Rockin' Possessed 1984-1986

Blackpool post-punks Zanti Misfitz (named after a 1963 episode of the old TV anthology series The Outer Limits) managed a couple singles and an EP on the minor indie Clay Records before breaking up and eventually transmogrifying into a rather different psychobilly act called the Turnpike Cruisers. Though the band remains a going concern to this day — Blackpool being a legendarily tacky coastside tourist town where a live rock & roll revival act can make a decent living playing '50s faves to aging Teddy Boys — their recorded output remains scant; they didn't make their full-length debut until 1989's Drive Drive Drive. The 2008 compilation Rockin' Possessed 1984-1986 collects in toto three mostly previously unreleased studio sessions. Lead-off track "That Girl's Got Mine" was released as a single in 1984 (there was even a video made, which has shown up on YouTube), and it both exemplifies the Turnpike Cruisers sound and suggests the problems that kept the band from progressing beyond the most minor of followings. At heart, the Turnpike Cruisers have a fairly unique sound, being perhaps the only psychobilly band with a permanent two-person horn section (trumpeter Steve Borsley and saxophonist Karen Bentham) and featuring an appealing lead singer, Richard King, who wisely keeps the usual Lux Interior/Dave Vanian vocal tics down to a minimum. Unfortunately, even for this hardly lyric-driven style of music, the lyrics are largely worthless, being neither as provocative (despite the repeated oral sex references) nor as funny as the band perhaps hoped. A few lines here and there are chuckleworthy non sequiturs, such as this bizarre couplet from "Extra Flesh": "Just been hassled by a paranoid junkie/Davy Jones used to play with the Monkees." But the combination of the weak lyrics and the cheap, functional production keeps these songs from working up the sweaty, danceable head of steam that a good psychobilly band needs to attain on a regular basis, making Rockin' Possessed 1984-1986 more of a curio for obscurity fetishists than anything else.