The Frantic Flattops: Hi-Fi Honey Revisited

Every few years since the Stray Cats made it cool back in the early ’80s, rockabilly makes a big “comeback”. Everyone goes nuts and floods hip dance floors to swing dance and jive and look cool and all that shit. I don’t get it and never have. I’m not a hep daddy-o, and this kind of low rent hucksterism doesn’t deserve all the repeated wowing with mouths agape that it usually receives. Come on, even Brian Setzer was flat out boring during his last renaissance. When his cover of “Jump, Jive an’ Wail” went big, everyone picked the fucker up and used it, or dusted off the original and used it some more. Then after that, listeners got sick and rightly went back to their cozy homes and decreed that boy bands were instead to be the next big thing and forced the world to become nauseous all over again. A beautiful cycle.

This need to mine the rather crusty — but still hip in someone’s notion — forms of old rock struck a group by the name of the Frantic Flattops as a really good idea. They got together in Rochester in 1987 and played around a while until they finally released their debut Hi-Fi Honey in 1994. They did Brian Setzer all over before Brian Setzer did Brian Setzer all over. There were a couple other albums in there as well (during which Setzer overlapped the Setzering and those other goofy groups like Cherry Poppin’ Daddies were succeeding at lame variations, so it was prime time for this stuff) and apparently the band had a hand in getting some cat by the name of Ronnie Dawson to come out of hibernation and sing and play once again.

At any rate, Get Hip has reissued the Flattops’ first album with a remastered sound, bonus tracks with Ronnie Dawson, etc. You know: the usual deal of glopping on some rare life stuff and a new color cover shot to get the old fans to rebuy the same old same old and everyone else who doesn’t know who these guys are to go, “Who the hell is that?” Well, that is if the local music shops are even selling this title, in which case it’s just going to be the old fans going at it alone.

But now even you know of this release, and if you like greasy, Stray Cats-sounding rockabilly (it may be presumptuous of me, but I’ve yet to hear any that didn’t sound Stray Cats inspired … at least not by any groups that came afterward) and are ready to party like it’s 1996 all over again, then by all means, turn it up. Just don’t expect the remastering to be any sort of revelatory experience. The thing sounds like it was recorded on old equipment and then rolled around in a tin can, so why it got the deluxe treatment is beyond me. I suppose there’s a new rule that says even if you’re a small indie band, you get your shit automatically remastered if any of your old discs get sent out once more.

So all of these songs pretty much sound the way you’d expect them to. “Juke Joints Jumpin'”, “Go Man Go”, “One More Dance”, and “Feelin’ Cheap” sound exactly like they read. Lots of rockabilly rhythm, twanging guitars, and a lead singer doing his best young Elvis thing. After the original ten tracks are all done, you get to hear some of them again live, along with those other tracks with Ronnie Dawson. It’s energetic and you could dance to it. It’s rockabilly 101.

I would end this by saying it’s odd how something so faddish gets tossed out in a time when it’s seemingly more decrepit than it would be if everyone were back into listening to such a thing, but then I remember that all pop music is faddish no matter what genre is playing. So in its own way Hi-Fi Honey Revisited is as much a celebration of the old styles as Toby Keith singing about Ford trucks is a nod back to old greasy trucker music… in its own greasy, updated way. Fancy that.