Lights Show

Sons of Salinas: The Mystery Lights go from garage recording to commercial release.

The home-sown Mystery Lights release their debut.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

A lot has happened to the Salinas garage-rock band The Mystery Lights over the last two years. The group – 19-year-old singer/guitarist Mike Brandon, 20-year-old drummer Steve Miller, 21-year-old lead guitarist L.A. Solano and relative old man 23-year-old bassist Joe Dellamora – has witnessed a bloody brawl erupt at one of their Brookdale Lodge shows, gotten their touring van impounded during a tour stop in Los Angeles, had two members graduate high school, seen four members come and go and has gone through blues, ’60s garage rock and punk phases. And, oh yeah, they finally finished their long awaited debut CD Teenage Cat Girls and The Mystery Lights Show, whose release will be celebrated Saturday at Jose’s.

An exuberant mixture of Brit Invasion rock, garage, surf and punk, Teenage Cat Girls and The Mystery Lights Show was recorded at Sam’s Lab Recording Studio in Chualar and, to add a gritty element, in a Fort Ord garage. “We wanted to go dirty with our sound,” Dellamora says.

The 11-song CD features the delirious punk song “The Renouncement” along with “21 and Counting,” a stomp with a guitar solo that tears into the song’s first section like a wayward lightning bolt. It also includes ambitious tracks like “2012,” which begins as sunny sounding oldies rock and ends with a ferociously rocking section aided by a flurry of drumbeats.

THE MYSTERY LIGHTS celebrate the release of Teenage Cat Girls and The Mystery Lights Show with NAGG and The Flakes 9pm Saturday, April 4, at Jose’s, 638 Wave St., Monterey. $10. 655-4419.