By Walter Smelt

American punk was born in a dive bar and music club whose name stood for Country, Bluegrass and Blues, which is the kind of music the owner expected to book there. Instead, the Ramones started playing at CBGB’s and turned the music world upside down. So in an upside-down kind of way, it seems appropriate that Somerville’s own dive bar and music club should book bands whose members grew up on punk but found their way back to punk’s roots in older American music: music like rockabilly, rhythm and blues, and country. Of course it’s the Abbey Lounge we’re talking about, which last Saturday night hosted a sold-out show in which all these traditions were represented-and not just represented, but resuscitated.

The only misstep came at the beginning of the night with a band that called itself, aptly enough, the Almighty Terribles. Unfortunately, honesty was the Terribles’ only virtue.

Luckily, Nate Gibson and the Gashouse Gang were up next. This rollicking act may have been short a lead guitarist, but you never would have known it from the aplomb with which Gibson handled his own instrument, a guitar with a sparkly gold fa√ßade that looked as though it was cut from the $1000 wedge in Wheel of Fortune. His vintage pompadour, meanwhile, stood up like the fin of a ’56 Cadillac.

If the front man was all rockabilly glitz, upright bassist Miles Anderson was straight-up hillbilly with a red flannel shirt and reddish beard. Completing the sound was Tom Long on drums and Steve Toebes working the piano over in exuberant honky-tonk style. All you need to know about this band is that they rocked out “Folsom Prison Blues” like it was a celebration, complete with yodels.

Oh, and Gibson also plugged his pirate joke book, which was for sale in the back. (Question: Why did the pirate go to the adult movie theater? Answer: Because XXX marks the spot. Rim-shot sound from the drummer.)

They were followed by the Sprained Ankles, whose lead singer Drew Pilarski seemed woefully underdressed after the pearl-buttoned Gibson. All was forgiven, however, when he whipped out a kazoo for the first number.

The perfect marriage of buzzing and melody, the kazoo is not a bad metaphor for the Sprained Ankles as a whole. The seven-member band buzzed like a burnt-out speaker, but inside the almost-cacophony were sweet melodic lines you could trace back to doo-wop bands such as the Coasters. On these, Pilarski was assisted by back-up singers Andrea Baird and Emily Vides, known collectively (and inexplicably) as the “Brides of Tankenstein.”

When not singing or kazooing, Pilarski jittered spastically across the stage as though the drumbeat threatened to tear him apart, all the time wearing a confused and hapless expression belied by his strong voice. Guitarist Ryan Logsdon also joined in the fun, making a brief foray into the crowd with his instrument, and once running the kazoo up his fretboard like a bottleneck.

The band was rounded out by Michael Patterson on drums, Henry Ryan playing funk-bass, and Patrick Kennedy on keyboards. The total effect was goofball genius.

But as fun as they were, the best had been saved for last. In fact, the Sprained Ankles were originally supposed to go on after the Swinedells, but as an ardent fan explained to me, “No one wants to follow the Swinedells.”
With good reason. The six-piece Swinedells played their first club show just over two years ago, but already they are a Boston institution, laying down old-school R&B and rock ‘n’ roll with the conviction of apostles. They sound like a band booked 50 years ago for a high school prom against the principal’s better judgment.

The band is fronted by Sean Coleman, a singer who resembles a bantam rooster not just in size and  energy, but even in his cockscomb of a pompadour. (One of his more passionately sung numbers was entitled ‚ÄúDon’t Touch My Hair.‚Äù) He can slide without faltering from a crooner’s tender tremolo to the shriek of a blues preacher, until you wonder how such a thin frame can contain that truck-horn of a voice.

Behind him were guitarists Stiggs Piranha and Greg Giannino, drummer Jeebs Piranha (brother to Stiggs), Bat the bassist and Terry O’Malley on the all-important saxophone. The whole band was on and swinging from the first note of an old song that sounded like ‚ÄúGood Golly Miss Molly,‚Äù for which Coleman summoned Little Richard’s trademark scream.

While O’Malley and his saxophone swayed and dipped together and the guitarists leaned over their instruments like surgeons, Coleman was everywhere, jumping, gesticulating-in short, jiving.

Sometimes he went down on one knee as though proposing to the entire audience. To judge from their shouts, the crowd was ready to accept.

The Swinedells played honest-to-God, no-holds-barred rock ‘n’ roll with an extra helping of soul, and their energy was so irresistible they even got a roomful of hip Northerners to forget their carefully slicked-back hair and dance. When the band announced the next song would be their last, the crowd disagreed vehemently. So the Swinedells pounded out one ‚Äúlast‚Äù song after another, a band obviously unconcerned with the forward march of time.