Translating into Spanish, and fun

Los Straitjackets is a band in ridiculous disguise, a quartet of Nashville dudes in matching sharp suits and glittery lucha libre wrestling masks. They are comical, smooth operators, building their trebly sounds of surfing and spying in the tradition of the heavy guitar instrumentalists Link Wray and Dick Dale.

The Mexican wrestling gear is an amusing gimmick, but the band has also absorbed enough genuine Latin roots-rock to be embraced by the real thing. On Friday at Safari Sam’s in Hollywood, Los Straitjackets celebrated the release of “Rock en Espanol, Vol. 1,” the band’s charming, rocking album that includes appearances by the East L.A. rockers Big Sandy, Little Willie G. of Thee Midnighters and Cesar Rosas of Los Lobos.

As on the new record, the band performed Spanish translations of classic rock tunes at Safari Sam’s, including the Kinks’ “All Day and All of the Night” (transformed here into “De Dia y de Noche”), caressed with the band’s frayed, velvety flair and the sparkling lead guitar work of Eddie Angel, a mystery man in a black mask endlessly strumming, tapping and stroking his instrument.

The set opened with four dreamy instro tunes before Los Straitjackets were joined by rockabilly soul man Big Sandy, an occasional collaborator with the quartet these last several years. It is a good fit. Sandy stepped out in dark shades and a short pompadour to sing “Dame Una Sena” (the Brenton Wood standard “Gimme Little Sign”) in vocal tones vulnerable and sturdy.

“Let’s have a ball!” Sandy declared with a smile. “I don’t know if you can say that in Spanish. You might get punched.”

He is a big man with a gentle soul who apologized for his Spanish even as he crooned a magnetic “Lagrimas Solitarias” (better known as Jackie Wilson’s “Lonely Teardrops”). A couple slow-danced near the stage.

Many of these songs had been Top 40 hits in their day but had also been recorded in popular Spanish-language versions by mid-’60s rock bands in Mexico. The new Straitjackets album is a tribute to those translations.

Rosas, who produced the album, arrived Friday to sing a few of the old tunes. And though he is fluent in Spanish himself and is the primary singer of Spanish songs in Los Lobos, he had to hold a lyric sheet up to the light as he ripped through the rock standard “Dizzy Miss Lizzy.”

“That’s a lot of words there,” Rosas explained, tossing the paper into the audience.

Roots-rock hometown hero Dave Alvin was in that crowd, and punk original Keith Morris was the DJ who spun ancient sides and retro-rock classics between bands. The Straitjackets’ 90-minute set helped mark the one-year anniversary of Safari Sam’s, which has already become a key venue for new music and local rock traditions.

Los Straitjackets were a fitting choice for that anniversary. Fitting and ridiculous. As always, during the show, guitarist Daddy-O Grande (aka Danny Amis, a vet of indie instro bands the Raybeats and the Overtones) introduced several songs from behind his white mask in garbled, sped-up Spanish.

That nonsense ended whenever the band began playing. And this night’s set finally closed when the quartet dived into a daring surf-guitar version of Benny Goodman’s swing epic “Sing, Sing, Sing,” reigniting the original Gene Krupa beat and replacing big band horns with endless waves of watery, reverberating guitars, a sound and energy that works in any language.