When I was a kid, growing up in Metairie, everybody was in a rock band. Although we admired the black rhythm and blues music that dominated New Orleans, our true inspiration came from Liverpool, London and Jan and Dean’s apocryphal “Surf City,” where there’s “two swinging honeys for every guy and all ya gotta do is just wink your eye.” Our world was the world of Beatle haircuts, Beatle boots and Jimmy Page imitation. Our “Strawberry Fields” was Lakeshore Drive. It was a “Whiter Shade of Pale” world, inhabited by such denizens as the Greek Fountains and the Basement Wall, two bands from Baton Rouge. In our world, for some ineluctable reason, Baton Rouge was much cooler than New Orleans.

Aaron Broussard, who would one day become mayor of Kenner, led a rock band called the Pro Teens that usually clobbered all opponents at our high school talent show. Then the school was integrated and the Gladiators—a black band led by the Batiste brothers—was allowed to compete. Rock was creamed by soul and there you have the condensed history of New Orleans rock: butt-shaking killed head-banging.

New Orleans has never produced a great rock band. Note that I say rock—not punk-rock or roots-rock or heavy metal. I’m talking about rock played on radio stations from coast-to-coast, performed by white males with electric guitars. No keyboards because keyboards are for pussies. Rock with Zen-teenage lyrics of meaningless profundity, rock that sounds best as you shift into fourth and your girlfriend slides her fingertips down your skintight jeans. Rock to overcome pimples and heartbreak and alienation. The kind of rock that is born in those American places where nothing else is going on. In New Orleans, there’s always too much going on.

MuleBone, led by trombonist Mark Mullins, might be our first great rock band. Surely the title of the band’s latest album—Only In New Orleans—is meant to be ironic: the greatest aspect of this fine work is that it does not sound “New Orleans” at all. Because Mullins has developed such an unusual technique of electronically modifying the trombone’s sound, the instrument is often indistinguishable from the electric guitars of Jimmy Robinson (playing some of the most incredible passages of his very long career) and Mike Mayeux. The equally adept rhythm section consists of bassist Benji and drummer Mike Barras, whose beats are like a piledriver’s.

What does MuleBone sound like? Well, Mark Mullins is a sideman for all seasons and everybody’s favorite player. He’s performed with Better Than Ezra, Harry Connick, Jr., the Continental Drifters, Tori Amos, Rancid and Tom’s House. Chances are that if you encounter a guy dressed in black playing trombone with a rock band, it’s Mark Mullins. He co-leads Bonerama, a mostly all-trombone band. He’s played for large rock audiences and understands the proclivities of the rock business.

So MuleBone sounds like no-nonsense modern American rock. It sounds like its mother was Led Zeppelin and its uncles were Soundgarden, Hüsker Dü, Pavement and Metallica. Mark is a very good rock vocalist—he sings without resorting to screaming but with enough macho swagger so that no one will mistake him for Freddie Mercury (a parenthetical remark: it is a curious fact that at pro football games around the country fans and teams are incited by Queen’s “We Are The Champions,” a song sung by a campy, deceased homosexual who must chuckle in his grave at the irony).

Only In New Orleans commences with a trio of songs tailored for the rock radio format. “King Kong” has the requisite “doo-doo-dooey-doo” and lyrics about duty-free shopping. They make absolutely no sense, which makes them perfect. In rock, the essence is the sound. No need cluttering up the place with sensitive musings. Second is “Cemetery Street” and, of course, there’s one in every town: “Last night we drove down to Cemetery Street—we met our friends, we felt complete…” Now that’s positively brilliant. When you’re a teenager, hanging around with your friends next to a cemetery, with all the semi-Gothic, horror show possibilities, is about as appealing as the Palestinian suicide bomber’s vision of an eternity spent in the company of 10,000 virgins. And third on the agenda is the swaggering “Goodbye” and Mullins ain’t kidding: “Love me tonight, tomorrow I die, Spend my love and share my life…” What blonde 16-year-old cheerleader, a bit late with the period, would not love those sentiments?

A slight bit of Massive Attack/Radiohead instrumentalism titled “Truth” follows, as does a snippet of intercepted police communication concerning the West Band Expressway, and then—this the part where, live, MuleBone’s full arsenal of pyrotechnics would be ignited—“Angel.” Once again, the lyrics are confetti: “My angel flying high, feeling fine, singing my song, my my doing it…” I like the “my my” part—it reminds me of Mick Jagger’s advice about the importance of fucking lyrics up. Mike Baras’ drums shake the subdivision as the electric guitars and trombone cockfight for supremacy. Jimmy Robinson emerges the bloody victor—his fingers must’ve been shreds of tendons when he finished cutting this.

“Brother T” is a paean to a lost comrade and “Basin” an anthem to running the streets—not necessarily Basin Street. “Charity,” no relation to the hospital, is a hooky segue into “Coldest Instigator,” in which the wordy ghost of Elvis Costello invades Mark Mullins’ temporal being. “Black and Blue” is Elmore James in an 18-wheeler cutting off old ladies in traffic. “Always,” the only selection composed by Jimmy Robinson, is shotgun Houses of the Holy with humidity, and lyrics that nail Mark Mullins: “The world will end and you’ll be the good guy and everyone else will be wrong.” And as all good rock albums should, Only In New Orleans concludes with a dreamy ballad, “Heaven’s Moon,” with a more or less natural, non-manipulated trombone solo. But no, that’s not really The End…let the CD roll and Mullins and mates make like free-jazz and Ornette Coleman for a bit, squawking with manic harmolodics. Perhaps that’s what he means by Only In New Orleans: this is a place where rock musicians know more than three chords, the latest hairstyle and their publicist’s cell phone number. Now if only somebody could explain what that image on the CD’s cover is. A mangled trombone? A parody of Prince’s former symbol? An IUD viewed through an electron microscope?