"Fiend Club Lounge"
Misfits Meet the Nutley Brass
Ryko, 2005
Back
in 1999, a strange CD appeared on the lounge landscape. The lounge revival
was winding down and a most people out there jumped on the "let's cover
rock songs like they were lounge music songs" bandwagon. Most of this stuff
was forgettable, but there was one CD that stood out for its daring. It
was the Ramones Songbook as Played by
the Nutley Brass. Strange as it might seem, the Nutley
Brass created a weird sort of musical voodoo mixing their style
of Tijuana Brass-meets-high-school-marching-band
with the pure punk power of the Ramones. It quickly became
on of those CD's you brought out at parties when you really wanted to blow
people's minds.
Well, the Nutley
Brass is back. And this time they're taking on horror-rockers the
Misfits. An odd pairing to say the least. What's even odder
is the Misfits have put their stamp of approval on this project.
As founding member Jerry Only says in the press release,
"If Grandpa Munster had a band as a teenager it would have sounded like
the Misfits Meet the Nutley Brass!"
The Nutley Brass
seems to have graduated from their high school marching band music and
have moved more into sixties pop bordering on the early psychedelic sound.
There are even hints of Motown (albeit filtered through white bread) on
this collection of 11 classic Misfits tunes. If nothing else,
the dark Misfits sound is made even creepier with the
Nutley
Brass's pseudo-Up With People approach. It's the same sort of thing
that makes clowns so creepy to people.
Despite all that (or
maybe because of that), Fiend Club Lounge is a must for all
hipsters. It gives you both your cult rocker cred as well as adds a few
point to your modern lounge cool cat scale.
One final point
of interest--the front and back covers were painted by
Basil Gogos.
He's the guy who painted many of the legendary "Famous Monsters of Filmland"
magazine covers.
Buy this album from
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