It seems like Mannequin Men spent half our tour in NYC, which was sometimes good (seeing friends, taking a break from our fast-food diet to have some incredible meals) and sometimes bad (using up our tour budgets to fund overpriced drinking expeditions). All in all a pretty great time, though. One thing that definitely helped was sharing a couple of bills with the Back C.C.’s. Their straight-ahead garage punk would only sound innovative and original to someone who’d been in suspended animation since the early 60s, but their execution is satisfyingly dirty and snotty, which when you’re talking garage punk is really about the best thing you can say. The fact that they have a song with a chorus that just goes “Rock ‘n’ roll / Rock ‘n’ roll,” delivered without even the slightest bit of a smirk, is a wonderful thing.