I Was a Teenage Mummy

If you were going to make a low-budget black-and-white horror flick about a pack of leather-jacketed JDs and a high-school cheerleader turned into one of the Egyptian living dead, who would you hire to do the music? Filmmaker Christopher C. Frieri asked himself that very question and wisely chose New York's loud and proud rock & roll purists the A-Bones to score I Was a Teenage Mummy, and the band whipped up nine appropriately crazed tunes for the occasion. If the resultant album isn't at the top of the A-Bones heap, that's mainly because it's a bit on the short side and leans too heavily on instrumentals, but the group is in fine and rowdy form and what's included is cool stuff. "Mum's the Word" is a funny but savage "Surfin' Bird" variation, "Kashmiriam" is a moody instrumental with fine sax honking from Lars Espensen, Handsome Dick Manitoba makes a memorable guest appearance on a growling cover of the Coasters' "Little Egypt," and "Oh Wendy (Let's Stay Out All Night)" is suitable for submarine race watchers everywhere. The best A-Bones records sound like a wildly rockin' beer bash contained on plastic, and on the finer moments of the I Was a Teenage Mummy original soundtrack, you can practically smell the Budweiser. And that's a compliment. [Norton Records upgraded the album to CD in 2006, and helped remedy the short playing time of the original edition by including two early EPs, Tempo Tantrum and Free Beer for Life!, as bonus tracks.]