Featured pop concert: Sonics, still super, play TLA

'Our whole bag, just like when we were 18, is to play hard and make the floor move. Hold on to something, because the Sonics are coming!"

That's saxophonist Rob Lind's advice to anyone going to see the Sonics on Sunday night at the TLA. The band, which formed in Tacoma, Wash., in 1963, has just released its first album in nearly a half-century and is on its first tour of the United States. And these septuagenarians are ready to rock.

Lind, guitarist Larry Parypa, and vocalist/keyboard player Jerry Roslie formed the Sonics in 1963, and they released three albums and a handful of singles between 1964 and 1967. The Sonics never had a national hit, but "The Witch," "Strychnine," "Have Love Will Travel," and "Don't Believe in Christmas" came to define what was later called garage rock: raw and unruly music more interested in being loud than in being sophisticated. In subsequent decades, the Sonics influenced bands as varied as the Cramps, Mudhoney, and the Hives.

Lind says the Sonics' style came about mostly in opposition to the sound of Seattle's more proficient players. "They played jazzy stuff, swinging stuff," he says. "We hated that.

"Down in Tacoma, we wanted to rock and roll. We were into Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis and any of the black acts that played that power stuff," Lind says. "Our primary thrust was just playing right in your face. That's what we did then, and that's what we do now, exactly the same thing. We just wanted to rock and roll. We didn't want to be cool or trippy or anything like that."

After breaking up in 1967, the band members abandoned their music careers and pretty much forgot about the Sonics. Lind graduated from college and was drafted into the Vietnam War, where he became a Navy fighter pilot. He spent three decades flying commercial jets. He even flew out of Philadelphia for US Airways from 1993 to 2003. The Sonics were a part of his youth, and he didn't pick up a saxophone at all.

In 2005, prompted by solicitations to play New York's Cavestomp garage-rock festival, the band members reconvened and started to rehearse again, although they refused to perform until they were sure they were ready.

"We became aware of our legacy and were protective of it," says Lind. "I guess because we are older guys, we made a mature decision to do this if we can be credible, but if we can't, let's not do it. We didn't want to go on stage and be pathetic."

There's nothing pathetic about the new album, This is the Sonics. Produced by Jim Diamond, who worked with the White Stripes, the album rocks hard, with originals such as "Bad Betty" and "Save the Planet" (because "it's the only one with beer"). It also includes what Lind calls "Sonicized" covers of tracks by Guitar Shorty, Ray Davies, Marty Robbins, and others. It's a raw, wild, and lusty record.

"We do what we know," says Lind. "One of the things is because we stopped playing in '67 and didn't really play much until 2005, we were right where we were in '67. We hadn't been polluted by jazz or standards or pop. Nobody wanted to sing 'Blowin' in the Wind' or 'Puff, the Magic Dragon' or that kind of stuff. We started right where we left off."

The band, which now includes drummer Dusty Watson and bassist Freddie Dennis, is surprised by and appreciative of its newfound success.

"If I had any more fun than this, I'd probably be in trouble with the cops," says Lind. "It's gratifying. It couldn't possibly be more fun than it is right now."