Cracking the Egg: The Untold Story of The Nightcrawlers

They were just a bunch of lads from Daytona Beach, musicians wearing matching suits and cranking out jangly pop in the Central Florida of the mid-1960s. They had a hit, just one hit, and then broke up to head off to college and lives far removed from dreams of rock stardom.In that dizzy 1965, the Seabreeze and Father Lopez High bandmates opened for The Beach Boys and were on the same bill with future legends The Allman Brothers (then called The Allman Joys) and heard their tune on local radio and even saw it reach the Billboard charts.

And in one giddy sequence in Kelly Rouse’s Cracking the Egg: The Untold Story of The Nightcrawlers, the filmmaker lists the bands (The Cars, The Lemonheads) that famously covered that one hit, and then scans through scads of Youtube covers of “The Little Black Egg.”

It’s a catchy, twangy little tune with a great hook and nonsense lyrics. And if that’s all that Sylvan Wells, Pete Thomason, Tommy Ruger, Rob Rouse and Chuck Conlon are known for, maybe that’s enough. Rouse went on to become a local judge, and raise a filmmaker (Kelly Rouse is his daughter).

The documentary has a very garage band-do-it-yourself feel, which doesn’t hurt it in the least.

Screening at: 8:30 p.m. Friday, April 3, Regal.