Los Tiki Phantoms - Disco Guateque

Los Tiki Phantoms were a pleasant surprise when they played with us last week opening for the Fleshtones - a super fun, highly visual Spanish instro band who didn't play just the usual surf tunes, but had some real songs. What I didn't know at the time was that most - all? - of the songs that they did were covers of 80's hits! I essentially did not listen to the radio at all during the 80's, so I am not familiar with groups like Wham!, Eddy Grant, Supergrass, A-Ha, etc.

This record, roughly translated as "record party" (as best as I can tell), is all covers. For all intents and purposes, I know zero Spanish, so I do not know if the songs titles in Spanish were hits in that country or are simply more songs that I am not acquainted with with Spanish titles. But, there are smashes from the Clash (actually Bobby Fuller's "I Fought the Law" blended with a couple of his other numbers), Blondie (I did not notice before how similar the melody is for "Call Me" and Kiss' "I Was Made For Loving You"!) and Roy Orbison that I could not fail to recognize.

These cats are all fine players and the sound here is high quality but, as with almost all bands and certainly with masked instro groups, their live show far surpasses any recording. Live, they are a wild party group - on record they are (obviously) much more controlled and (also obviously) you don't have the visuals, but regardless, this is a quality piece of plastic. Check 'em out for sure!