Halloween Countdown: October 31 – in these moonlight hours

The day is finally upon us – the final installment of my Halloween Countdown. My wife has been dragged off by her friend to see everyone’s favorite yellow cardigan-wearing, golf-playing, Geriatric Frankenstein dig into his threadbare bag of tricks down at Foxwoods. I’ll be spending Halloween by myself this year, handing out candy to a procession of neighborhood rugrats while dressed in my incredibly sophisticated and complicated costume.

When I started this theme month, I had already decided on what today’s track would be: “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by Bauhaus. It seemed like a no-brainer, and probably too much so; everyone and their five year old sister is familiar with the song. It’s not mystery archeology if there’s no mystery.

(Oddly enough, back when I was in college, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” was a rarity, a treasured gift passed via mixtape. The original single was extremely hard to find, and the great CD reissue boom hadn’t gotten underway yet. I remember dropping twenty bucks on an used copy of an import Bauhaus singles compilation to get a hold of a clean version of that song and other obscurities. Today, you can walk into Target and buy the Dead Man’s Curve OST, which includes the track, for a tenner.)

I set about looking for a suitable replacement, and eventually settled on something as hauntingly good, if not better than my original selection. The song is “Unexpected Guest” by UK Decay, the tragically least remembered of the gothic trailblazer bands. From the throbbing bass line to Steve Spon’s jagged post-punk guitar work to Abbo’s appropriately theatrical vocal stylings, it’s a gorgeously atmospheric and spooky post-punk/early gothic masterpiece.

UK Decay – Unexpected Guest (from For Madmen Only, 1981)

Wow. The theme month is now officially over. I hope the results were at least comprehensible, if not enjoyable, for everyone. Have a happy Halloween, and don’t eat too many Milk Duds. Cue the closing theme music:

Madness – Swan Lake (from One Step Beyond, 1979)

Halloween Countdown: October 30 – sometimes it takes a nip at me

Today my wife and I celebrate the second anniversary of our wedding. The event itself was a pretty low-key affair, the five months previous having been entirely taken up with the extended ordeal of buying and refurbishing our house. The logistical nightmare involved in dealing with the affected cluelessness of the previous owners, the abrasive pushiness of the real estate agent (not the woman who showed us the house, who was a total peach, but her superiors in the firm), and the bank (which were hesitant to sink a few hundred thou in a property that was a shade seedier than Ed Gein’s old place), pushed all other concerns to the background for much of the summer of 2004. My future wife refused to even think of planning the wedding until all other issues were resolved.

Even though the wedding and reception plans were cobbled together at a very late date, things went surprisingly well. We booked the Goddard Chapel at Tufts University for the ceremony and found a nice Unitarian minister to officiate over the proceedings. Our original plan for the reception was just to invite folks back to my in-laws’ house for a small party, but my wife’s father generously stepped up and booked us a function room at a classy Italian restaurant in North Cambridge. We made the centerpieces ourselves from skull and pumpkin candle holders and plastic flowers purchased on the cheap at a local craft store. Keeping with the Halloween theme, my wife got Dia de los Muertos bride and groom figurines for our cake topper.

She wore a blue silk Chinese dress with a silver tiara. I wore a black suit with a sombrero, red satin sash, bolo tie, and tanker boots.

I handled the reception music duties, and burned four CD’s of our favorite songs (punk, new wave, oldies, Irish music) to load into the hall’s sound system. (The random playlist kicked off with “Pretty Vacant,” to our mutual amusement and joy.)

While we were too buzzed on the excitement to take it all in, everyone seemed to have a good time. The best comment about the night came from my sister-in-law’s friend who said, “Only and Maura and Andrew’s wedding would the bride dress in Chinese costume and the groom as a mariachi band member, and the reception held in an Italian restaurant with Irish music on the loudspeakers.” We are citizens of the world, my wife and I, though the verdict is still out on which world.

To commemorate that momentous day while meeting my Halloween theme obligations, here is an appropriate track plucked from our reception music playlist:

Sparks – Eaten by the Monster of Love (from Angst in My Pants, 1982) – Wonderful quirky pop from the new wave leg of the Mael Brothers’ ongoing musical odyssey, this song was put to excellent use in 1983’s Valley Girl.

Halloween Countdown: October 29 – atmosphere you could have cut with a knife

Occasionally, when I’m really bored, I’ll read the fan reviews of shows I watch over at TV.com. I was skimming over the various comments regarding Showtime’s Masters of Horror, and was struck by one recurring criticism of the show: not enough gore = not horrifying. While I have several minor gripes about the series, mostly regarding the wildly erratic quality of the anthology’s installments, the level of gore never factored into my criticisms. If anything, the show’s blatant efforts to maintain a minimum splatter quotient have hampered the various creators’ attempts to tell their stories effectively.

The obsession with gore being necessary to horror puts me in mind of those kids I knew in junior high who used to quote Alice Cooper lyrics as they crafted facsimile Freddy Krueger gloves in metal shop. True horror is more than the adolescent transgressive appeal of graphic bloodletting, as today’s track clearly demonstrates. It makes a great companion listen to the thematically similar “Frankie Teardrop” and “Teen Love.”

Rhoda Dakar and The Special AKA – The Boiler (from a 1981 single, collected on Stereo-Typical: A’s, B’s, and Rarities, 2005) – Rhoda Dakar was previously a member of the all-female ska act, The Bodysnatchers, which later mutated (sans Dakar) into the poppier Belle Stars ("Sign of the Times"). This track, believe it or not, made to #35 on the British charts.

Halloween Countdown – October 28 – a scary birthday to Foo

The Fierce and Terrible Queen of Rabbits, also known as “The Funky Foo”, also known as my partner of fifteen years and wife of two, celebrated her birthday today. In honor of this happy event, here are some of her favorite Halloween-themed tracks, all of which coincidentally are from horror movie soundtracks.

At the beginning of each October, my wife pulls out a stack of her favorite horror films to watch. From a pile of around twenty or so DVDs, she usually ends up watching five or six tops, the others getting lost in her hectic schedule. It’s really fun when she decides to pop one into the bedroom DVD player to watch after I’ve already dozed off. She’ll nod off during the opening credits, and I’ll inevitably wake up just as the most disturbing or violent scene of the movie occurs. (I’m lucky this year. The remote for the upstairs DVD is nonfunctional at the moment.)

The Damned – Dead Beat Dance (from The Return of the Living Dead OST, 1985) – The Damned are one of my wife’s favorite bands, and one of her most cherished memories is when she got to hang out with the band after a local show a few years back.

The Undead – Somebody Super Like You (from The Phantom of the Paradise OST, 1974) – Also known as “the Beef construction song,” this is a fun bit of ghoulish glam penned by Paul Williams and performed by the sinister Death Records’ chameleonic house band. (Before their glam/proto-goth turn as The Undead, they appeared as the 50’s nostalgia act The Juicy Fruits and the surf-revivalist Beach Bums, satirically anticipating the shameless demographic pandering of today’s acts by a good couple of decades.)

My wife and I love The Phantom of the Paradise. It’s Brian DePalma at his best (which is faint praise, I admit) and infinitely more enjoyable than the better known Rocky Horror, which has been loaded down with so much fan baggage over the years that it’s hard to get past the taint of its devotees. Kind of like how the nerd hive-mind has conspired to bleed all the enjoyment out of Monty Python’s material.

The Ramones – Pet Sematary (from The Best of the Ramones, 2004) – I was never a big fan of The Ramones, even though I did make the effort to catch them live waaaay back in the day. Their early bubblepunk stuff is enjoyable in small doses, but it gets repetitive fast. My wife, for some reason I’ll never understand, digs their later material, when they ditched the 1-2-3-4 schtick for a Lords of the New Church-style rock sound. I’d rather just listen to London Calling.

Halloween Countdown: October 27 – I’m just a normal guy

Alfred Hitchcock goes new wave in today’s Halloween offering, Landscape’s “Norman Bates”, a minor UK hit from 1981. The music video got a lot of play in the early days of MTV, back when the limited pool of available material led to some very interesting programming choices.

Tilling the same musical field as fellow synth pioneers, Kraftwerk (although less prolific and with a far lower profile than their German counterparts), Landscape had a significant behind-the-scenes impact on the British new wave scene. Member Richard Burgess produced albums for a slew of new wave and indie acts in the early 80’s including Shriekback, Spandau Ballet, Kim Wilde, and Adam Ant. He’s also the man who (supposedly) coined the term “New Romantic” to describe the frilly-shirt and synthesizer crowd.

Landscape – Norman Bates (from From The Tea Rooms Of Mars...To The Hell Holes Of Uranus, 1981)

Halloween Countdown: October 26 – will you believe it when you’re dead

The Green Slime are coming, and they cares not for your subject-verb agreement rules, pitiful humans!

This is where I’m supposed to extol, in true cult cinema dilettante fashion, the virtues of Kinji Fukusaku’s 1968 film, The Green Slime, and justify its role as an influential cinematic landmark. You know what, though? I’m not feeling it. It’s a cheapjack sci-fi horror film with an American cast (with many off-duty servicemen serving as extras), involving big chinned guys fighting silly rubber monsters on a space station that makes the original Enterprise set look like something from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

How is it that Japan is so ahead of the curve when it comes to personal technology and animation, but when it comes to live action sci-fi, seems hard pressed to compete with the special effects wizardry of the 1930’s Flash Gordon serials? A Kamen Rider episode filmed in 2006 is about as visually convincing as a 1954 installment of Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. It has to be a cultural thing, some ritualized aspect of kaiju theatre that only someone born into the culture can hope to understand. The rubber suits and visible strings serve similar roles in the proceedings as the floral arrangements and incense do at a Japanese tea ceremony, I suppose.

One thing I can appreciate is great garage rock, and the movie’s theme song delivers a powerful dose. Here’s the original version by Richard Delvy and a not-as-good but decent enough cover by The Fuzztones:

Richard Delvy – Green Slime

The Fuzztones – Green Slime (from The Battle of the Garages, Vol. 1, 1994)

Halloween Countdown: October 25 – use your eyeballs for dials

It must be that time of the month again, because I’m feeling some Cramps coming on…

(Yes, yes, that was a terrible joke. Deal with it.)

“TV Set,” from 1980’s Songs the Lord Taught Us, is a rip-snortin’ track celebrating love, household appliances, and acts of unspeakable violence. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Lux Interior is a very terrifying individual, as this clip from Urgh! A Music War clearly illustrates.

I have recurring nightmares about being suffocated by those latex pants. What would Jung make of that?

Halloween Countdown: October 24 – I’ll be there when you wake up screaming

Take the director, screenwriter, and several cast members from Repo Man, toss in a bunch of punk and new wave musicians (including the Pogues, Joe Strummer, Grace Jones, Edward Tudor-Pole, Courtney Love, and Elvis Costello), then add an incomprehensible screenplay cribbed from various spaghetti westerns. Bake under the Mediterranean sun for a few weeks and - voilà – you’ve got 1987’s cinematic mess-terpiece, Straight To Hell.

After director Alex Cox original plans for a concert movie fell through due to lack of funding, Cox managed to secure financing for a feature film and flew a small army of friends, musicians, and hangers-on over to Spain to make one of the most frustratingly entertaining movie misfires ever committed to film. An odd mash-up of Touch of Evil and A Fistful of Dollars, Straight to Hell attempts to follow up on the surreal quirkiness of Cox’s Repo Man (and several re-used bits and gags could be used to argue that both films happen in a shared universe), but lacks the earlier film’s goofy enthusiasm. The most inspired parts of the movie (The Pogues as a clan of caffeine-addicted, pickup truck-driving banditos) are too mired in its overall incoherence to achieve escape velocity. It’s a case of ten tenths failing to equal a whole, and one’s viewing experience ends up becoming eighty-six minutes of celebrity cameo-spotting.

The Straight to Hell soundtrack is pretty damn fine, though, and features several otherwise unavailable tracks by Joe Strummer and The Pogues. Most of the material consists of bizarre Morricone-meets Big Audio Dynamite instrumentals. The standout tracks come from The Pogues, who dabbled around with a zydeco-influenced sound on an alternate version of “If I Should Fall From Grace With God” and today’s selection, “Rake at the Gates of Hell.”

The Pogues – Rake at the Gates of Hell (from the Straight to Hell OST, 1987) – The CD reissue added some more incidental tracks and dialogue clips, but dropped a couple tracks from the vinyl release, most notably The Pogues’ sample-heavy version of The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly theme. I know it probably had to do with some licensing and royalties hassle, but part of me is always going to suspect record company execs who like fucking with collectors’ heads.

Halloween Countdown: October 23 – hair DIE!

Too hell with subtlety, let’s get buzzed on obscure punk. NYC’s Sic F*cks were a Rezillo-ish punk novelty act that featured the Bellomo sisters (the folks behind Manic Panic hair dye) and a lead vocalist who later became an IT bigwig at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Although meant as a one-off effort, the band managed to appear in the mildly amusing punk club climax scene of the 1982 film, Alone in the Dark, and get namechecked by the late John Belushi as a favorite band. (Belushi also favored jam sessions involving heroin, cocaine, and a syringe, so make what you will of that nugget of info.)

Here’s the F*cks’ heartwarming “Chop Up Your Mother,” from their self-titled 1982 12”. Clocking in one minute and fourteen seconds, it serves as a shining testament to the concept of not overstaying one’s welcome, something I wish more bands would pick up on.

Halloween Countdown: October 22 – finding Cheryl

I’ve had a special fondness for the Silent Hill series of games from the moment I first tried the demo version of the first Silent Hill that came bundled with an issue of Official Playstation Magazine. The Resident Evil games, while fun to play, were strictly b-movie material thematically; its playbook familiar to anyone with the most passing knowledge of modern horror clichés -- a bio-engineered virus creates killer zombies and mutant animals.

The RE games do have some suspenseful moments, and are certainly fun to play, but the ground rules are too familiar, tapping the well-mined vein of zombie fiction conventions, that there’s not a lot of horror to be found. In William Paul’s excellent analysis of the “grossout” genre, Laughing, Screaming, he notes that the effectiveness of the original Night of the Living Dead movie stemmed initially from the audiences’ unfamiliarity with the nature of the monsters depicted onscreen. The lore of past cinematic bogeymen and their weaknesses (fire, stake through the heart, silver bullets) did not apply to this new breed of undead, and George Romero was able to exploit his audience’s ignorance to the fullest. (Case in point: The infectiousness of a zombie bite, something today’s audiences have been conditioned to expect, was not revealed until the latter part of the original movie.)

That feeling of being set adrift without any frame of reference in a world upended was perfectly captured in the first Silent Hill game. The transitions between a fogbound and monster-infested city (inspired, I assume, by Stephen King’s novella, “The Mist”) and a nightmarish otherworld of rusted metal, bloodstains, and flayed corpses used as décor, are unsettling and not explained until the very end of the game. The fluid nature of its reality defies rationalization, preventing the player from achieving a sense of equilibrium and thus heightening the overall sense of unease.

The game’s soundtrack, composed by Akira Yamaoka, meshes perfectly with Silent Hill’s relentless and disturbing visual elements. Somber, melodic tracks like the opening theme, “Silent Hill,” alternate with uncompromising audio assaults such as “Ain’t Gonna Rain”. It’s not the easiest album to listen to, but one of the best import soundtrack purchases I’ve ever made.

Bonus:

My favorite FMV clip from the game. It loses a little when watched out of context, but its combination of music and visuals are damn creepy (and sad), regardless:

Halloween Countdown: October 21 – can’t go on no more

So many possible dirty-minded interpretations, so little time. Things have been a little hectic here today, but the Halloween Countdown stops for no man (or manifestation), so enjoy today's excellent cop-out of a selection.

The Specials - Ghost Town (from The Singles Collection, 1991)

...and here's the video, to pad things out:

Halloween Countdown: October 20 – I’m a b-creature movie star

First I got drenched in one of the torrential rainstorms that have been lashing eastern Massachusetts today. Then I spilled a gallon jug of vinegar all over myself while bringing in the groceries. The combination of events put me in a cranky, slightly murderous mood, until I realized I was being given a sign by sweet Providence.

Dripping wet, foul smelling, and bad tempered? That reminds me of someone...

The Monsters – The Creature from the Black Lagoon (from This Is Horrorpunk, 2004) – Groovy psychobilly from a Swiss band whose singer was apparently inspired by Froggy from the Little Rascals. Seriously, the man must drink his Drano straight, with no chaser.

Halloween Countdown: October 19 – muah hah hah hah

Today’s track is a bit more lighthearted than my more recent offerings, but still in compliance with the Halloween theme. The track is “Monster,” a 1978 single from super idoru duo Pink Lady. Phenomenally popular in their native Japan, echoes of their cartoony blend of disco and pop can be heard in nearly every anime theme song recorded from the late 1970’s to the present day.

Their popularity didn’t carry over to this side of the Pacific, apart from one hit single, “A Kiss in the Dark”, although a dismal Sid and Marty Krofft variety show probably wasn’t the best vehicle to bring Pink Lady to the American listening public’s attention. The notorious Pink Lady and Jeff did provide me with my favorite “so terrible it’s great” viewing moments: Pink Lady doing a phonetic English medley of songs that begins with The Carpenters’ “You Needed Me” and flows into a mash-up of “Last Dance” and “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” where Mie and Kei are joined by an open-shirted, tight-panted, Farrah-coiffed Greg (BJ and the Bear, My Two Dads) Evigan. Evigan is a wonder to behold; so caught up in the rockin’ moment that the poor sap has no clue how utterly foolish he looks shaking his microphone around like a chronic masturbator, his male cameltoe visible to all.

That, my friends, is true horror.

Halloween Countdown: October 18 – the wolves are hungry tonight

It’s frustrating when a previously unremarkable band suddenly makes a creative quantum leap, then promptly breaks up. Given the number of acts that don’t know when to quit and continue to coast on the vapors of their past successes, these flashes of ephemeral brilliance shine all the brighter. They tease the listener with hints of what could have been had fate taken a different course.

The Dark started off as a factory-standard 80’s britpunk act, with the typical repertoire of anti-bomb, anti-war, and anti-police material. Their stuff wasn’t terrible, but apart from a decent cover of the Hawaii Five-O theme, there was little to differentiate the band from their peers. The a-side of their final single before the band split, “The Masque”, was an amazing piece of gothic-tinged punk unlike anything else The Dark ever recorded. It reminds me a little of the Damned’s work, but with the 60’s garage influences shorn in favor of heavier 80’s punk guitar riffs, and the horror movie elements (associated with the Damned, but really a Dave Vanian conceit) moved to the foreground.

I first came across the track in the early 1990’s when I bought a copy of the second Punk and Disorderly compilation at Disc Diggers in Davis Square. “The Masque” stood out among the uninspired later offerings by Vice Squad and the Abrasive Wheels (the reasons I picked up the record) and poor Discharge clones, and has become a Halloween season constant around Armagideon Time HQ.

The Dark – The Masque (from a 1982 single, collected on Punk and Disorderly: Further Charges, 1982)

Halloween Countdown: October 17 – this apple’s rotten, rotten to the core

Don’t let the title fool you; today’s spooky selection has nothing to do with Johnny Cash. This particular “I Walk the Line” is a galloping, off-kilter celebration of moral ambivalence courtesy of the legendary UK goth/electronic/rock act, Alien Sex Fiend. I’ve previously lamented the bland metallic direction goth music took after shedding itself of its early post-punk influences. Exceptions to that boring trend, Nik and Mrs. Fiend (and friends) have been tinkering with and exploring the genre’s boundaries for nearly twenty-five years now.

While the results of their sonic experimentation have been mixed, yielding around one killer track for every three or four recorded, I appreciate that the Fiends have been willing to try something new, and not merely record the same song over and over again with different lyrics.

When my wife was working as a desk clerk at a local hotel, she got the opportunity to meet Nik Fiend, who was staying there while on tour with the band. She remembered he sounded like Dracula, and he kissed her hand during checkout. All the cool stuff happens to my wife….

Alien Sex Fiend – I Walk the Line (from a 1986 single, comped on Drive My Rocket, 1994)

Halloween Countdown: October 16 – you better be good and you better pray

La Llorona is a Mexican weeping ghost, similar to the Irish banshee. There are many variations to the legend, involving a woman who drowns her children after being spurned by her lover, and is therefore doomed to walk the earth as a wailing, restless spirit (like a supernatural Susan Smith, minus the race-baiting). Wikipedia has a good rundown of the various tales and aspects of La Llorona. Especially interesting is how the nature of the spirit, tragic harbinger or malevolent entity, changes based on the social class of those telling the story.

Last winter, I was driving late at night to pick up my wife at Davis Square station, and while I was making my way down South Border Road, a parkway cutting through the Middlesex Fells reservation, I saw a woman in white swaying along the shoulder where the asphalt met the edge of the forest. It was probably some drunk teenager stumbling out of an arboreal beer bash, but it still made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end for a few minutes. I suppose I could have pulled over and found out for certain, but ever since that time Resurrection Mary stiffed me on gas money, I’ve been hesitant to stop for roadside manifestations from beyond.

Manic Hispanic is an ongoing side project featuring the members of various SoCal punk acts performing Chicano-themed reworkings of various punk classics. It’s a clever gimmick executed masterfully, to where I’ve come to prefer the revised versions of certain songs over the originals. Here’s their “She Turned Into Llorona”, playing off the Misfits’ “I Turned Into a Martian”, from their 2003 album, Mijo Goes To Jr. College. (Descendents fans will get the joke.)

Halloween Countdown: October 15 – he’s just trying to survive

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows, and based on today’s track, the members the pioneering synth/punk band Suicide know as well.

“Frankie Teardrop”, from the band’s self-titled 1977 debut album, is a ten minute and twenty-five second journey into the heart of darkness. Frankie is a young factory worker whose world implodes into a nightmare of blood and violence. It’s an old narrative, and one repeated in countless folk, country, and blues songs. Here, set to a muted, throbbing synth line and punctuated by harrowing shrieks and sonic effects, it’s stripped to its raw, nihilistic core.

Welcome to post-industrial America, Hollis Brown. The gun is oiled and loaded; you’ll find it in the dresser drawer. Give my regards to the wife and kids.

Halloween Countdown: October 14 – polyphonic monstrosities and other nonsense

How far the old archetypes of fear have fallen. Once able to induce nightmares in generations of impressionable children, they’re been reduced to mere shadows of their former selves, acting as spokescreatures for sugary cereals and having their cartoon likenesses used to decorate the walls of grammar school classrooms. (Until some fundamentalist Christian parental unit inevitably complains about satanic intent and spoils everyone’s fun, that is.)

In “The Story of the Black Seal”, a chapter of his 1895 patchwork novel The Three Impostors, Arthur Machen mentions the transformation of the faerie folk in popular culture over time. Depicted as horrific and malevolent in many of the early legends, over time the “fair folk” came to be portrayed as benign, if mischievous, entities. For the purposes of Machen’s story, this evolution was depicted as a necessary psychological hedge enveloping truths too horrible for the public to acknowledge. (Machen was a major influence on Lovecraft.) In reality, it’s a case of knowledge outstripping ignorance. It’s a natural birth defect, not an otherworldly abduction. Feargus got shitfaced and drowned in the bog; he wasn't led “astray” by supernatural powers. The romantic yearning for a magical past did the rest. Nothing cleans the puke stains out of our collective memory like nostalgia can.

And thus it went for poor Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster; although anxieties about a corrupt parasitic ruling class or the consequences of science run amok seem as valid today as they were in the 19th Century. Vampires remain as popular as ever, even if promising attempts to bring relevance back to the mythos by incorporating issues of blood-borne contagion and sexual identity have mostly given way to a misunderstood otherness used as a pretext for elitist decadence (or really awful erotic fiction of the sub-slashfic variety). Frankenstein’s monster has a lower popcult profile these days, although he did recently star in the best of Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers minseries, and that’s better than what the Wolf Man got.

Keeping with the wonderful-but-dated theme, here are two monstrous tracks culled from my extensive archive of lost and forgotten synthpop music:

Dilemma – Dracula (from a 1983 German compliation cassette) – The Germans call this “minimal electronik”, which I believe translates into “one or two guys with synthesizers in a basement recording studio”. The bleep effects towards the beginning of the track happen to be identical to those used in the opening theme of The Giant Spider Invasion. That’s a “plus” in my book.

Human Backs – Frankenstein – What I know about this band: They were based in Melbourne, Australia. They were active in the early 1980’s. They recorded this rather nifty track, which appeared on one of the unofficial Flexipop compilations.

Halloween Countdown: Friday, October 13 – ladders ‘bout to fall

Friggatriskaidekaphobes beware! Themes collide on this portentious day here at Armagideon Time, as we incorporate some date-appropriate tracks into our musical countdown to Halloween. Salt shakers will be tipped, mirrors broken, and the spaces beneath ladders traversed.

I’m probably the least superstitious person on the planet, but I do have one Friday the 13th-related horror story. Back when I was first dating my future wife, a friend of hers organized an all-day marathon of the Friday the 13th series of slasher films. While I wasn’t a fan of the franchise, which think is pretty lousy even by the lax standards I hold the genre to, it was an opportunity to hang out with my new sweetheart, something not to be passed up.

The person who arranged the affair was a nerd of the annoyingly intense variety. He wrote Dreadstar fanfic. He adapted Clive Barker stories into plays, which he would recite in voice to captive audiences. Sheol forbid you chuckle at any of his forced attempts at humor, as he’d then set a stool down beside that fucker and milk it harder than Johnny Surge on his max setting could, one’s will to live fading with each retelling.

So instead of a bunch of friends hanging out and watching terrible movies, we got a highly-structured and overplanned event featuring a variety of asinine non-alcholic drinking games. As people got restless, and their attention spans lagged, Mr. Nerd got increasingly defensive and shrill. His persecution complex kicked into overdrive, and he accused the attendees of sabotaging his plans and being ungrateful. We barely made it into the credits of the third film before the whole forced project collapsed under its own weight, tossing up dust clouds of bitter acrimony. More than a couple of friendships traced their demise back to that day.

But I did a chance to spend time with my gal, so something good did come out of it.

UK Decay – The Black Cat (from The Black Cat EP, 1980) – The officially designated Halloween track for today. Swirling, pounding post-punk with appropriately theatric vocals; I’m a pushover for this stuff.

UB40 – Superstition (from The Best of UB40, Vols. 1 & 2, 2005) – It’s impossible to top the Stevie Wonder original, but there’s something wonderfully wrong about this 80’s pop rendition of the classic soul/funk jam. Listening to it conjures a mental image of Superfly wearing parachute pants and sporting a fade.

Amii Stewart – Knock on Wood (from The Best of Amii Stewart, 1996) – It never hurts to hedge one’s bets when dealing with the supernatural, and I can’t think of a better way to do so than with this 1979 space-disco version of my favorite soul song ever.

Halloween Countdown: October 12 – I will eat your soul

Some good old-fashioned nightmare fuel today, in the form of Aphex Twin’s harrowing “Come To Daddy”. This track is relentless in its simplicity. No context or clarification is given for what one hears. There are no handles for the listener to grab onto and rationalize the proceedings, just a repeated two line verse and the sinister beckoning of the chorus, buried behind a wash of feedback and distortion.

Every night is game night for the post-nuclear family. Is that roast pork I smell?

Aphex Twin – Come to Daddy (Pappy Mix) (from the Come to Daddy EP, 1997) - My wife gave me this CD as a Christmas present. We are truly soulmates.

Hungry for more? Here’s Chris Cunningham’s warm and fuzzy video for the song:

Halloween Countdown: October 11 – seals keep crushing our heads

It’s 8:25; do you know where your pets are?

Sure, they pretend to be all lovey-dovey and cute, but that’s just an act, trust me. They’re just biding their time, waiting for the signal to begin their mass insurrection. I’m telling you this as a man who was once attacked by a ten pound rabbit. My wife insists it was a mistake. The “poor, sweet” bunny thought I was sitting on top of his snacks, but I know better. The public at large may have mocked Jimmy Carter back in the day, but the killer rabbit threat is all too real and represents only a part of the overall conspiracy.

We took our male kittens to the clinic today to be neutered. I was just in the spare room checking up on them, and I could feel their vengeful intent, dulled as it was by the vestiges of their anesthesia daze. One doesn’t have to be a Rex Harrison (or even an Eddie Murphy) to understand what little Witch Baby (Leon Trotsky in Felis silvestris catus form) was thinking as he glared at me with those sinister copper eyes. “Payback’s a bitch, you hairless ape. Now scratch my tummy and bring me some Pounce.”

Here are two spooktacular tracks dealing with the theme of animal insurrection:

Erasure – Supernature (from EBX 3, 2001) – Consider this my modest little nod in honor of National Coming Out Day. When I was first deciding on a tracklist for the Halloween countdown, I briefly considered using Cerrone’s original version of this Lene Lovich composition, but passed on it for some reason I can’t recall. (Credit goes to synthpop snob Kevin Church for reminding me of this excellent cover. )

Wall of Voodoo – Animal Day (from Dark Continent, 1981) – REISSUE. THIS. ALBUM. NOW. PLEASE.

Halloween Countdown: October 10 – she had synthesized her emotions

Up for something really creepy? Like high school?

Seriously, H.P. Lovecraft’s pantheon of alien gods have got nothing on the Pavlovian social control experiment and artificial drama factory known as grades nine through twelve. Even rebellion and non-conformity are factored into the institutional feedback loop in the form of detention hall or a swiftly deployed SWAT team. It’s a type of predestination so total that John Calvin would have wept tears of joy…providing he could look past the ban on school prayer.

And in the end you find out how meaningless it all really was. If you’re lucky, you might come away with some lifelong friendships or happy memories, but the rest is dust, scattered to the winds and soon forgotten. The fact that I know so many people who want nothing more than to go back and relive those nightmarish days (“and do things differently,” they say. Ha!) disturbs me a little.

“Doesn’t it bother you, not knowing what the ‘kids’ are into these days?” a thirty-something friend asked me a while back, the reaper’s distant hoofbeats goading him onto the gilded path of wistful nostalgia and youth envy.

“Not at all,” I replied.

Today’s Halloween selection is a disturbingly clinical dissection of adolescent romance by Washington, DC art-punks, No Trend. It may not seem like it fits with the theme at first, but bear with it, and all shall be revealed.

No Trend – Teen Love (from the Teen Love 12” EP, 1983)

Halloween Countdown: October 9 – you’re a creature of destruction

One of the problems I’ve encountered in compiling tracks for this theme month is that there are certain bands who I knew were going to be featured, but I had a hard time selecting one definitive track from their back catalog. In today’s case, I gave up trying to decide, and so you, the reader, benefit from my indecisiveness with two wonderful songs from LA death rock legends 45 Grave.

Most famous (if that term can accurately be applied in their case) for providing the theme song (“Party Time”) to the relentlessly bleak horror comedy, Return of the Living Dead, 45 Grave’s output varies immensely in style and tone. The tracks on their 1983 LP, Sleep in Safety, range from semi-pretentious atonal thrash (“Insurance from God”) to stabs at gothy punk-pop (“Dream Hits II”) to cartoonish horror-punk (“Party Time”). Some of the material is hampered by Dinah Cancer’s problematic vocals. While she can certainly caterwaul like nobody’s business, she has a hard time delivering the goods on the more ambitious tracks, where a more polished vocalist with a better range might have pushed things across the border between “good” and “excellent”.

That may sound like a harsh assessment of the band, but only because I really dig what they were trying to accomplish: a home grown, harder-edged counterpart to the Britgoth sound. I spent many an hour sifting through the used vinyl bins looking for any- and everything 45 Grave related – compilations, singles, LP, bootlegs. None of it was terribly expensive, but, geez, was it ever hard to find.

Today’s two featured tracks come from 1981's Hell Comes to Your House compilation and Sleep in Safety. “Evil” is a great horrorpunk stomper, built around a kickass guitar riff (though the production is a tad on the tinny side). “Surf Bat” is a groovy-ghoulie instrumental track harkens back to the swinging mod monster scene of the 1960’s that gave us gems like the theme to The Munsters and “Dracula’s Deuce”.

Halloween Countdown: October 8 – the rest is silence

Today’s installment of our seasonal countdown features a much-loved favorite at Armagideon Time HQ: “Tenterhooks”, an instrumental track from Damned frontman and gothic fashion icon Dave Vanian. The piece originally appeared on The Whip, a 1982 gothic rock compilation. Subsequent reissues of the album have seen other tracks from the original dropped or swapped out of in favor of songs from contemporary goth acts, but “Tenterhooks” has remained a constant, and rightly so.

The track has a nice traditional spooky vibe (complete with a ghostly chorus), livened up by some retro-sixties organ flourishes. I can easily envision it as the theme to some lost horror film with a title like The Go-Go-Ghost of Castle Von Groovy (which may or may not have been the title of a Bob Haney Teen Titans story). Hardly the stuff of nightmares, but great, ghoulish fun nonetheless.

Dave Vanian – Tenterhooks (from The Whip, 1982)

Halloween Countdown: October 7 – a piece of my world

I caught a really terrible bug last spring. The illness peaked during the night, and my body temperature soared. The flannel sheets that my wife prefers for our bed during the colder months trapped in the heat, and tangled around my sweat-drenched body.

I spent hours fitfully slipping back and forth between conscious and dream states, to the point where the boundaries blurred. Fever nightmares, vivid hellscapes of swirling crimson skies, screaming faces, and clutching hands, alternated with brief flashes of lucidity. My wife had left the TV on when she nodded off, and I’d catch bits of Humanoids from the Deep (on Encore or some other movie channel), providing fresh nightmare fodder for my virally-induced delirium.

The illness passed after a couple of days, but the psychological effects of that night lingered in for months in the form of randomly triggered flashbacks, blindsiding me with soul-numbing horror as I went about my usual routine. Combined with my usual post-sickness hypersensitivity (“Roderick Usher syndrome,” it’s been dubbed), it made for an interesting convalescence.

This no wave track by Mars reminds me of that traumatic night. Too much so, perhaps.

Mars – Tunnel (from No New York, 1978)

Halloween Countdown: October 6 – I’m running towards nothing

Up for some gothic metal? Too bad, that’s what you’re getting, in the form of the delightfully named Creaming Jesus covering The Cure’s “A Forest.” The track originally appeared (alongside a cover of The Smiths’ “This Charming Man”) on Bark, a 12” EP released in 1990.

It’s a surprisingly listenable track, considering how much I love the original version and how I much I despise the gothic metal genre, that noxious musical cul-de-sac the scene turned onto in the mid-eighties. There was a time when goth music was a merely a thematic blanket term which encompassed whatever gothic fashion victims happened to be listening to, be it Joy Division, Danielle Dax, or Adam Ant’s early stuff. Diversity and atmospheric dread has given way to bland metallic dirges; as if we needed yet another pretentious metal subculture.

I once got into a heated argument with a Finnish college student who insisted gothic music began with the Sisters of Mercy. Every time I’d bring up things like Bauhaus, Killing Joke, Siouxsie Sioux, the Batcave scene, or any other gothic precursors or pioneers, she’d merely respond, “That’s one version of the truth.” It’s a wonder I didn’t murder her.

Halloween Countdown: October 5 – Got blood desire?

After the suffocating doom and gloom of yesterday’s selection, I figured I’d lighten things up with some bouncy, upbeat indie pop befitting the festive side of the Halloween season. Man (or woman) does live on morbidity alone. Well, some do, like those elderly aunts who pass their time going funeral-hopping, but are they really role model material?

Today’s track is “Secret Vampires” by bis from 1995's Secret Vampire Soundtrack EP, and is representative of the band’s early disposable teen-pop/indie pop sound. It may sound insubstantial compared to the material on 1999’s Social Dancing, which I consider to be the band’s creative apex, but it’s a perfect track for some candy corn-fueled ass-shaking.

(I like the concept of candy corn better than the actual product. Aesthetically, it captures the essence of the holiday perfectly, but gastronomically, it leaves much to be desired. I do not recommend substituting candy corn for an actual corn-based breakfast cereal, even though candy corn has less sugar, more nutritents, higher fiber content, and tastes better in milk than most frosted corn breakfast products on the market today.)

Halloween Countdown: October 4 – sometimes you’re better off dead

Horror: It’s all a matter of presentation.

Today’s macabre offering was recommended to me by Kevin Church, the up-and-coming comics writer and bourbon-besotted genius behind BeaucoupKevin.com, and it’s a Pet Shop Boys cover from a 2001 PSB tribute album, Very Introspective, Actually.

The dour, socially aware pop of “West End Girls” might seem like a odd choice for a Halloween music selection, but this interpretation by poet/performance artist Nicole Blackman and John Van Eaton is the stuff of which nightmares are made. Sinister intent lurks behind each spoken line, set against a creepy-as-fuck minimalist soundscape rife with ambient spookhouse effects. It reminds me a lot of Crass’s spoken word material, evoking the same sensations of having made a wrong turn into someplace horrible and wrong. Don’t bother retracing your steps. The exit has been blocked. This isn’t London. It’s a necropolis.

How far have you been? Just you wait.

Nicole Blackman and John Van Eaton - West End Girls

Halloween Countdown: October 3 – the dark side of Avalon

Here’s an appropriately spooky Halloween offering from my wife’s wonderful and varied music collection. It’s “The Land of Harm and Appletrees” from Aurora’s 1993 debut album of the same name. The group was a side project of the German-based Project Pitchfork, and released two albums of creepy, atmospheric music that falls under the intriguing, yet infuriatingly vague, genre banner of “darkwave”. As I understand it, darkwave means either synth music with gothic elements, or gothic music with synth elements, but, hey, it sounds really esoteric and impressive when dropped into a conversation.

I have conflicting feelings about this track. It features some haunting (if extremely simplistic) synthesizer work, marred only by the vocal stylings of Patricia Nigiani. I think she was trying to channel Nico, but the end result sounds like outtakes from karaoke night at Der Gothhaus. (Believe me, you haven’t lived until you’ve heard “Sugar Walls” sung in halting, thick-throated Schwarzen-engrish.)

Halloween Countdown: October 2 – got the power of the devil

Today’s seasonal offering is a frantic bit of garage rock voodoo from New Zealand’s Chants R&B. An obscure act even in their native land, here’s the Chants’ blazing rendition of John Mayall’s “I’m Your Witchdoctor” from a 1966 single (collected on 2000’s Stage Door Witchdoctors).

Ah, the witch doctor, comedic foil of countless entertainments from my youth, from Warner Brothers cartoons to Three Stooges shorts to Gilligan’s Island episodes. Because nothing brings the funny like mocking indigenous peoples and their religious beliefs, especially if you get a white actor to dress “native” and ham it up while spewing gibberish like “unga-bunga” or “gumba-bumba”.

Even Superman got into the enthnocentric shenanigans, though the poor dope apparently got his stereotypes mixed up and came dressed as a made-for-TV Sioux medicine man. “You heap big insensitive moron, Buffoon-in-Blue-Tights.”

Halloween Countdown: October 1 – she says damn that horror bat

“This is the only time of year when people can decorate their yards with tombstones and skeletons. That’s a shame. Why not do it for Christmas, too?” – my high school friend, Jeremy

It’s October 1st, an so I’m kicking off a month long project I’ve been planning since I first created this blog last May – thirty one days, thirty one posts, thirty one Halloween-themed tracks hand-picked from the musty catacombs of my music archives, and brought to you in decadently luxurious Armagideo-vision. (Don’t bother asking what the process entails; I tossed it in because it sounded kind of cool.)

And what better way to get the spiked torture ball of doom rolling than The Birthday Party’s classic “Release The Bats”? Released as a single in 1981, and later added to the reissued version of the Junkyard LP, it’s a wonderfully creepy mix of post-punk and rockabilly with Nick Cave providing the frenzied vocals. This ain't gothic rock, no matter what the white-pancake-and-hairspray-crowd would have you believe.