On receiving a call from the most prestigious public relations firm in the Los Angeles music world I had but one thought: “Oh shit.” It was. The flack on the other end tried unsuccessfully to interest me in seeing Sugarloaf, failed equally with War (minus Eric Burdon) and was about to hang up when he asked hesitantly, “Say, you wouldn’t be interested in seeing Flash Cadillac and The Continental Kids, would you?”

Flash Cadillac and The Continental Kids! Words to conjure with! Ever since they had shared the bill with The Beach Boys and stolen the show, it had been one of my strongest ambitions to see this band. I agreed gleefully, and on Saturday night when the flack showed up I was decked out in my snazziest duds, ready for some boppin’. The flack, looking more like a greasy hood than a press agent, introduced himself as Chris. We played a few appropriate records, like “Great Balls of Fire”, “Work With Me Annie” and the incredible “Somebody’s Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonite”, a perfect sendoff as we stumbled into the night and Chris’ open ’58 Buick convertible.

We were soon tearing along the back roads at 85mph. Chris pulled out a bottle of apple wine, which went inside of five minutes. The bottle was thrown from the car with a whoop, and we stopped at a nearby liquor store to stock up with a pint of brandy and a case of beer. It took the better part of an hour to reach Anaheim, where Flash was playing at a' joint called The Warehouse, and in that time we did away with the brandy and most of the beer, leaving the highway behind us littered with empty cans and bewildered motorists.

We groped our way inside with difficulty and reached stage front just as Flash began their first number, “At The Hop’’. Whether or not Chris had planned it, my critical faculties were practically nil by then, but that didn’t stop me from jumping around, snapping my fingers and grinning like a monkey. There’s no way I’ll ever know, but I believe my reaction would’ve been much the same if I’d been stone sober.

The mere appearance of Flash Cadillac is a panic. I had been led to expect something on the order of Sha Na Na, but these guys were punks. Nothing about them smacked of costume or exaggeration. The only thing I could think of was that Somehow I had been transported to 1958 to watch this band, possibly Ritchie Valens’ former backup group, perform the hits of the day with as much single-minded vigor as their illiterate souls could muster, which was quite a bit.

But although Flash Cadillac doesn’t engage in gross parody they do put on a visual show. Kris “Spin” Moe is prone to flip his leg up on the piano during especially hot numbers, bassist Butch Knight combs his hair between songs, and all of them jump around doing splits and otherwise reviving the old-style showmanship of rock and roll. The biggest goof comes during “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” when Flash, the short, cocky Tex-Mex lead singer, throws out his hands and tells the band, “Let’s get real low one time!” The guys bend their knees and lean backward. -nash repeats the command and they lean down even further, like a Limbo contest, the music getting softer and softer. By the fourth time they’re all laying on their backs. Then with a shout from Flash they’re on their feet, wailing through the closing bars of the song.

Their repertoire consists of “all original songs.’ According to Flash, “We’ve got some real great songs now, like ‘Little Darling’, ‘Rockin’ Robin’, ‘Hound Dog’ and ‘Teen Angel’. Music you can bop to.”

“And,” adds rhythm guitarist Spike, “we’ll keep writing our own songs. I just finished ‘Blueberry Hill’, ‘Rock Around The Clock’, and am working on a catchy little number called ‘At The Hop’.” One of their most popular songs is “Tell -Laura I Love Her”, a real tear-jerker acted out with excruciating sincerity.

' It’s hard to explain the difference between Flash Cadillac and the dozen other bands doing similar material. Brownsville Station, Frut, Warren Phillips and the Rockets, The Flamin’ Groovies, Sha Na Na . . . something about all these groups, however good they are, doesn’t quite ring true. The “willing suspension of disbelief’ that is the most important element in any successful fantasy, fails to take place. The Wild Angels come closest, in that they can make .you believe it’s 1956, but while the Angels would have been featured at an Alan Freed Show, Flash Cadillac would be playing some nearby suburban Armory dance to a couple of hundred kids, spending intermission stealing parts for their rods out in the parking lot.

Speaking of audiences and such, the crowd at The Warehouse was almost as good' a show as Flash themselves. Anaheim is in the center of Orange County, where the 50s are not completely over. A good quarter of the audience'were Marines, and most of the guys not in uniform looked like they hoped td sign up as soon as they reached 18. The girls were a study in bouffant hairdos, bubblegum and Toreador pants. There was a small scattering of freaks, looking disoriented. It was a strange feeling asking the guy at the door for directions to the Men’s room and being warned to “watch out for the Marines!” But whatever their cultural persuasions, they all seemed to dig Flash Cadillac.

Talking to them backstage it becomes apparent that, beneath the glib patter and punk lifestyle, these guys are quite intelligent,and aware of the effects of what they’re doing on many levels. Kris in particular has a razor-sharp wit that put me in mind of the old John Lennon. The whole group, in fact, interacts the way the Beatles used to in their early movies and press conferences. Puns fly baqk and forth, going over the heads of the groupies and fans. And when you realize that they have the musical ability to be a top band in any genre they chose, their choice pf 50s rock and their understanding of the special things it can do become all the more impressive.

Flash and the boys think of themselves as crusaders against the pretension and boredom of the current music scene. “Today’s music is sure enough bad news,” reflects Flash, the philosopher of the group. “What weneed is a revival of really hairy music, good drinking and party music. Music to cop a feel by. How long has it been since -you’ve heard any of that real ‘good-time’ rock & roll, or had a really great evening, when like you take home souvenirs like the usher’s ear, or put your head through a plate glass window? That’s what I call a good evening.”

Onsfage, in bowling shirts and baggy suits; the band tried t^ieir best to instill this feeling in the audience. A furious succession of songs from “Johnny B. Goode” to “Muleskinner Blues” led to the evening’s highlight, a “twist contest”. Four judges were selected from the audience, and at the end of “Peppermint Twist” the judges chose four couples to compete. The floor was cleared as the couples, numbers pinned on their backs, squirmed about as if they had ants in their pants through five minutes of “Let’s Twist Again Like We Did Last Summer”. Couple number four were really getting into it, the guy kneeling all the way down on one leg and extending the other, the girl gyrating until her hair, once piled twa feet high, had collapsed about her ears. To make it fair, though, we were asked to applaud as each couple was pointed to. After Consulting his, “Applause-O-Meter”, Flash declared No. 4 the winners, awarding them a Ricky Nelson album.

The twist contest wks followed by an event that had never happened before, or so everyone assured me. The band launched into Joey Dee’s “Shout”, growing 'more and more intensely involved with each passing -minute. After ten minutesyor so they were in a frenzy. Spike, charged with insane energy, hurled his guitar on the stage and stomped on it, then picked it up by the neck to wave it about and smash it through the amplifier. They all became caught up in it, the drummer kicking over his kit onto Flash’s head, Kris dumping his piano on its side, etc. The amazing thing about it was that their playing continued unimpeded for another\ couple of minutes and finally reached a roaring end, leaving the audience screaming.

Backstage, Warren was pushing Spike around, saying, “Why’d you do that, man? You out to lunch or something? We can’t afford to wreck equipment like that!” “T couldn’t help it, I just got carried away!” explained Spike. The whole thing was a beautifully unintentional parody of The Who. I was struck even further with the irony of it all when I recalled that in England, the flip of The Who’s “My ''Generation” single was a song called “Shout and Shimmy”, the same Joey Dee song Flash had smashed their instruments to. It was, to me at least, ineffably sublime.

Flash is elusive regarding their origins. “I was a high school letterman in wrestling. One night I was driving down Van Nuys in my ’49 Olds, and I met these other guys in their ’56 Chevies with reverb units, and the radios were playing ‘In The Still Of the Night’. And we were all fingerpopping simultaneously. So, I figured that these guys were really hep. And rather than fight, we decided to form a band.” The real story is more prosaic. They formed in Colorado about three years ago, and have been making the usual rounds of weddings, high school dances and small Las Vegas clubs ever since.

But since the Beach Boys concert, the reviews of which were chiefly devoted to Flash Cadillac, things are beginning to look up. Their manager feels they are on the verge of breaking into the rock ballroom circuit, and with the group’s ability to excite an audience (the sheer energy they generate can be overpowering) a recording contract is sure to follow. Anticipating this, and determined not to put out another album of carbon-copy oldies, which the band rightly feel are better left to the original artists, they boys have prepared a “rock opera” they believe will set the music world on its ear, if it ever gets recorded.

And we’re back to The Who again, because Flash Cadillac’s rock opera is, on one level, a broad parody of “Tommy”, including a hilarious recitation of the “see me, feel me,” theme by the girl as she is eyed hungrily by one of the hoods in the story.

Entitled “Tommy Who?”, it concerns three teenagers “caught up in the wild, passionate world of hot rods, underage drinking, and the driving rhythms of rock ‘n’ roll!” The characters include Angel, a nice girl with clean clothes, a mostly-smooth complexion, and a charming ponytail, who despite her normal, average appearance wants to be wild, and is bored with her “steady”; Tommy, her boyfriend, a clean-cut guy with good grades who spends hours polishing his ’56 Chevy, dreaming of the evenings he can spend at*the A&W stand, where the town’s roughnecks and daredevils hang out. Their leader is Rocko, “who symbolizes the worst of today’s speed-crazy, ‘hop’ generation. He hangs around the A&W stand, polishing his car, spitting, telling obscene stories and combing his pompadour.”

The opera opens with Angel giving Tommy his class ring back after a fight. As they stand arguing Rocko drives past with a load of stolen hubcaps, notices Angel, and sings “She’s So Fine”. She takes note and they make a date for that night. Tommy goes home to brood. That night Rocko picks up Angel, singing “Say That You Care”. When they arrive at the root beer stand they find the Greaser Choir singing “Ode To The A&W”, while Tommy, alone in his room, sings “The Saddest Teenager In The World”. Unable to take it any longer he jumps in his car and hauls ass to the A&W. He squeals to a halt singing “Rock And Roll Lover”, catching Rocko giggling over dirty pictures of somebody’s sister while Angel combs her hair. Angel is won back, and drives off with Tommy.

•‘AR°1M re.tUr"S. *° find herS°ne. rings AngelMy Love >, consoles himself with his buddies by singing “Me And Mv Pompadour”, then loses his temper and goes after the two lovers. The whole gang piles into the fastest car while Rocko sings a tender love ballad dedicated to Angel. They find Tommy and Angel in the high school parking lot, and chase them down a winding mountain road to Lover’s Leap, where Tommy hopes to lose the gang. But Rocko knows a shortcut and as Tommy rounds a curve he finds Rocko standing in the road with a chain and a knife. Swerving to avoid him, the car goes over a cliff, Angel being killed while Tommy escapes. The final scene is in the Cathedral with Tommy and Rocko mourning the loss of “a really neat ’56 Chevy.”

Lest you think all this sounds like a clever fantasy, I heard acetates of many of the songs, and it’s fine, fine stuff. The album is sure to be an absolute killer.

If I’ve given the impression that Flash Cadillac and the Continental Kids are more fun than a drag race, or even a rumble, I’ll be satisfied. But if you re going ‘‘ho-hum’’, it’s only understandable. You’ve got to see these guys to believe, that’s all. If Y°u d like to believe what I say is true, then pester your local promoter until he brijM$, them to your town. They can ® reached through this magazine.

You won’t be sorry.