Here Come the Mummies
April 3rd, 2015
Mercury Ballroom
Louisville, KY
It’s something you have just have to see.
Typically, words will only fail to fully describe the experience of seeing Here Come the Mummies in concert. In fact, concert is hardly the appropriate word – perhaps spectacle is a more apt description. And last night at Mercury Ballroom was no different.
Louisville's Armageddon yesterday didn't deter the crowd or the band from coming out for a good time. Sometimes it surprises me how many enthusiastic fans this wonderfully kitschy band draws to their shows, especially considering how often The Mummies make it through town – but perhaps that’s why they come…people always show up. Because once you’ve seen their show live, you won’t miss another one, and you’ll most likely introduce someone else to them with each subsequent show you attend.
The Mummies host the party. It’s a high energy, funky 70’s throwback sound – with just enough innuendo in the lyrics to make you blush, but not raunchy enough to get the dreaded P.M.R.C. stamp of judgment.
The show always begins the same way. The faint rumble of a drum line, whether it’s coming from the back of the venue, back stage, or as it was last night, out on the street. The members of the band, in full costume (it’s not just a clever band name, yes they play the full concert dressed as mummies), parade down the sidewalk, in the front door, through the audience, all the way to the stage. It’s a theatrical entrance to say the least.
Once they arrive at their instruments, that’s when the room explodes. They work through their string of tongue-in-cheek funk jams, blurring their good sense of humor between sexual innuendo and ancient Egyptian allusions. They rip through a full string of fan favorite body-movers like “Freak Flag,” “Ra Ra Ra,” “V.I.P.,” “Carnal Carnival,” and “Wonders of the World.” Even if this is your first time hearing the songs, everyone will have you singing along by the end of the first chorus.
Lazy Sunday opened the show. They are certainly one of the many jewels in our local music scene here in Louisville, and they offered a slightly more straight laced juxtaposition to what The Mummies did later.
