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On Saturday afternoon I get an e-mail from my friend Steve. The subject line reads: "the next great '60s garage band, for free!" He knows those words alone are enough to pique my interest, the bastard. Inside, he writes, "Hmm, the singer sounds a bit familiar..."

So I head to the web address he provides and give a look and a listen. It's a very clever homepage, essentially just a mockup of a dog-eared, mod--not to mention graphically modular--album cover, complete with fruggin' chicks who dance when you scroll over them. The band's name? Foxboro Hot Tubs (never heard of 'em). Flip the image over, ignore the satanic goat head and upside-down cross in the top right corner, and you see an equally authentic-looking back cover listing the six songs contained within. I click on the first title, "Stop Drop And Roll," and the rudimentary guitar riff immediately brings to mind the Knickerbockers' ersatz-Beatles hit from 1966, "Lies." I can't quite place the voice but the singer's certainly in my collection somewhere. It's not Mike Gent (if you knew my friend Steve, you'd also assume it just had to be the Figgs singer). Forgetting for a moment the existence of something called Google, I email Steve requesting the reveal. I get this message back: "they're a bunch of idiots (hint hint) who had a huge record a few years ago. they also had a side project called the Network a few years ago." A-ha! In other words, it's the band that provided the greatest Grammy moment ever--well, at least according to some CBS show I half-watched a week earlier.

I go back and play the second track, "Mother Mary," which begins with that classic bopping-soul bass line that's foundation of such classics as "You Can't Hurry Love," "Town Called Malice," "American Girl," "Don't Get Me Wrong," and "Last Night." Other tracks manage to recall "Tired Of Waiting for You," "Till The End Of The Day," and additional songs not written by Ray Davies.

In all, what I'm hearing is nothing special--just spiffily updated simulations--catchy knockoffs of catchier knockoffs, really. It's the sound of a superstar band having a laugh in their downtime. And Green Day (or Billie Joe, at least) will likely never admit they're the men behind the Tubs.

But Steven Van Zandt will probably want to shake their hands anyway. In a sidebar to the cover story in the December issue of SPIN, Springsteen's sidekick complains that these damn kids making music today willfully ignore the artists and sounds that formed the building blocks of rock. Their musical history, he says, doesn't extend beyond U2 and Eddie Vedder. I imagine he'd be proud of what Green Day are up to.

Still, I'd like to hear what the Figgs could do with these songs.

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