The Sloths are back from the grave

When the Sloths play the Casbah November 9, the 1960s-era garage band will have a famous guest: Jason from the Friday the 13th films.

“There’s a guy I know down there who does a great Jason so he will be joining us onstage for the song, ‘He’s Back (Man Behind the Mask),’” says Sloths lead singer Tom McLoughlin, who got to know the Jason character very well.

The song was originally performed by Alice Cooper for the the 1986 slasher flick Jason Lives: Friday The 13th Part VI, which McLoughlin directed.

“I’m not a fan of slasher movies,” McLoughlin tells the Reader. “They seem like a way to slice and dice women for the excitement of men.

“When I was hired, I thought, What am I going to do? So I decided, What if I bring him back like Frankenstein? He’s dead so he can’t be killed — just like Dracula, Wolfman, and Frankenstein, and none of them wanted to be back from the grave.”

Not coincidentally, Back From the Grave is the title of the band’s debut album, recorded 50 years after they first broke up and released earlier this year.

The band was part of the vibrant Sunset Strip scene of the mid-1960s. Smack dab in their teens, the Sloths shared bills with the Doors, Love, Iron Butterfly, Pink Floyd, and the Animals.

The Sloths broke up by the summer of 1966 and went their separate ways for 45 years, during which McLoughlin did a variety of jobs in showbiz, including training as a mime with Marcel Marceau.

His rock-and-roll past was a distant and happy memory until 2011 when he got a call from a lawyer. It seems a former member of the band had hired a private investigator to track the other guys down.

The reason: a recording of the band’s only recorded single, “Makin’ Love,” had caught the ear of garage-rock fanatics and was selling for upwards of $6000.

“That turned into us getting together in a garage to see if we remembered the song,” McLoughlin said. “It turned into sort of a poker night for us.”

It also turned into a live gig in San Diego, thanks to Loons leader Mike Stax, who also tracked down the band members for a profile in his magazine, Ugly Things.

“Mike was instrumental in making this happen,” McLoughlin says. “If he hadn’t been determined to write a story on the Sloths and my other band, the May Wines, none of this would have happened. He kicked us off and, much to his surprise, we’ve kept it going.”