But the little Ghouls understand.....Groovie Ghoulies--An All-American Halloween Tradition!

Here's a few more quickies for America's favorite evil holiday. A little number from The Groovie Ghoulies....Lookout Records answer to the Cramps.

You know, Green Day but with monsters.............!




As we celebrate again this wicked night, when the Great Pumpkin rises once more from his pumpkin patch, here is more macabre music from my favorite Halloween-themed Punks!





They may be gone for now, but like any broken band, they can be re-animated someday. Right now, though Kepi is due to drop a Country album shortly.......

Halloween is for SUPER Rock--Fleshtones---Screaming Skull!

Just a quickie for Halloween!

One of my favorite creepy Halloween tunes by the Gods of Super Rock, the Fleshtones.




Both of their great 80's IRS albums, Roman Gods and Hexbreaker! were reissued a few years ago on Raven Records, so you have no excuse! Brilliant 60's party music for one and all.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! Dream Syndicate, Go Groovie Ghoulies and The Cramps that Bind!

Happy Halloween! Here's a few super songs from the Kings and Queens of Halloween!

Groovie Ghoulies! This is the Ramones on Halloween!


I will relate a spooky story that happened in my own home town probably 10 years ago. It is a true story and could probably only happen here. A couple was handing out candy for Halloween. At some point the wife decided to take out her false teeth for a little bit and left them on the table. Later that night, when she went to retrieve them, she couldn't seem to find them!

The next morning, I hear her husband's voice on the radio, telling their story, and imploring the kid who found dentures in their candy sack to please return them! Dentures are expensive Halloween treats, after all.

Reality is a lot scarier than anything even Steven King could dream up!


Here's my favorite Halloween song from Lux and Ivy. It's not about Hockey goalies.





Have a fun and safe Halloween! From the Days of Wine and Roses.....

Happy Halloween!!!

Kind of out of sorts, but  here's a little bit of Halloween fun from the Half Japanese collective, namely Jad and David Fair. Just discovered they also put out an album entitled 26 Monster Songs back in the 90's, in addition to "Halloween Songs".

Over the course of a full album it gets a little monotonous. David Fair sounds a little bit like a rappin' Zombie Cookie Monster! Overall they sound a little like Deadbolt here.

Here in P-shizzle, NY, we got hit by the storm pretty good, but not as bad as many other places. Don't recall seeing such a great swath of devastation before.

Well, enjoy this vid--and everybody have a safe and happy halloween!

Night of the Living Jersey Astro Zombies--The Misfits Walk Among Us

No, not the cast of Jersey Shore. These are the good zombies, not the tan ones.Walk Among Us by the Misfits is another Halloween classic from 1982. A loud and fast punk album with loads of horror and B-movie lyrical content. This is the stuff that New Jersey should have notoriety for. The play Jersey Boys should have been based on the Misfits. What a band.

This Ain't No Fantasy

This one goes by quick. High octane, aggressive, revved up guitars. Mostly under two minutes. Sing along vocals. Rancid, Clash, Ramones, Black Flag, Roky Erickson. Danzig is great here.

Glenn Danzig: Vocals
Jerry Only: Bass
Doyle: Guitar
Arthur Googy: Drums

My favorite tracks are: I Turned Into A Martian, All Hell Breaks Loose, Hatebreeders, Night of the Living Dead, Astro Zombies.

Other songs: 20 Eyes, Vampira, Nike A Go-Go, Mommy Can I Go Out And Kill Tonight? (live)
Skulls, Violent World, Devils Whorehouse, Braineaters

I Sent My Astro Zombies To Rape The Land

Happy Halloween Continued:Kolchak:The Night Stalker on Dvd!!

When I was a kid I was a big fan of the Tv show Kolchak: The Night Stalker. I watched the show regularly, though back then some of the episodes would scare me so much I would have to leave the room. It was a great show that was only on for one season. Apparently the show is credited as being an inspiration for the X-Files. I consider it to be Scooby Doo for adults.

The series starred Darin McGavin as Carl Kolchak, a hard nosed tenacious reporter with a trademark pork-pie fedora who worked for a small Chicago newspaper. For some reason he gets on everybody's nerves and is the butt of jokes.He is regular guy who is confronted week after week with the supernatural occurrences, that are beyond the realm of believability. The reporter angle is good because the writers did not want to have the hero of the series to appear to be a kook or insane person. Simon Oakland plays Vincenzo, his constantly stressed out and flustered editor. Jack Grinnage plays Ron, his foppish fellow reporter and acid tongued rival. Ruth McDevitt is Emily, the old lady who creates puzzles for the newspaper.

Beyond that, from week to week, it was like The Love Boat Of Horror. Each episode had a new bunch of celebrities, including Tom Skerritt, Cathy Lee Crosby, Dick Van Patten , Erik Estrada, Jamie Farr, Antonio Fargas, Sharon Farrell, Jim Backus, Phil Silvers, Scatman Crothers, Larry Storch, Hans Conried, David Doyle, Alice Ghostley,Bernie Kopell, Stella Stevens, Pat Harrington, Jr, Carolyn Jones, Dwayne Hickman. Whew!!! That's a barrel full of character actors.

And every week Kolchak would go toe to toe with all sorts of strange entities. Plus he indefatigably butted heads with his editor and Chicago's finest. He battles Werewolves, Jack the Ripper, Vampires, Doppelgangers, Zombies, Demons, Gods, even Robots. You can marvel at the second rate special effects of the era, and the interesting clothes and hairdos that people had back then. The makeup and masks used at the time are also worthy of examination. All the monsters and werewolves look a lot cheesier now than when I was twelve.

Another thing I like is that this is all about Chicago. There are constant driving scenes through Chicago's downtown, street scenes where Kolchak is a pedestrian . There are also panoramic views of the skyline and the area along Lake Michigan. The show is definitely not set in some anonymous city at all. You get a sense of the flavor of the Windy City as it was three decades ago.

Of course one of the stumbling blocks to this show was the fact that someone who was nominally a reporter would constantly be subjected to encounters with the supernatural. It probably would have been better if the hero was cast as professor or author who investigated the occult. To have this happen to a beat reporter time and time again strains credulity. It's like the popular series Murder She Wrote. Wherever Jessica Fletcher went, dead people showed up. Book tours, visiting old friends, the body counts rose. But nobody suspected her. Whether she had something personally to do with the murders or she was just bad luck, she usually was bad news. I wouldn't let Angela Lansbury stay at my inn at any price. You would have thought her home town of Cabot Cove Maine would have had a population of zero by the end of the series by a combination of foul play, and terrified locals fleeing all the carnage.

But I digress. Kolchak is a fun carnage-free glimpse into the madcap world of American Tv of the 70's. It's not the greatest show ever, but I have a fond place in my heart for it. Check it out. Happy Halloween, part 2.

Happy Halloween: Good Ghouls Don't--The Cramps' Songs The Lord Told Us

Happy Halloween everyone!!! Once I again I drag out the Cramps, the band that is my perennial Halloween mascot. And this one is my favorite of them all. Even though people are asking 50 bucks right now for Date With Elvis (right before Halloween it is a sellers market), Songs The Lord Told Us does it for me. And of course this macabre masterpiece was produced by the great Mr Alex Chilton of my prior post.

A Midwest Monster...Of The Highest Grade

The record is filled with rockabilly rave ups, zombie stomps, hormonally overloaded ballads. It's all here, B movie imagery, 50's and 60's classic music taken to the next level. When you listen to The Cramps, you realize the mythical creatures from scary stories from childhood are real. Those ghouls, zombies, werewolves, vampires are wandering the streets of your hometown. And Lux Interior is their leather-clad Pied Piper.

From top to bottom, with the exception of their exemplary cover of fever, this is one high octane ride. This is uniformly excellent, one of the great Halloween punk albums. What's Behind The Mask is my personal favorite here, with the Elvis gone berserk vocalisms of The Mad Daddy a close second. Songs The Lord Told Us is the must own album of the Cramps. Check out the song titles!!

TV Set
Rock On the Moon
Garbageman
I Was A Teenage Werewolf
Sunglasses After Dark
The Mad Daddy
Mystery Plane
Zombie Dance
What's Behind The Mask
Strychnine
I'm Cramped
Tear It Up
Fever

This should be the soundtrack to any Halloween. Don't live a deprived life--come on and do the Zombie Dance tonight.

It's A Futuristic Modern World--Living In Darkness with Agent Orange

What would Halloween be without a little Orange?

You Will All Have Exquisite Taste

Agent Orange is a punk band from California that combines the loud fast music of bands like Social Distortion with the surf guitar sound of Duane Eddy, Link Wray and the Ventures. California Punk songs with surf guitar segues. And it all works so unbelievably well. These punked out surf riffs are exhilarating to hear.

The band was formed in 1979 in Orange County, California. Mike Palm is on vocals and guitar, James Levesque on bass, and Scott Miller on drums. The first song on the Cd is the classic punk anthem Bloodstains.

Blood Stains

Speed Kills

Fast Cars

Cheap Thrills

Rich Girls

Fine Wine

I've Lost Sense

I've Lost Control

I've Lost My Mind!

This is a short album--many of the songs are under two minutes long. This is not the greatest or most profound punk rock you will find, but it sounds fantastic, in the same way that The Jam's In The City is a great album. According to the liner notes the songs were a reaction to the imploding punk scene in California, when the doctrinaire hardcore groups were taking over and leading bands were falling apart. So though there was plenty of surf guitar, there aren't songs about hanging ten and bikinis here. There are three excellent punked up surf instrumentals here, Dick Dale's Miserlou, The Chantay's Pipeline, and Mr. Moto by the Bel-Airs.

The music is all high tempo punk rock with highlights like Too Young To Die, A Cry For Help In A World Gone Mad, and No Such Thing. The band takes a little bit of a poppy turn on the terrific Everything Turns Grey. Aside from the 9 minute review, the album seems to end before it even starts. Aside from Bloodstains, The Last Goodbye is my personal favorite, in all its cynical disillusionment. Agent Orange certainly was not the only punk band to incorporate surf guitar. Some punk bands brought actual surfing and beach elements into the mix. Even the legendary Dead Kennedys sound employed the use of surf guitar in their stridently satirical black humored punk. But Agent Orange did something special, as they did also on their We're Outta Here e.p. Even Bloodstains and Misirlou alone make this a worthwhile addition to a punk library. You be the judge.

Cause But My Heart Doesn't Break Anymore...I Often Dream of Trains--Robyn Hitchcock

Heading For Paradise...Or Baskingstoke...Or Reading...

It's Halloween Eve Eve and I decided to share my thoughts on one of my favorite albums ever, an album I consider to be the quintessential album of Fall. When I listen to this album I visualize swirling leaves, dark evenings, brisk walks through the forest, cold rain on city streets. I Often Dream of Trains is one of Robyn Hitchcock's greatest, on a par with the magnificent Underwater Moonlight which he made as leader of The Soft Boys. Pastoral, Urban, Psychedelic, Medieval, Surreal, there is something for everyone and sounds like nothing else. And it holds together so well that it sounds like a concept album. No wonder that YepRoc has released a recent live performance of these songs in New York, accompanied by a Dvd.

Probably about the time of this record's release I saw Robyn perform for the first time. Another serendipitous accident. I was home from school, and I was in the Tower Records that used to be at 4th and Broadway in New York to do some shopping. There was an announcement that Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians was going to make an in-store appearance that afternoon. So I waited, and waited. Apparently the band got caught in crosstown traffic and was running late. They did a short mostly a cappella set, which included Furry Green Atom Bowl, and the thoroughly amazing Uncorrected Personality Traits from I Often Dream of Trains. He also did a bizarre rendition of the 50's classic by the Monotones Book of Love with wonderful backing vocals, like a dadaist barber shop quartet. I've seen him several times since, including at Maxwell's in Hoboken, for the brief Soft Boys reunion about ten years ago, and trust me, he is a great live performer. And very funny. Go see him if he is within a radius of 100 miles of your home town.

Dream of Trains is a very reflective album, and a lot of the surreal imagery about things like crabs, Victorian squids and ooze are tuned down here. Don't get me wrong--I like that Daliesque aspect of his songwriting, but I think these songs have hurt his street cred somewhat. I think that people who aren't paying enough attention use this as a way to trivialize his music. But Hitchcock uses such imagery as foils and surrogates to illustrate and illuminate our human condition. Others people who aren't fans (and probably not real music fans at all) level accusations that his 30 odd album and 30 year career is futile exercise in aping Syd Barrett. I saw a review recently where someone said this album was terrible, and that he couldn't sing. The guy who wrote that should think about a new career in my opinion. I concede that musical enjoyment is all about opinion and personal taste, but I don't know what that person was hearing that I can't hear at all. Enjoying music isn't about taking sides--a lot of this conjecture is like tilting with windmills. Clearly this is a lo-fi album, probably recorded on a small budget, but that still does not detract from its myriad of charms.

The album begins and ends with the instrumental Nocturne. The second track is the bizarre Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty with its plinking piano counterpoint. It's a nice reflection on male adolescent sexuality and voyeurism, like that Monty Python skit about the girl who you know....she likes to... you know...Odd and humorous songs like this are interspersed with serious beautiful chamber songs like Cathedral and jazzy supper club balladry like Flavour Of Night. Of course, lyrics like You..yeah, you, with your Ice Cream Hands, sets him apart from the lyricism of Tin Pan Alley. Even further out there are the surreal a cappella lyrics of Furry Green Atom Bowl.The only song I dislike is Mellow Together--the song is actually pretty good but the vocals are terrible. Judging my the lyrical content, it seems the intent was to mock hippies, but it is the only sour note I find on this album.

The aforementioned Uncorrected Personality Traits, is beyond any of your expectations. It is literally a amusing send up of psychiatry and human behavior. And pulled off with a jaunty music hall a cappella style.
A spoon full of sugar to help get down the social satire. Similar psychoanalysis is expressed in the spikily syncopated case studies of Sounds Great When You're Dead.  There are medievalisms on this album like the gutbucket Ye Sleeping Knights of Jesus, which gives organized religion and politics a few good sharp pokes to the ribcage. Bones In The Ground similarly would not feel out of place at a Renaissance Fair or at a Halloween Party. There is air of dissolution and decay on this records, and the Fall metamorphosis leading to Winter is equally a metaphor for time and aging. When you hear a song like Winter Love you can feel the coming chill in your bones.

This sentiment is evident in the nostalgia of songs like I Often Dream of Trains, and Trams of Old London. The imagery found on this album gives the music a truly cinematic quality. Equally affecting is the paean to architecture, My Favorite Buildings. Songs like these also give the music a geographical appellation. I would consider this a very English album not exclusive to Robyn's London, though at its essence the subject matter has a universality to it.

The beautiful I Used To Say I Love You is very emblematic of this accessibility and is one my favorite songs here. Autumn is Your Last Chance is also one of the standouts also, a poignant disquisition on heartache, disappointment and lost illusions. The melodies on songs like these are simply unforgettable, and they stick in my head for hours. Definitely one of my Hibernian Island Discs.

If you like John Lennon, Syd Barrett, The Byrds, Odessey and Oracle-era Zombies, or Nick Drake's Pink Moon, you are going to love this album. For me, listening to this record is a rite of passage from Autumn to Winter, and one of the classic albums of the 80's.

So Scary It'll Make Your Eye Pop!!! Ghost Town Dvd for Halloween--Three Days till La Veille De La Tous-saint



Dead For 7 Minutes. A Bit Less.

 I had just finished watching a film on a flight (Wall-E) on a return flight to New York. It wasn't a great film to see on a tiny screen on the back of an airline seat. Unexpectedly, another film came on shortly afterward, a film that I had remembered being in theaters but had not given a second glance. At first I watched distractedly, but within 15 minutes I was completely into the movie. Ghost Town. Unfortunately the plane landed as the movie ended and I missed the last minute of the film. The following week I rented it and saw the flick in its entirety.

I didn't know what to make of the movie at first. It seemed like one of those novelty comedies where people switch bodies or meet eccentric aliens. But it was far too well constructed and the plot too clever to be just something to do on a Saturday. This was a real comedy like A Fish Called Wanda, or Arthur, or the wacky comedies of the 1930's. Not a bunch of comedians ad libbing, and no reliance on profanity and gross-out humor. Surprise, Surprise! An intelligent adult romantic comedy that is actually funny and moving, with some valuable life lessons thrown in. Ghost Town was directed with panache by David Koepp, who also has an impressive resume as a screenwriter including films such as Jurassic Park and Angels and Demons.

Ghost Town stars Ricky Gervais, star of the original Office series on BBC TV. He portrays an English dentist, Bertram Pincus, who is a resident of New York City. He lives an isolated existence, getting up, going to work, returning home. He is a curmudgeon, a smart person who refuses to tolerate stupidity, and treats people around him with ridicule and condescension. He lives life in a monotonous routine, days unassumingly blending into one another.

His unchanging routine is upended when he needs to undergo minor surgery. He endures a litany of frustrations on the way to his procedure, where Gervais is at his best, humorously skewing human nature and the foible of modern society. Of note is his argumentative conversation with the nurse at the hospital admittance desk, and his eyepopping encounter with a self-absorbed physician played by Kristen Wiig of SNL. But things change dramatically after the surgery. Bertram's story takes on supernatural dimensions...

After leaving the hospital he begins to have encounters with people who are not really there. They are ghosts wandering the streets of New York. And they soon realize that he can see them, unlike the other living people. Pincus thinks he is hallucinating and returns the next day to the hospital. He finds out that he died briefly on the operating table as a result of the anaesthesia. His near demise has him situated between two worlds, and the spirits of the departed won't leave him alone. They are here on earth because they have unfinished business, and they are hounding the poor dentist to intervene on their behalf.

Finally, one particularly pushy ghost in a tuxedo pressures Pincus into making a deal with him. Greg Kinnear plays Frank Herlihy, an aggressive businessman who persuades Pincus to agree to try to break up his wife Gwen's (Tea Leoni) pending engagement, as he believes her fiancee to be a bad person. Complications arise because Gwen lives in the same apartment complex, and Pincus being Pincus, has treated her with his trademark rudeness. Kinnear and Gervais make for an unlikely team, a brash aggressive ghost and a sharp witted but introverted dentist, which also becomes a marriage of convenience for Pincus as he becomes infatuated with Gwen. Pincus detests Frank, and argues with him a lot.

In a lot of ways the movie is like Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Pincus is an emotional Scrooge. Intellectually he thinks he acts the way he does because he is superior to all the idiots around him. In reality, it is a defense mechanism. He is an emotionally scarred person who uses his indifference and acid humor to push people away before they can harm him. And it is the intervention of these ghosts that set him on a new course toward personal redemption. He is suddenly forced to act and interact, and the nice guy under all the layers of armor is slowly revealed.

But this Pincus is like a W.C. Fields at first doesn't like kids, treats Dr. Prashar (Aasif Mandvi) in his office brusquely and has bothered to learn so little about him that he is a virtual stranger. He treats his doorman and even the posse of ghosts surrounding him at all hours with unflinching thoughtless indifference. Once he accepts that ghosts are talking to him he just gets on with it. Gwen Herlihy, on the other hand,  is a beautiful intelligent headstrong woman, and he has to relearn his social skills and be charming and considerate. His supernatural mentor knows Gwen well though, and offers him insider information and blunt advice, with mixed and often funny results. Gwen's fiancee (Billy Campbell) is a man who would get a grade of 100 on a woman's checklist of qualities, and is a dramatic contrast to Gervais' regular guy appearance. You sympathize with Gervais' mismatched competition for her affections.

This Is How We Do It, Baby

Another important characteristic of this movie is the cinematography. This is very much a movie about New York--the City itself is one of the actors. It is a film set in Autumn, with leaves falling, rain falling, dark skies and full moons, Central Park. This is a also an ultimate Dentist movie, a Desert Island Dental disc, on a par with The In-Laws, Little Shop of Horrors, Marathon Man, and Tim Burton's Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Though Autumn is the perfect time of the year for Ghost Town, I would recommend this movie any time it hurts when you smile.

We Always Stay Cool, We Like It That Way! The Fleshtones' IRS years on Cd--5 More Days till the End of Superocktober!!

Despite the Fleshtones song "The World Has Changed", at least one thing has not changed--the Fleshtones' are still rocking the garage after all these years. It's already 2010, and the dudes still abide, even putting out a Christmas album recently.


Phony Society-- We Reject Your False Values



I am very gratified to say that Raven Records has released a greatest hits of the IRS years compilation of the Fleshtones. There is all but one of the Roman Gods tracks, about half of Hexbreaker, live tracks, singles, and two songs off their Upfront Ep (wish they had the whole thing).

The Fleshtones are one of the ultimate party bands, a potent concoction of garage rock, psychedelia, surf rock, and RnB. Founded in Queens in 1976, the band helped spearhead the garage revival of the 80's, at a time when such a subgenre was considered passe by the cognescentis of good taste. But they persevered and have continued to put out a slew of releases throughout the following decades. The lineup featured front man Peter Zaremba who was also host of MTV's The Cutting Edge in the 80's. Keith Streng  was the Guitar and Jan-Marek Pakulski played Bass. Gordon Spaeth was on Sax and Bill Milhizer was their drummer. From top to bottom this Cd is a blast. They are masters of this genre but not in preservationist sort of way. These guys rock out on all 25 tracks here--I think they did a great remastering job on this one.

I saw these guys 25 years ago at Irving Plaza in New York. I can't remember much about the show now but I do know I enjoyed the sloppy exuberant performance. I think they took one of the drums and did a sort of a Conga line out of the venue at the end. But I'm glad to say I saw them. They really are an extraordinary band live, which has earned them a very loyal fan base. I saw them when I was home from College on Christmas break, and they seemed like the perfect keg party band to me at the time.  All these years later and after innumerable gigs they are still unbeatable.

The non-hits are all here. Most are originals though they all sound like long lost Nuggets from some obscure  60' s compilation. Let's See The Sun, What's So New (About You)?, The World Has Changed are all songs that sound older than their years. One of my favorites is The Girl From Baltimore from their first Ep. Unfortunately the comp doesn't have Cold Cold Shoes, or their cover of the Stones' Play With Fire that were also on the Ep. Of course, there are the Halloween tracks, like the raving B-movieisms of Screamin' Skull, The Dreg, the mystery beat of Shadow Line, Hexbreaker, Roman Gods, and Return To The Haunted House. It makes you want to howl.

On Super Rock! you have the stomping RnB of R.I.G.H.T.S, and a sweet take on Lee Dorsey's classic Ride Your Pony. There is the American Beat tune from the Bachelor Party soundtrack with its lengthy musical syllabus at the end. The instrumental track The Theme From "The Vindicators" completely rocks out, as does Roman Gods. New Scene is another great track, an organ drenched fuzzed out big medallion teensploitation track. "We're Young We're Cool, and We Care". The darker edged and melancholy Hope Come Back shows another side of the Fleshtones songwriting chops. I've Gotta Change My Life is another fast paced psychedelic gem, just as Right Side Of A Good Thing is infectiously uptempo soul music.

In other Fleshtone news, Raven Records, in addition to this anthology, has released a Hexbreaker/Speed Connection Live in Paris twofer Cd. In light of this develop, I wish they had just released a Romans Gods Cd with the full Upfront ep and singles. Nonetheless this is one tight collection for any fan of high octane Rock Music. If you like garage music, or are into bands like Hoodoo Gurus,Young Fresh Fellows or the Dirtbombs you can't go wrong with this.

We're All Living On Goblin Time!!! Halloween Week Kicks Off With Goblin's Pride

America Reborn

Goblin Pride could be the greatest album ever. But it's too late for me. The Goblins have already taken over my home town. Save yourselves. Or maybe the best solution is to just submit to Goblin Mania and avoid annihilation. The mysterious Beau Grumpus, The Phantom Creeper, Dom Nation, Buh Zombie all do stuff and make songs. In a better world they would be filling Giants Stadium in New Jersey instead of Bon Jovi. Right now they are biding their time in the Windy City.....Like the Wyld Stallyns in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure they may just be that game changer, that wild card. I try to play their music every day, so that I can be prepared for the approaching New Goblin World Order.

They are clearly a band for the new millenium--their songs are adored by America's youth--they look to them in the same way young people idolized Bob Dylan in the 60's. The topics they address in their music touch on all the things Americans are most concerned about. The song Pride is about pride--why should we pay attention to anything else in the world. We've got our own problems, folks. Cutlass is about cars with a neat car horn solo, but there is a hidden message there regarding energy independence maybe. Giant Robot Rock N Roll is about the 2000K crisis and our nascent fear of being conquered by Robots. Selena is about the late tragic Tejano pop singer, but I think it also about the debate on immigration that is a big issue to some people in the US.

One of the highlights of this album is (The Police Are Just) Doing Their Jobs, and again there is that underlying issue again; how can we reconcile public safety with constitutional freedoms? The New Ordery tune Worst Brother Ever analyzes the complicated relationship between the Unabomber and the brother who ratted him out! I feel like I now see America's Civil War in a whole new light. Ken Burns should be ashamed. The songs are short but full of wisdom, like Haikus, or maybe Limericks. Their humanitarian side is unabashedly obvious here, I mean, have The Rolling Stones or Jay-Z written an anthem for the Special Olympics? But they aren't in the cutthroat world of Rock N Roll for accolades; they are here to teach us to be better.

One godsend are the autobiographical numbers included on this album. One look at the album and you will notice that these rock and roll superheroes keep their true identities anonymous. Who are these guys? You want to know everything there is to know about them and it eats you up in side when there is so little information available. Thankfully there are Living On Goblin Time, The Goblin Rider, and Goblin Girl to help fill in the blanks, so that we understand the unassuming men in the masks who are out keeping our streets safe so that bums like me can blog in peace. The first song makes it clear that we are Goblins. The Goblin Rider is an inside look at the fast paced world of rock icons like a sonic version of MTV's cribs. Goblin Girl uncovers the pain and frustration of being a Goblin, and is also a call for full female equality in our society.

This album may be the only thing that can save our planet from complete anarchy. Learn their lessons in the same way you have studied our American Constitution. Above is a Halloween Treat for you and your loved ones courtesy of the Boys. Below is one for the resistance.

Vegemite Bomb--What's Halloween in Australian? Scientists--Blood Red River 1982-1984

If You Want To Be Sad
Do It Somewhere Else

I've been putting up these posts for a little while now, and it just occurred to me that it has until now been a Scientists-free blog. That is about to change. I just found out that the reunited band performed at All Tomorrow's Parties in Monticello New York, their first New York gig ever only last month. I bet that they are still an awesome live band.
Originally the Scientists were a punk band from Perth, Australia that played a form of pop-punk. Some people are pretty dismissive of this lineup, possibly because of the contrast with their future musical directions. But I would disagree with the naysayers. That music of their first incarnation is compiled on the Pissed On Another Planet Cd, and I think the music is very good, in most cases great. In any event the band was not particularly well received and they split up in early 1981.

Later in the year things got interesting, as a new Scientists formed with a radically different sound. This was the celebrated classic lineup of Kim Salmon (vocals,guitar), Brett Rixon (drums), Boris Sujdovic (Bass),Tony Thewlis (guitar). This is an album more informed by bands like the Stooges and the Cramps. The music is sludgy swampy blues stomp, with Kim Salmon chanting like a demented preacher. There is a certain tendency I like about some of these great Australian Bands. I'm not sure if you call it having a chip on your shoulder, but it certainly may have been a response to swimming upstream, having to deal with people who had preconceived ideas about music. It's combative, like the Sex Pistols; don't like us? sod off. like us? ah, you, sod off too. We like what we do, and we don't care what anybody thinks. Punks have short hair? Well, then we'll grow our hair long and play punk. Like your music fast? Well we'll chug along at our own pace, thank you. Let's alienate everyone--maybe they'll get it someday. There is so many instances of pandering to tastes in the music industry; it's nice when you see people take risks, toss a few sacred cows in the blender. You can also witness this musical defiance with bands like The Saints and the Birthday Party. But these bands stuck to their guns and changed music forever.

Blood Red River is the first disc of a two disc Scientists anthology. For a long time this music was only available on vinyl. There was a greatest hits collection on long defunct Big Time Records called Weird Love, where they rerecorded their songs for the album. There was also a greatest hits collection, Absolute, which was released by Sub Pop in the US. But it was Sympathy For The Record Industry who did the job right, 29 songs all told. Because these guys are stylistically in the neighborhood of bands like the Detroit proto-punk bands, but musically and vocally, they are just to idiosyncratic to be anything but their own creature. For one thing, there is a tendency for bands to get more melodious as they mature, you play your instruments better and learn new tricks. But these guys got noisier and more abrasive, to the point where they made even the Stooges sound baroque in their later period. When I hear Kim Salmon croon and shout, I am reminded of Jim Thompson pulp novels, and 50's culture themes, dancing around a bonfire. And there is no kitsch factor here--it's all done with complete conviction, purposeful.

This collection start off with the electric anarchic Set It On Fire and proceeds off road from there into the remote wilderness. I feel like I'm driving down back roads when I hear this stuff--it's great music to drive around to. And in fact a lot of the songs have hot rod themes to them. They seem to have created their own Australian mythology here. Swampland is one of the monster tracks on this anthology. "In my heart, is a place called Swampland, nine parts water, one part sand..." Equally powerful is the bluesy testimony of When Fate Meets Its Mortal Blow. Nitro is like Bo Diddly meeting the Night Of The Living Dead.

We Had Love is another great Australian classic song, a truly manic love anthem with great riffs. A true antecedent to the Seattle grunge movement. Clear Spot is Scientist styled send up of a Captain Beefheart song. Revhead is an energetic high speed car chase of song, with a kinetic bassline. My personal favorite is This Is My Happy Hour, a grim Australian version of the Stooges No Fun. It always feels appropriate to listen to when I've had a less than pleasant day. The collection ends with the Crampsy Demolition Derby which is another exhilaratingly grinding lo-fi ranting mess.

You might get this album and think, what's so special about this? Well, this music came out 25 years ago and a lot of bands have followed in their footsteps. At the time, there was nothing to compare it to, really. If you are a fan of Grunge bands like Mudhoney or Green River, there is a whole lot to recommend here. Certainly comparisons can also be made with the Cramps and the mighty Gun Club. But this is music that has its own special style, its own singular lunacy, a mudslide trapped in a bottle. They seem to take that aesthetic to even greater extremes.One of my favorite Australian bands of all time. And I haven't even covered the second anthology The Human Jukebox 1984-1986 here, where things get even messier.

Ken Nordine on a Bender??10 Days Until Halloween--Dead Bolt---Shrunken Head--

Some People Try To Know Us.......

Deadbolt is one macabre band. I found out about them by accident. I was in Phoenix Az browsing through the bins at a Zia Music branch. The store clerk obviously was a big fan of San Diego's "Scariest Band in the World," as I got to hear a lot of Deadbolt. Finally I went up to him and asked, "what the hell is this stuff?" So the clerk clued me in. I had never heard music quite like this. It was quite odd. I guess Deadbolt calls this music "Voodoobilly". I can't help but reference Ken Nordine's Word Jazz as a musical template when I hear this. But with crazy shit instead of whimsical humorous reflections.
So I picked up one of their albums, probably Hobo Babylon. Today however, I am featuring Shrunken Head. This is pretty darkly humorous stuff. Singing and on Bass is Harley Davidson. RA Maclean plays bass and Les Vegas is the drummer. Singing is probably exaggerating--Davidson is more of a narrator or tale spinner over a backdrop of a variety of musical genres. The songs are heavily influenced by old B-movies and horror films. Some songs are dark surf, like Shrunken Head or El Sadistico. The music is almost a loungier version of the Dead Kennedys. Some of the songs are bluesier like Voodoo Doll. You Don't Know Me is psychotic rockabilly. Some songs sound like a 50's educational film gone wrong, like the gone-postal tale Zip Code.

This is a good Halloween album, but it has its drawbacks. There isn't a lot of variety of songs, the songs sort of lurch into one another and there isn't much variation in tempo or volume. But if you are into what they do, or are a fan of The Gun Club, or The Cramps, their music could become pretty addictive. And luckily for Deadbolt fans, there is no shortage of material for them to check out. And as they are currently on tour, you might even have the opportunity to check them out live.

So I Meet You at the Cemetery Gates---Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book--11 Days until Halloween

Keats and Yeats Are On Your Side

I have been a fan of Neil Gaiman's books since I read his short story collection Smoke and Mirrors. But as Halloween approaches nearer by the minute, I wanted to say a little bit about one of his recent works, the children's novel Graveyard Book. It's a book that I enjoyed reading and one that I already have given to several people as gifts. Last year it was the recipient of the prestigious Newbery Medal for best children's literature.

It makes for a creepy Halloween tale. The story is about Nobody Owens, a boy who is brought up by the denizens of a cemetery after his family was murdered when he was an infant. The idea of the story was based upon Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book. In that book, a young boy was raised by jungle animals. In Nobody's case, he is raised by the spirits of the departed. His guardian Silas is able to provide for him in ways the ghosts cannot, as he is a being able to travel between the worlds of the living and the dead. In a lot of ways this book also reminds me of a lot of the boys adventure series' that I read in childhood like Hardy Boys or Robert Louis Stevenson.

Nobody encounters many varied interesting individuals as he grows to adulthood. One of the things that I enjoy about this book is that Nobody gets to meet and have conversations with people from many periods in history, something that almost anyone has wished they could do. And it is ironic that a forbidding and sad place like a graveyard could provide a loving and nurturing environment for a young boy. But the unusual situation works well for him. His adventures in the confines of the cemetery over the years provide him with life lessons, and as he matures, he is increasingly in contact with the world of the living, which at first is a bit of a curiosity to him. After all, ordinary life would seem strange to someone like Nobody. But as he goes beyond the safe confines of his childhood, he becomes ever more visible to the assassin who he evaded as an infant...

Overall, I thought this was a pretty interesting children's book. And with all the ghosts and ghouls, and other fictitious beings inhabiting the pages, I couldn't help but mention this in a Halloween post. The beginning part might be a little hard going for younger children, but it does set the table for the rest of the novel. It is also a good read for grownups. So if you get a chance take a look at the Graveyard Book. Or the terrific Neverwhere, or American Gods, Fragile Things, Anansi Boys, his Sandman series or of course Coraline.

Lucky 13 Until Halloween!!! Cramps--Bad Music For Bad People

That's What Fiends Are For

This is just a Cramps compilation of their early output-there are a number of these, but Bad Music For Bad People is strong top to bottom. And what a cover picture!!! From the zombie stomp of Drug Train, to the murderously appalling TV Set, there is an abundance of Halloween musical ambiance on this disc. There are the droolingly hormonal songs Save It and She Said, and the horrific Human Fly. Only 11 songs. All the songs are top notch-- a better buy would be the longer Off The Bone Compilation, but, hey, I like the cover art.

Songs

Garbageman

New Kind Of Kick

Love Me

I Can't Hardly Stand It

She Said

Goo Goo Muck

Save It

Human Fly

Drug Train

TV Set

Uranium Rock

14 Days Until Halloween--The Ghastly Ones-A-Haunting We Will Go-Go

What A Heavenly Way To Die

I don't have a lot to say about this. It's a sinister horror themed instrumental (mostly) surf album. From Southern California, the Land of the Undead. Like the evil Ventures, with macabre voice overs and sound effects. A very tight and musically accomplished band. The guitars are ghoulishly drenched with reverb. A fun energetic Halloween soundtrack. Here are the song titles:

An Invitation

Ghastly Stomp

Hangman Hangten

Thunderhead

Pacific Ghost Highway

Haulin' Hearse

Lonesome Undertaker

Mysterion

The Boys Go Creeping...

Diabolo's Theme

Action Squad

Deadbeat

Spookmaster

Doctor Diablo Speaks...

Attack of Robot Atomico

Los Campiones Del Justicio

Hollywood Nocturne

Surfin Spooks

A Final Warning...

(Everybody's Doin') The Ghastly Stomp

A Rose For Emily--Tim Burton's Corpse Bride--15 Days Until Halloween

Grave New World

As much as I like A Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride is special for me. As Halloween fare goes, it is the cinematic equivalent of a 5 star restaurant. Watching the extras on the DVD,  you can't miss the excitement in Tim Burton's demeanor as he talks about this project. It's like he's just completed something he always wanted to do--the only difference between the average person's ambitions and his own is that he does this for a living. I've enjoyed stop-motion animation since I saw Mad Monster Party as a child, and I am pleased that he is helping to keep the craft alive, in the face of the cost efficient industry standard of computerized graphics. And the fact that he is now married to the voice of the Corpse Bride, Helena Bonham-Carter, makes the enthusiasm even more palpable.

I had seen advertisements for the film when it was originally released but never wound up seeing it in a theater. I was trying to get a DVD for The Nightmare Before Christmas but the film was out of print at the time and I didn't want to pay a lot of money for it. So I stumbled upon Corpse Bride. Being a Tim Burton film, I was confident that it would be good, but it turned out to be one of the best animated films I've ever seen. Most people who see it only regret that the film couldn't have been longer. At 1:17, it is pretty short, but the plot is very well focused and coherent. Basically it is an old fashioned Fairy Tale, probably a little too scary for the very small, but not at all gory.

The story is about Victor (Johnny Depp) and Victoria (Emily Watson), a young couple who are about to be married. It is an arranged marriage, a trade off noble rank for new money between their parents, and the two young people have never met. The story is set in a 19th century Victorian landscape, drab and grim, and the animated backdrop is joyless black and white. Yet somehow, the day before the nuptials, the two meet and they find they have an innate chemistry with one another.

In a bizarre scene in the forest, Victor accidentally marries a dead woman while practicing his wedding vows. Emily, the Corpse Bride was seduced and murdered by a sinister stranger on the day of her wedding. Victor is whisked away to the land of the Dead, which ironically is a lot more lively and fun than the land of the Living. The depiction of the Underworld with vibrant color and energetic activity is a contrast to the staid conventionalism of the world above. It almost feels like you are really crossing the English Channel from Victorian England to the lively Paris of the 1880's. In the living world society is crushing people down: in the dead world peoples are laughing, dancing, and telling joke.

What makes the situation even more trying for young Victor, is that the Corpse Bride is pretty wonderful. She is beautiful, intelligent, kind, and talented, but unfortunately not alive. While as a gentleman, he initially recognizes he has an obligation to her, he becomes sympathetic to her tragic misfortune and winds up enjoying her company. The story of the Corpse Bride's betrayal reminds me of the beautiful song by the Zombies, A Rose For Emily. A beautiful young woman now sadly faded. The sharp contrasts of the two societies and the attractiveness of the Corpse Bride create a dilemma of choice for Victor. Much like Odysseus, he is tempted by the land of the exotic. Yet the love he feels for Victoria pulls him in the direction of home. Particularly when he hears the news that she may be forced into an arranged marriage with another suitor.

Probably the best testament I can make for the movies is that even though the animation is wonderful and creative, you are always focused on the story first. The special effects do not overwhelm the story. The musical numbers and the score are by long-time Burton collaborator Danny Elfman, and he does not disappoint. I enjoyed the Anti-Disney aspect of the movies use of cute comedic sidekicks-namely a Peter Lorre/Jiminy Cricket impersonating maggot and a friendly black widow spider. Horror legend also Christopher Lee has a memorable role as a menacing and scary Pastorr. Other famous actors in the movie include Joanna Lumley, Albert Finney, and Tracey Ullman.

The informative extras in the DVD highlight the enormous number of people's painstaking work in creating this film. There is such an amazing attention to detail in creating these characters and trying to make their movement life-like. When you watch the movie it all appears very organic and simple, which is no mean feat. And there are some moments in the movie that are just so beautiful, you find it hard to believe that they are really inanimate puppets doing the acting one small step at a time. Animated childrens films are so profitable these days and studios keep banging them out in greater and greater proliferation. Most of them seem to be done cynically, with a lot of pandering, and not a lot of forethought. The Corpse Bride, happily,  is a major exception to this trend. It's a bona fide Halloween classic suitable for the whole family. I only hope that Tim Burton will make more movies like this!

17 Days Until Allehelgens Dag-A Friend Of The Devils Is A Close Personal Acquaintance of Mine-Grifters are Crappin' You Negative

It's okay Pete--They make the playoffs every year...

My buddy Pete complained that I neglected to wish him a happy Leif Ericson Day, so this Halloween post goes out to him. May the Aesir have mercy on his soul. I saw the cover of this album and immediately thought of him. The NHL hockey season has just begun and he is a huge fan of the New Jersey Devils. On the outside he seems like an average guy, but in his heart he is a face painter. He also used to play ice hockey with me for quite a few years. And he is tough, believe me. Early on in our beer league rookie days, he popped his shoulder out of the socket in the middle of a game. I told him to hit the showers, because after all, this is something we do for recreation. He said "no, that's alright", and proceeded to lean over and he popped the shoulder back in place like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. The Gibson comparison ends there though--his wife is Jewish and he looks ridiculous in a kilt.

This album is crazy crazy crazy. Memphis crazy. It's a classic bluesy rock album recorded on horse tranquilizers with a budget of 149.95. There is a sort of grandiose confidence in the vocal deliveries of Scott Taylor. When he sings "I am the Mambo King" at the beginning of Skin Man Palace, I want to vote him into Congress. Every time I listen to this album, I like it a little more. A jauntily insane album, but it seems to proceed with its own brand of coherent logic, like you suddenly stumbled into a different dimension. The Grifters are compared to a huge assortment of bands, The Rolling Stones, Replacements, Guided By Voices, most notably. You could probably also compare them with Neil Young and Crazyhorse, Killdozer, Butthole Surfers, This Kind of Punishment, ZZ Top, Led Zeppelin, Gun Club, and the lo-fi stuff on the old New Zealand Xpressway label. Crappin' You Negative is dense yet with a lot of sonic diversity and once you start listening you need to hear the whole thing.



This is pretty much a one of a kind album--it's too bad it seems to be out of print. But I just did some looking and you can buy this directly at Shangri-La records for ten bucks. It's probably not for everybody, but with songs like Dead Already, Piddlebach, Junkie Blood and Get Outta That Spaceship and Fight Like A Man, you probably need this.

H.P. Lovecraft: Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh Wgah'nagl Fhtagn--Halloween Greetings From The South Pacific 18 Days

My fear of the unknown at this point was very great

Autumn is a wonderful time to be in New England. The beautiful yellows, reds, oranges of the changing fall foliage. The smell of smoke arising from fireplaces, delicious apple pies, scarecrows, face painting hockey fans. Is there better place to be vacationing during this short respite before the cruel ravages of winter?

So if you have the travel bug in you might I recommend a trip to rustic old Dunwich in North Central Massachusetts. Passing through gorges and ravines of problematical depth, stretches of marshland that one instinctively dislikes, where the fireflies come out in abnormal profusion to dance with the raucous, creepily insistent rhythms of stridently piping bull-frogs, you finally reach a quaint New England town where most of the houses are deserted and falling to ruin with their rotting gambrel roofs. Have a nice cup of coffee with the locals, maybe take the kids up to Wilbur Whateley's old farm. They may have some problems with the local planning board, but there is always plenty of fun activities.

Or if you are in a more nautical mood there is the old whaling town of Innsmouth at the mouth of the Manuxet River. For some reason, people have been down on this place of late, but it is poised to make a comeback through tourism. The downtown has managed to retain its 19th century charms, though perhaps some renovations are in order. Get a cozy room at the Gilman House Bed and Breakfast, take a walking tour with old Zadok Allen, (great for you amateur antiquarians) or take a motorboat out to Devil Reef and get back in touch with the wonders of nature.

You may as well be distracted from the inevitable day when Cthulhu, the gigantic squid deity who lies sleeping, yet influences the world through our dreams, rises from his slumber at the bottom of the South Pacific and enslaves the Earth. Slice the human into ringlets, dip them in batter, deep fat fry and serve with tomato sauce. Believe me, this kind of stress, you don't need. I can tell you, too many times have I been in some Cyclopean landscape or ice blasted barren plateau, when you accidentally have a chance encounter with some crazy, gibbous, so-horrifying-words-can't-describe-it, blind flute-piping abomination from some other planet or dimension. Or giant human size albino Emperor Penguins. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for all the noise. I start to say "would you please shut up" before I realize that the distractions are actually my very own screams. Am I bad. That's the problem with antiquarianism--all that curiosity can land you in some hot water. But hey, the chicks dig it. That's the main reason why I majored in it at old Miskatonic U in nearby legend-haunted Arkham.

My youthful days playing hacky-sack on the Octagon

This is the world that H.P. Lovecraft created in the 1920's and 1930's in his eerie body of literature. Stephen King has often credited him as a major inspiration for his horror stories. And the movie Reanimator is based on one of his short stories.Very often fantastic tales traditionally occurred in ancient or exotic locales, or in other galaxies or dimensions. There is something a little scarier and close to home when the inexplicable happens on your own doorstep. Where not very far below the bucolic veneer of humdrum day to day existence, lie terrors and utter destruction beyond our wildest comprehension. These tales by Lovecraft, like Shadow Over Innsmouth, Dreams In The Witchouse, The Dunwich Horror, and The Tales of Charles Dexter Ward are eminently great reading, especially as we approach the end of October. 

First and foremost, the stories are scary and bizarre. Secondly I enjoy the way he writes, in the way he describes people and real and imaginary landscapes and also in the odd sorts of conventions that crop up in this work. People are always too curious for their own good, and sadly often reach a bad end or at best are granted a temporary reprieve. The lead characters are almost always not sure about what is real and what is a figment of their feverish imagination. And in most cases their mad hallucinations are realities that are beyond the capacity of human understanding. It seems that goodness has a very uphill battle with evil in his tales, and the small victories achieved are probably Pyrrhic.

Calamari's Revenge

One of the oddities of the stories is the absence of women. I don't really know whether that necessarily makes him a misogynist. In these types of adventure/fantasy stories of that time period women often served as foils to the action, being in danger and helpless and needing to be protected and saved by the male hero. In Lovecraft's stories the main characters seem pretty incapable of saving themselves, much less another person (antiquarian may be old-speak for nerd). And when the earth is on the verge of being eviscerated, maybe nobody is getting out of it in one piece. I think that maybe he just couldn't be bothered with another storyline. He was just mainly concerned with that frontier where the human mind encounters the unknown and unbelievable and resulting reaction.

So if you like scary stuff but not too graphic, pick up some H.P. and enjoy yourself.