King Kurt

Although psychobilly pranksters King Kurt are best remembered for "Destination Zululand," the rambunctious smash with which they stormed the U.K. chart in 1984, to recall them purely as one-hit wonders is to decry another four years of achievement -- four further singles and two full albums also bothered the charts before the group finally faded away during 1987. But even that only begins to tell the band's story, for it wasn't on cold, impersonal wax that King Kurt were at their blistering, mystifying best. It was in concert, where gigs became tribal gatherings, songs became rockabilly psycho chants, and haircuts were -- well, let's just say they were mighty peculiar, and leave it at that. The story begins in early 1981, with the band -- fronted by the irrepressible Smeg, and completed by guitarist Thwack, saxophonist Maggot, and drummer Rory -- rising out of the same twisted garage underground that was home to an entire army of post-Cramps psychobilly revivalists. But, whereas the majority of their rivals chose to drive their point home through more-or-less deliberate revisions of the Cramps' own take on the genre, King Kurt's eye was always focused on less ghoulish angles. For a full year or so, the band rattled around the U.K. pub circuit, hanging their rat-with-cigarette backdrop from a hundred subterranean basement stages, then visiting the local butcher's shop in search of that night's collection of stage props. Smeg wore a dead rabbit necktie for a while; there might also have been an uncooked goose at one show. Whatever. Wherever the King ventured, he acquired another horde of like-minded acolytes, all of whom seemed thrilled to adhere to King Kurt's own personal dress code -- "all male concert-goers must wear dresses." Neither was that the end of the...