The Mummies - (You Must Fight To Live) On The Planet Of The Apes

Today is Halloween, so here's a date-appropriate record to share.

Do you like old tyme rock 'n' roll? The kind that dumb-ass white kids used to make when girls wouldn't pay attention to them? Then this is for you. It's the Mummies, a quartet of dorks from south of San Francisco who created Budget Rock around 30 years ago and will still whip you right in the ass with their blazing sounds. They hated CDs, and lord knows that they probably dislike the likes of yours truly sharing a very influential record digitally.

I picked up the "On The Planet Of The Apes" 7" mostly because of the reference. I think I played the title track on my radio show once or twice, but almost certainly sold it/traded it more than 15 years ago. It's a bummer, because this has a lot of prime Mummies slapped on its seven inches of vinyl. "White Caps" spans two parts across the A- and B-sides, and there's a cover of the Beatles' "I'm Down" on the back end. There's a little Margaret Keane art on the A-side label, and that Sympathy patch on the B...always a sign of quality.

Records come and records go, and you just try not to regret the ones you sent off to their next home. I'll be damned, though, if I don't get a little choked up thinking about how easily I let my Mummies records go. I mean, how could 20-year-old me NOT appreciate a bunch of fellas playing grimy garage and surf whilst draped in toilet paper? I was way too fucking serious back in those days. Chalk it up to capricious youth, a fundamentalist upbringing devoid of Halloween, or too much hardcore orthodoxy. At any rate, it'll cost me a lot more than the $3 to $10 I originally paid to bring these back to my life.

Discogs

Click here to download.