Random mumblings and mundom ramblings on music (mostly), and whatever else pops into my mind . . .
[The files attached here are for review only, and should be deleted after two weeks. If you like the bands, go buy the albums . . . like I did!] . . .
And yes - EVERYTHING posted here is still available!
No long-winded Halloween stories this year; I couldn't think of any that were of any import or interest. But during the year, I gathered up a few more releases related to the holiday, and wanted to get a couple of them posted here before Friday - so here you are.
The first, These Ghoulish Things - Horror Hits For Halloween, was released in 2005. It contains some superb selections of horror rock from the Golden Age of Rock 'n' Roll, between 1957 and 1964. Artists both renowned (like Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Bo Diddley) and obscure are featured here. But what makes this release unique is that it also contains several 1962 radio station plugs recorded by Mr. "Monster Mash" himself, Bobby "Boris" Pickett. In all, many of the tunes on this disc had never before been released on CD, making this an essential album for connoisseurs of this genre. Here's the lineup:
1 Radio Plug for Monster Mash on Station KFWB - Bobby 'Boris' Pickett 2 Screamin' Ball (At Dracula Hall) - the Duponts 3 Drac's Back - Billy Demarco & Count Dracula 4 Midnight Stroll - Revels 5 Ghost Train - Virgil Holmes 6 The Mummy's Ball - The Verdicts 7 Frankenstein's Den - The Hollywood Flames 8 I'm the Wolfman - Round Robin 9 Spooksville - The Nu-Trends 10 The Munster's Theme - Milton Delugg & the All-Stars 11 Coolest Little Monster - John Zacherle 12 Monster Party - Bill Dogett 13 The Creature (From Outer Space) - The Jayhawks 14 Mr. Were-Wolf - The Kac-Ties 15 Radio Station Promo for Bill Gavin - Bobby 'Boris' Pickett 16 My Son, the Vampire - Allan Sherman 17 The Monster - Bobby Please & the Pleasers 18 Theme from the Addams Family - The Fiends 19 Nightmare Mash - Billy Lee Riley 20 The Voo Doo Walk - Sonny Richard's Panics W/Cindy and Misty 21 Feast of the Mau Mau - Screamin' Jay Hawkins 22 Frankenstein's Party - The Swingin' Phillies 23 Legend of Sleepy Hollow - The Monotones 24 Bo Meets the Monster - Bo Diddley 25 Rockin' in the Graveyard - Jackie Morningstar 26 Radio Plug for Monster Mash on Station WCOP - Bobby 'Boris' Pickett 27 Monster Mash - Bobby 'Boris' Pickett 28 The Vampire - Orvin Yoes
The second one here, Mostly Ghostly: More Horror for Halloween, coming out a few years later, was a follow-up of sorts to These Ghoulish Things. All of the music on this album is from the same general time period as the earlier comp, i.e., late '50s/early '60s. Allmusic.com put together a great summation of this compilation that I really can't add much to or refute:
If you're looking for a non-run-of-the-mill soundtrack to your next Halloween party, this disc, and its predecessor, These Ghoulish Things: Horror Hits for Halloween,
should just about tide you over the first round of trick and treat. Devoted wholly to rock/horror novelties from the mid-'50s to the
mid-'60s, just a couple of these 25 tracks... were hits. And as a matter of fact, just a few of the other artists... will be familiar to the average knowledgeable rock fan. Since these
are essentially novelty songs, you might not feel much like pulling them
out on occasions other than Halloween, much like you only play
Christmas albums at a certain time of year.
The songs are longer on
novelty than musical value, but if nothing else, they're entertaining
relics of just how outrageously silly early rock & roll performers
(and labels) would get in search of a quick hit. Some of the songs, too,
are pretty strong in their own right, especially Sutch's "'Til the Following Night" (one of the best pre-Beatles rock & roll records from Britain), "Haunted House," and the Moontrekkers' instrumental "Night of the Vampire" (one of Joe Meek's best productions). It doesn't get much weirder than Gary "Spider" Webb's
"The Cave, Pt. 1," consisting mostly of a boy and a girl sporadically
calling out to each other in a cave as guitars twang and drums throb.
Beatles'
novelties, to stretch the thread more, don't get much weirder than Gene
Moss & the Monsters' "I Want to Bite Your Hand," issued in the wake
of the Fab Four's invasion of the U.S. For Cramps fans, there's the original version of "The Goo Goo Muck," as first heard on Ronnie Cook & the Gaylads' 1962 single.
Here's the track list for this one as well:
1 Dracula's Theme - The Ghouls 2 Til' The Following Night - Screaming Lord Sutch & The Savages 3 Do The Zombie - The Symbols 4 Haunted House - Jumpin' Gene Simmons 5 Dinner With Drac - John Zacherle 6 The Goo Goo Muck - Ronnie Cook & The Gaylads 7 The Mad Scientist - Zanies 8 The Cave - Chuck Holden 9 Spooky Movies - Roy Clark 10 They're Here - Boots Walker 11 Black And Hairy - Screaming Lord Sutch 12 The Hearse - Terry Teen 13 Terrible Ivan - Art Roberts 14 Night Of The Vampire - The Moontrekkers 15 The Mummy - The Naturals 16 I Was A Teenage Creature - Lord Luther 17 The Cave - Gary 'Spider' Webb 18 The Cat - Rod Willis 19 Zombi - The Monotones 20 Alligator Wine - Screamin' Jay Hawkins 21 Morgus The Magnificent - Morgus & The Three Ghouls 22 Sleepy Hollow - The Last Word 23 Rockin' Zombie - The Crewnecks 24 I Want To Bite Your Hand - Gene Moss & The Monsters
So, that's that. For your enjoyment this holiday weekend, here are two superb and lauded Halloween-themed releases put out on the Ace Records label: These Ghoulish Things - Horror Hits For Halloween in 2005, and Mostly Ghostly: More Horror for Halloween in 2012. Have a spooky, scary, fun listen, and as always, let me know what you think.
Happy Halloween!
Please use the email links below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:
Various Artists - These Ghoulish Things - Horror Hits For Halloween: Send Email
Various Artists - Mostly Ghostly: More Horror for Halloween: Send Email
(Oh, and just in case you were wondering - yes, there WAS a recording of "The Cave, Pt. 2" by Gary Webb, a follow-up to the original. For the sake of completeness, here it is for your listening pleasure - however, you won't find it as being much of a variation of "Pt. 1":)
A few memories and vignettes from past Halloweens in my life:
*********
...When I was ten, my younger sister and I were walking back home through the wooded area between our home, a townhouse in Arundel Estates, the Navy officer housing across the street from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and the officer's apartment housing in nearby Perry Circle. It was late afternoon on Halloween with dusk and the time for trick-or-treats rapidly approaching, with an orange glow from the setting sun brightening the sky, and the air was full of anticipation for the activities to come that night. The residents in Perry Circle used to deck out each apartment foyer with fun, spooky regalia, and we could already hear the recorded "scary" sounds of cackling witches and moaning ghosts floating through the air as we stomped through the leaves, eager to get home so we could get our costumes on. As we walked, I turned to my sister and said, "Hey Syd - guess what?"
"What?", she answered.
"It's HALLOWEEN!!!", I screamed joyously, and we laughed and screamed together as we ran down the hill.
While innocuous as that passing remark was at the time, we always remembered it... and every Halloween since then over the past fifty years, the holiday hasn't passed where one of us, either in person, over the phone or via text, will greet the day by contacting each other and repeating that phrase - "It's HALLOWEEN!!!" It's a silly "tradition" between us, I know - but we've never forgotten it. It's a reminder to us of just how great and thrilling this date was when we were kids.
*********
...When I first moved to New Zealand in the early '90s, Halloween was still an all-but unknown holiday, celebrated chiefly by American expats and their families. At that time, it was almost unthinkable for Kiwi kids to go door-to-door that night, looking for treats. But I held out hope and kept with the ritual, buying candy my first year there and having it ready by the door in case someone came knocking (like every other American military family in Christchurch, I lived out in town like a local, renting a place in Casebrook). But my first Halloween there, I had no visitors. It was somewhat disappointing, but I hoped that the activity would eventually catch on.
During my second October 31st there, I once again purchased candy, and again had it ready to pass out, should someone stop by. A hour or some passed by that night, and again I had no nighttime visitors. However, at around 6:30 pm, just as I was about to give up, there was a ringing at my door. I opened it to find a little Kiwi boy and girl, no more than seven or eight years old, standing shyly and somewhat shame-facedly on my stoop. Neither of them were wearing any sort of costume; they stood there in street clothes.
"Hello, sir," the boy began. "We're awfully sorry to bother you... but, you see, in America, they have a thing on this night called -"
I cut him off instantly, happily shouting "TRICK-OR-TREATERS! FINALLY! WOO-HOO!!!" I'm sure my yelling initially scared the living bejesus out of them... but they quickly recovered, glad that they had come to the house of someone who knew why they were there! We all laughed together, and I piled candy into their waiting sacks and sent them merrily on their way. Thus ended my first real Halloween in New Zealand... Nowadays, the holiday is well-established in the country, and on this night the crowds of kids roaming neighborhoods seeking candy in many ways resembles the same activity back in the States... thank goodness.
*********
...Halloweens in my early/middle teens in Massachusetts were always interesting times. After the candy was gathered and deposited safely at home, the later evenings of October 31st were unofficially the times when scores got settled, power struggles culminated and lines and alliances were redrawn between the kids in our suburban neighborhoods on the South Shore. In many ways, it was open adolescent "warfare", a toned-down version of the Castellammarese War, but without casualties and between youngsters.
Guys would prepare for Halloween weeks in advance, burying cartons of eggs in the woods to rot and use as projectiles... hoarding firecrackers and cherry bombs... and filling old Christmas tree lights with paint to throw at opposing parties. During that post-trick-or-treat period, the sequence of events was that your respective group/gang would meet up, load up with these things, then start roaming the area, seeking out opposing groups to battle in the streets and in the woods. I know that, in some ways, it sounds sort of mean-spirited, street thuggy and semi-deliquent-y... but believe me when I say it was all done for fun, by suburban teens/pre-teens with time on their hands. I distinctly recall standing on a low hill overlooking the town near the end of one of those nights, and in all directions hearing the bang/pop and occasional flash of fireworks in every direction, and the distant roars of gangs of kids "battling" all over the place. For me at that time, that was the definitive sound of Halloween.
*********
I don't have any long-winded story in relation to these album offerings. I dug both of these up a few years ago while searching for Halloween-related music and sound effects. Disney released these records under the exact same name fifteen years apart. The first half of the 1964 release is clearly geared to a younger audience (ages three through eight), with the tracks presented in a Disneyesque storybook manner by a narrator, Ms. Laura Olsher (whose other claim to fame was participating in voice work for Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, one of the first animated holiday specials, playing Mrs. Cratchit). The second half dispenses with that story-time tone, and just provides the expected "spooky" holiday sounds (thunder, explosions, space alien sounds, etc.). The original liner notes and insert for this release (initially issued on vinyl) included notes and suggestions on how to host a "scary" holiday party; it was all very wholesome and of-its-time.
The 1979 version of this record is simply straight-ahead 'haunted house" sound effects - shrieks, groans, wind and torture devices. Here's the reverse side of the album with track details:
So, here you are - two superb holiday releases, both on Disneyland Records put out in their respective years, that I hope will set the tone for your Halloween festivities tonight and in the future, and help you and yours create the sort of lasting memories of this date that I still cherish and hold.
Have a happy and delightfully frightening Halloween!
Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:
Various Artists - Chilling, Thrilling Sounds Of The Haunted House (1964): Send Email
Various Artists - Chilling, Thrilling Sounds Of The Haunted House (1979): Send Email
In the early 1960s, Charles Schulz's comic strip Peanuts was entering into a long period of enormous international popularity, which others in the entertainment industry were eager to capitalize on. Television producer Lee Mendelson was keen to produce a documentary featuring Schulz and the success of his strip, and by 1964 had established a good working relationship with the cartoonist which also morphed into a fast friendship. The documentary Mendelson envisioned would be mostly live action, with only a couple of minutes of animation included. For that, Schulz recommended an animator named Bill Melendez, who he had earlier worked with for several years on a series of commercials for Ford vehicles featuring the characters.
But despite his efforts, and the acclaim for the strip, Mendelson couldn't interest any of the then-existing networks in funding and airing a Charlie Brown & Charles Schulz documentary of the type he had in mind.
However, Peanuts-mania continued unabated; in the spring of 1965, the Peanuts gang was featured on the cover of Time magazine. Shortly after the release of that issue, Mendelson was contacted by representatives of McCann Erickson, a New York-based ad agency whose biggest client was the Coca-Cola Company. He was told that Coca-Cola was looking for a Christmas holiday special to sponsor, envisioning a half-hour animated program to air on the CBS Television network, and wanted to know if he and Charles Schulz were interested. The two completed and forwarded to Coke executives a show outline from scratch in a single day, and after belated approval from the corporation, completed the production of that first special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, in just six months.
Many of those involved in the making of A Charlie Brown Christmas and corporate and network executives were convinced that the program would be a disaster, due to its relatively slow pacing, flat animation, odd jazz-influenced music score, no laugh track and the inclusion of the reading of a Bible verse in the middle of it. But for the fact that the special was completed only ten days before its air date, it might not have aired at all ("I really believed, if it hadn't been scheduled for the following week,
there's no way they were gonna broadcast that show," Mendelson later
said). But CBS was left with practically no alternative but to show it.
Instead of being a disaster, the first showing of A Charlie Brown Christmas, on the evening of Thursday, December 9th, 1965, was a smash hit, with almost half of the TVs on that night tuned in to the program. The special ended up being the #2 show for the week (behind Bonanza), garnering considerable critical acclaim as well, and during the following year's awards season winning not only an Emmy but a Peabody award as well (the show is also credited with killing off the decade-long aluminum Christmas tree fad; within two years of its airing, the ornamental trees were no longer being regularly manufactured). It also set the template for the subsequent tradition of half-hour animated television specials (Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol and Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer had begun airing in the years prior to the Schulz special, but both were full hour-long programs).
Eager to exploit what they saw as a winning formula, Coca-Cola immediately commissioned another Charlie Brown special, Charlie Brown's All Stars, to air during the summer of 1966. That show was also a huge hit, the top-rated show for that week, with ratings and audience share rivaling that of the Christmas special.
With the added success of the second special, Mendelson, Schulz and Melendez figured they were in a pretty good place with the network. But that impression soured with the very next meeting, held the week after All Stars aired. From Mendelson's recollection of the conference:
Network Exec: Congratulations. The ratings [last week] were great - two in a row! ...What do you have in mind for the NEXT one?
Mendelson: Well, we really haven't discussed it...
Network Exec: We want you to come up with a BLOCKBUSTER like Christmas... something we can run every year, sometime between October and February. ...If we don't get a blockbuster, we may not pick up the option [for additional Peanuts shows}. Can you do it?
On the spot, Mendelson agreed to do it, although at that point he had no clue as to what sort of story idea and setting the production team could come up with in which to place this anticipated "blockbuster". However, going back to Schulz and Melendez, within a week the trio had hashed out an outline focusing around the Halloween holiday, based upon a series of strips printed in October, 1959, where Linus, confusing the traditions of Halloween and Christmas, began believing in the Great Pumpkin, a magical being who was claimed to bring toys and gifts to deserving children every October 31st. The "Great Pumpkin" stories became an annual theme in the comic strip for every October afterwards, so there was a wealth of input and gags for the team to mine. Other now-iconic elements and scenes, such as Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, and Snoopy as a World War I flying ace, were added, along with scenes involving Schroeder and his piano so the team could once again engage the services of jazz musician Vince Guaraldi, whose score for the Christmas special was widely celebrated.
Guaraldi was enthusiastic about scoring another Peanuts-related project, his fourth after ...Christmas, ...All Stars and the unsold Schulz documentary. In his excitement and interest regarding the many scene and mood changes in the Great Pumpkin script, he composed twenty original songs for the program in the basement of his San Francisco home, and expanded his regular recording trio to a sextet to include a flutist to accentuate the loneliness and isolation of scenes with Linus sitting in the pumpkin patch. He also re-utilized the song "Linus and Lucy" from the Christmas show, establishing it as the signature tune for all subsequent Peanuts specials.
The time allotted for production of the Peanuts Halloween special was even shorter than that for A Charlie Brown Christmas - just four months this time, rather than the previous six. But with a solid story and chops honed from the previous specials, the show was completed and ready to air far ahead of time. The initial broadcast of It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown occurred on Thursday, October 27th, 1966 on CBS. It was an even huger hit than A Charlie Brown Christmas, scoring a 49 share in the Nielsen ratings (meaning almost half of all TVs on that night were tuned into the program) and tied for the #1 show of that week. Although it was nominated for Emmys in the next year for "Outstanding Children's Program" and "Special Classifications of Individual Achievements", it did not win (in the former category, both Great Pumpkin and All Stars were nominees, which I think split the Peanuts votes, allowing some forgotten Jack & The Beanstalk cartoon from NBC to walk away with the award).
However, the show was immediately hailed as a classic, and celebrated for its artistic style; unlike the first special, It's The Great Pumpkin utilized much more camera movement. And artist Dean Spille went the extra mile, and hand-painted the backgrounds of the French countryside during Snoopy's flying ace sequence, utilizing a linear perspective rather than the regular flat design of the earlier shows. To this day, those scenes are recognized as a major achievement, and influenced several other animated specials for years to come. The show was also the first Halloween-related special, establishing that holiday as a television genre. And the execs got what they asked for: It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was rebroadcast annually on network TV (on CBS until 2001, then on ABC) for the next fifty-three years, until Apple TV+ purchased the rights in 2020.
I adore both A Charlie Brown Christmas and It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown - but if I had to chose between the two, I'd go for the latter, every time. The Great Pumpkin just hits me different... And I'm not alone; the program is regarded to this day as the best of all the Peanuts specials. When I was a kid, I couldn't WAIT until the night this program aired! It was the perfect way to get into the anticipatory mood for upcoming trick-or-treating and other Halloween shenanigans. It's sort of sad now that kids today don't really have the chance to see it as their parents and grandparents viewed the show, as a widely anticipated annual network event and tradition - somehow, watching it on Apple TV+ just doesn't feel the same to me. Despite the program's now-wide availability and easy access, to this day I REFUSE to watch it at any time other than the Halloween season.
Although the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas was released immediately after the show's first airing (on Fantasy Records in December 1965 - it is still the second-best selling jazz record (behind Miles Davis's Kind Of Blue) and top-ten best selling Christmas album of all time), it took decades for the Great Pumpkin soundtrack to see the light of day. Concord Music announced that it would be releasing the long-awaited soundtrack in 2018, but discovered that the original studio master recordings were missing. So instead, the label released music culled directly from the special's audio track, removing any dialogue and most of (but not all) extraneous sound effects, a move that Concord Music was heavily criticized for.
After Lee Mendelson's death in 2019, his children combed through his basement archives, searching for any Peanuts-related music he might have retained. In mid-2021 they finally found some of the original monaural
analog session reels recorded for the show in 1966. The tapes included nearly all of
the music cues recorded by Guaraldi, along with several alternate takes. Concord utilized these masters to rerecord and reissue the soundtrack album the following year, although some songs remained missing, forcing the label to one again use some selections from the audio track, albeit 'cleaner' versions.
So here for your perusal is the reissued It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown: Music From The Soundtrack, recorded by the Vince Guaraldi Sextet in Hollywood on October 4th, 1966, and released by Concord subsidiary Craft Recordings on August 26th, 2022. I hope that this selection gets you and your family into the Halloween mood! Have a happy October 31st... and as always, let me know what you think.
Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:
With October 31st just around the corner, and longtime horror hostess Elvira (or more specifically Cassandra Peterson, the actress who plays Elvira) in the news recently due to the revelations in her recently published autobiographyYours Cruelly, Elvira: Memoirs of the Mistress of the Dark, I thought I might post a couple of her Halloween-related compilations.
The first Elvira music compilation came out in 1983, a couple of years after Peterson auditioned for and won the job of presenter for a revival of a popular Los Angeles-area weekend horror show featuring old scary movies called Fright Night. The program (renamed Elvira's Movie Macabre) featured her now-iconic character Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark, a saucy, sarcastic, 'Valley Girl'-type tricked out in heavily-applied horror-film makeup, a huge black beehive wig and a tight-fitting, low-cut black gown which displayed Peterson's ample chest. Elvira not only introduced the decidedly Grade-B, -C and -Z films, she would often interrupt the flicks during the program to poke fun of their overall crappiness, in addition to making racy double entendres and jokes about her boobs. She quickly gained notoriety and popularity in the region, and parlayed that success to appearances on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show and other programs (like CHiPs and The Fall Guy) which brought her nationwide fame.
Her first release, Elvira Presents Vinyl Macabre - Oldies But Ghoulies (Vol. 1), was a quickie collection of Halloween/horror-related rock and pop hits and standards by the likes of Bobby "Boris" Pickett and Sheb Wooley, slapped together by Rhino Records in the early years of that label's existence. As such, Peterson/Elvira had little to do with or on the album, other than record a couple of intros/outros and appear on the cover in all her glory. Despite its relative generic October music presentation, today this disc commands high prices, probably because the record was never rereleased on cassette or CD.
The follow-up to this initial release was Elvira Presents Haunted Hits, put out in 1988. Actually, in some ways, this album serves as sort-of rerelease of Vinyl Macabre, as it reprises a number of songs that were on the first compilation (like "Monster Mash", "Purple People Eater" and "Haunted House"), while adding a substantial number of other holiday-related tunes, some rather popular and renowned. In case you're interested, here's the lineup:
Monster Mash - Bobby 'Boris' Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers
Haunted House - Jumpin' Gene Simmons
Ghostbusters - Ray Parker Jr.
Out OF Limits - The Marketts
The Blob - The Five Blobs
The Creature From The Black Lagoon - Dave Edmunds
The Purple People Eater - Sheb Wooley
The Addams Family (Main Title) - Victor Mizzy
Twilight Zone - Neil Norman & His Cosmic Orchestra
Welcome To My Nightmare - Alice Cooper
End Of Side One - Elvira
Beginning Of Side Two - Elvira
Halloween Spooks - Lambert, Hendricks & Ross
Dead Man's Party - Oingo Boingo
Little Demon - Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Horror Movie - The Skyhooks
I Put A Spell On You - Screamin' Jay Hawkins
King Kong - Big T. Tyler
Attack OF The 50-Foot Woman - The Tubes
I Was A Teenage Werewolf - The Cramps
Voodoo Voodoo - LaVern Baker
The Creature (From Outer Space) - The Jayhawks
Full Moon - Elvira
Martian Hop - The Ran-Dells
Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes - Lee Lewis
Elvira's Outro - Elvira
Elvira was a little more involved on this album; in addition to her commentary, she's even provided a full song to sing, "Full Moon" - a lightweight, synth-poppy confection that doesn't hold up well next to the other classics included here. But all in all, in my opinion, this is probably the best of the compilations released under her name, due to the breadth, scope and volume of fun Halloween music offered here. It was a bestseller for the label when it was released, and remains a perennially popular disc.
But the success of the ...Haunted Hits album seemed to lead to some unfortunate decisions/choices for the next Elvira compilation, Elvira Presents Monster Hits, released six years later. It appears that someone (either Peterson herself or the producers) believed that the big selling point for the earlier set was the increase in Elvira's voice and presence. So for this new one, the decision was made to ratchet up the "Elvira factor" - more than one-third of this short (28 minute long) album is centered on her. This includes two original songs, "Monsta' Rap" and "Here Comes The Bride (The Bride Of Frankenstein)" - both generally bland, worthless songs that do little more than take up space that could have been better utilized by including more classic and well-known Halloween songs. The track list for this brief release is as follows:
Introduction - Elvira
Monsta' Rap - Elvira
Little Demon - Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Feed My Frankenstein - Alice Cooper
Monster Mash - Bobby 'Boris' Pickett
Nightmare On My Street - DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
The Addams Family - Joey Gaynor
Here Comes The Bride (The Bride Of Frankenstein) - Elvira
Outro - Elvira
Also note that this comp includes several repeats from Elvira's previous releases, making the existence of this one somewhat redundant.
In years to come, Rhino would release a couple more Halloween compilations under Elvira's name, all to gradually diminishing returns: Revenge Of The Monster Hits in 1995 and Elvira's Gravest Hits (an 'best of' (*eye roll*) album devoted almost solely to tunes crooned by her) in 2010, along with Heavy Metal Halloween in 2009. But these have done little to decrease the fame of Peterson's signature character; Elvira remains popular and active to this day.
Anyway, here for your spook-tacular pleasure are two discs to make your haunted holiday complete:
Elvira Presents Haunted Hits, released in 1988; and
Elvira Presents Monster Hits, released in 1994
Both were put out by Rhino Records.
Enjoy, and have a wonderful, safe and happy Halloween! And as always, let me know what you think.
Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:
Various Artists - Elvira Presents Haunted Hits: Send Email Various Artists - Elvira Presents Monster Hits: Send Email
I pulled together a lot of my Halloween-related stuff last year, fully intending to have a couple of major music dumps here onto the blog prior to last October 31st... but time just got away from me, and I never ended up posting any of that stuff. I'm trying to make up for it this year, by actually getting up off my ass and getting some things posted well prior to the holiday for the edification and enjoyment of you all... and here's the first offering: the classic Halloween Nuggets set, three discs of spook-centric rock obscurities from the late Fifties and throughout the Sixties, mixed in with audio from classic horror/sci-fi film trailers of the era. Here's the lineup:
Disc 1
1. The Mystrys – Witch Girl (2:03)
2. Teddy Durant – The Beast of Sunset Strip (2:25)
11. Glenn & Christy with the Adventures – Wombat Twist (2:15)
12. Billy Ghoulston – Zombie Stomp (2:18)
13. Irvin Yeaworth – The Blob (1:16)
14. Johnny Fraser and the Regalaires – It (2:07)
15. Mr. Baseman & The Symbols – Do the Zombie (2:17)
16. The Shandells – Go Go Gorilla (2:53)
17. Ronnie Self – Go Go Cannibal (2:06)
18. Phil Tucker – Robot Monster (0:50)
19. The Shades – Strolling After Dark (2:07)
20. Jericho Jones – Black Magic (2:07)
21. Karl Freund – The Mummy (0:38)
22. Lee Ross – The Mummy’s Bracelet (2:13)
23. The Contrails – The Mummy Walk (Walking Death) (2:36)
24. Fred F. Sears – The Werewolf (0:11)
25. Carl Bonafede & The Gemtones – The Werewolf (2:08)
26. Johnny Eager – Howl (2:12)
27. Herbert L. Strock – I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1:32)
28. The Keytones – I Was a Teenage Monster (2:17)
29. Lord Luther with The King’s Men – (I was a) Teenage Creature (2:45)
30. Ted V. Mikels – The Astro Zombies (0:57)
31. Sonny Day and the Tony Ray Combo – Creature From Outer Space (2:29)
32. The Sabres – Spider Walk (2:28)
33. The Abstracts – Nightmare (3:07)
Disc 3
1. Ralph Nieson & The Chancellors – Scream (1:55)
2. Bernard Louis Kowalski – Night of the Blood Beast (0:48)
3. Billy & The Dukes – Roland (2:36)
4. Al Saxon – Evil Eye (2:31)
5. Kiriae Crucible – The Salem Witch Trial (2:52)
6. The 7th Court – One Eyed Witch (2:23)
7. Dave Gardner – Mad Witch (2:34)
8. Ervinna & The Stylers – Witch Queen of New Orleans (2:16)
9. Betty Lavett – Witchcraft In the Air (2:36)
10. The Circus – Burn Witch Burn (2:01)
11. Miss L. L.Louise Lewis – Monster’s Bride (1:48)
12. Glenn Ryle – Wolf Gal (2:17)
13. Gary Warren – Midnight Rain (2:33)
14. Jack Arnold – Creature From the Black Lagoon (0:40)
15. Evans Carroll & The Tempos – The Monster (2:08)
16. Billy Taylor And The Teardrops – Wombie Zombie (2:16)
17. Jan Davis – Watusi Zombi (1:59)
18. Terry Teene – Here Comes the Hearse (2:30)
19. Frankie Stein and His Ghouls – Knives and Lovers (2:19)
20. The Blue Knights – Madness (2:52)
21. The Elites – Jack the Ripper (2:09)
22. Larry & The Blue Notes – Night of the Phantom (2:13)
23. The Upperclassmen – Cha Cha With the Zombies (2:35)
24. Bela La Goldenstein – Old Boris (2:14)
25. Chris Kevin – Haunted House (2:03)
26. William Castle – The House on Haunted Hill trailer (0:32)
27. Kenny & the Fiends – The House on Haunted Hill (1:31)
28. Skip Manning – Devil Blues (2:31)
29. The Devotions – Devil’s Gotten Into My Baby (2:42)
30. The Twelfth Night – Grim Reaper (1:52)
31. James Duhon – Grave Yard Creep (2:33)
32. Original Trailer – Godzilla King of the Monsters (1:41)
33. Los Holy’s – Campo De Vampiros (3:12)
34. Richard Rome – Ghost a Go Go (2:12)
Sorry for the abbreviated writeup; just haven't been able to complete a longer form narrative that I was planning. But no matter; you all are here for the music, not for my long-winded screeds!
So here you are: the Halloween Nuggets: Monster Sixties A Go-Go set, 98 tracks of frighteningly good and obscure rock 'n' roll, released on Rockbeat Records on July 18th, 2014. Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think. And have a Happy Halloween!
Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:
I hope you'll pardon me, but I've been slack as hell regarding posting new offerings to this blog. I know I've started at least a dozen over the past few months, but for reasons including inattention and lack of free time, I just haven't had the wherewithal to finish them up. I DO feel bad about it, and I'm endeavoring to make an effort to complete and backdate many of these prospective posts before the year is out. I greatly appreciate the continued visits and requests from you all. Suffice to say that this blog is still up and running, and music links are still being forwarded to all who request them. I just need to get myself up and running again.
With that, here's an offering for this Halloween; a recording of Dr. Demento's Halloween show from October 1984. I used to listen to Dr. Demento every Sunday night when I was in school in Annapolis; it was part of WHFS's regular weekly lineup, and you could always expect to hear something weird and wonderful on it (apparently, the Doctor and his show are still going strong - however, I know I haven't heard it in at almost 30 years). This particular show was no exception; here's the song/track lineup:
Trick Or Treat - Elvira
Haunted House Of Rock (a cappella version) - Whodini
Goblin Girl - Frank Zappa
Let's Twist Again (Mummy Time Is Here) - Zacherle
The Addams Family Theme (excerpt) - Vic Mizzy
Whatever Happened To Eddie? - Butch Patrick (Eddie & The Monsters)
Mr. Ghost Goes To Town - Jon Schwartz & Group
Halloween Spooks - Lambert, Hendricks & Ross
Main Title From Night Of The Living Dead (excerpt)
Dead - The Poets
Werewolves Of London - Warren Zevon
The Vegas Vampire - Jim Parker/Bruce Popka
Human Fly - The Cramps
The Spider And The Fly - Bobby Christian & The Allen Sisters
It's Halloween - The Shaggs
Casper The Friendly Ghost - The Peter Pan Players
Haunted House - Jumpin' Gene Simmons
The Headless Horseman - Kay Kyser
With Her Head Tucked Underneath Her Arm - Caryl P. Weiss
Spook Opera - The Hawaiian Pups
Skeleton In The Closet - Louis Armstrong
The Lurch - Ted Cassidy as Lurch
The Laughing Gnome - David Bowie
I Only Have Eyes For You - Spike Jones & The Band That Plays For Fun
I Want To Bite Your Hand - Gene Moss
Harry, The Toothless Vampire (short version) - SuLu
Please Mr. Gravedigger - David Bowie
Cemetery Girls - Barnes & Barnes
#5 The Blob - The Five Blobs
#4 Vampire Beavers - Joe Hall & The Continental Drift
EXTRA: Dracula soundtrack (excerpt) - Bela Lugosi & Dwight Frye [misannounced as Boris Karloff]
#3 Dinner With Drac - Zacherle
#2 My Old Flame - Spike Jones & His City Slickers
#1 Monster Mash - Bobby (Boris) Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers
Up until a couple of days ago, I completely forgot that I had this in my collection. I think I found it years ago, and just filed it away. In any case, it's the perfect scary, silly, spooky, fun soundtrack for your festivities tonight!
So for your listening pleasure, here's Dr. Demento's Demented Halloween, syndicated show #84-44 aired Sunday, October 29th, 1984. Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think. Happy Halloween!
(And more to come, hopefully sooner than later . . .)
Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:
I've been thinking hard about becoming one of those "cord-cutters" I've been hearing so much about, and finally dumping my cable television subscription. At this stage of my life, cable is a nearly useless frivolity nowhere near worth its monthly purchase price. Frankly, I simply just don't watch that much TV anymore - or at least the TV the cable companies want me to watch. I could care less about the endless variety of "reality" shows and singing/dancing contests that befoul the airwaves nowadays - I wouldn't watch Duck Dynasty, Naked & Afraid or Dancing With The Stars at gunpoint. And don't get me started regarding network television - it's all so samey; either bland sitcoms (I once tried to sit through episodes of The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men - I didn't make it to the first commercial break) or gussied-up whodunit dramas (seriously, how many versions of CSI/NCIS/WTF do they air each week?). If it weren't for The Daily Show, South Park, Downton Abbey and the occasional Ken Burns documentary on PBS, I'd rarely have the set on at all during the year.
In many ways, it feels odd now to feel so ambivalent about television; for folks my age, TV was an essential and formative experience in our lives from nearly the very start.
Looking back now, I'm amazed at the stuff I used to watch - and that my parents let me watch - regularly at a young age; not just kiddie fare, but some relatively sophisticated stuff (for late 60s/early 70s TV, that is . . .). For example, in addition to I Dream of Jeannie and Daniel Boone, I never missed an episode of Land Of The Giants or The Mod Squad - I was four years old at the time. The next year, when I was five, I recall being bitterly disappointed when I learned that a favorite program at the time, The New People, a hokey drama about hippies surviving a plane crash and building a new society on a desert island, had been cancelled mid-season.
As I got older and was allowed to stay up later, my taste in TV shows continued to skew to programs made and marketed for adults, moving away from fluff like Family Affair, The Courtship of Eddie's Father and Nanny & The Professor and into things that were on past 8:30 pm, like Alias Smith and Jones (alas, Pete Duel . . . he could have
been a big star), Longstreet, Kung Fu and Mannix (quite possibly the most violent network TV show ever aired).
I can't really say that absorbing these 'grown-up' shows at a young age affected me all that much. I mean, watching the fistfights, car crashes and gunplay on Mannix didn't desensitize me to violence, or turn me into some kind of sociopath later in life. I'm sure that, like me, you've heard stories of kids during the 1950s who would watch George Reeves' Superman program, then go out and injure themselves by tying capes to their necks and jumping off the roof of their homes. I've always considered those tales to be mostly apocryphal - kids aren't really as stupid and impressionable as adults think they are, and learn at a very early age what is real and possible in real life and on TV, and what's not. Even back then, I knew that commercial spaceflights, blind detectives and pretty blonde witch-wives didn't really exist. I got it - I just enjoyed the programs.
But there was one aspect about watching those sort of shows relatively late into the evening that had a profound effect on my mind and soul - the Seventies were the Golden Age of classic horror movie trailers airing during breaks, commercials seemingly tailor-made to scare the absolute piss out of any little kids who might happen to be awake that time of night. I couldn't tell you how many times I would be watching TV by myself or with my siblings in a darkened den, when suddenly one of those goddamn things would fill the screen! None of us could get out of the room fast enough, screaming with fright and holding our hands to our ears to block out the sound! It got to the point where, for a couple of years, whenever a show faded to an ad break, I would get up and stand near the doorway to the room, so I could quickly make my escape should something scary pop up on screen.
Here's a prime example of the sort of stuff that would rear its head at any time during the night; this film trailer used to jolt the absolute bejesus out of me when I was seven:
At the time, there was something about seeing a frog with a human hand hanging out of its mouth that just scared the crap out of me . . . so much so, that my dad used to tease me back then by saying "Hey, son!", then putting his arm up to his mouth so that it looked like his hand was sticking out! It never failed to upset me back then, but looking back, it seems pretty funny now.
Here's another one from later in the 70s that was also a guaranteed late-night kiddie room-clearer in my house . . . this trailer is still unnervingly creepy today - just listen to that voice:
As frightening as the movie trailers were, in many ways they had nothing on what used to appear as regular fare on the networks back then. Probably a lot of you are too young to remember, but back in the Sixties and Seventies, the Big Three used to have weekly-scheduled movie series - shows like The CBS Friday Night Movies, NBC Tuesday Night at the Movies, The ABC Movie of the Week (I used to love the opening for the latter - great music, and from what I understand, one of the first examples of computer graphics on television):
These movie anthology shows started out in the 60s, showing old Hollywood B movies and the like, but by the end of that decade, the networks wised up and stopped paying the film studios for their hoary old castoffs and box-office flops, instead producing and airing their own "made for TV" movies. A lot of the home-grown stuff they showed on these programs was crap - tepid family fare, or pilots for possible future TV shows (long-running series like Kojak, Columbo and The Six Million Dollar Man started out as one-shot movie pilots on these programs). But in some cases, the networks aired some pretty interesting, innovative stuff. For example, the car-truck cat-and-mouse thriller Duel, Stephen Spielberg's first big directorial effort, was a TV movie that was subsequently released to theaters. And the immortal sports classic Brian's Song, with Billy Dee Williams and James Caan as Chicago Bears running backs Gale Sayers and the doomed Brian Piccolo, also began as a Movie of the Week.
But where these made-for-TV movie programs really kicked out the jams was with the mysteries and horror movies they sometimes aired. I recall seeing The House On Greenapple Road (a superb early '70s detective classic that led to the show Dan August) and being jolted by its rather graphic depiction (for that period) of the aftermath of a grisly murder. I remember seeing another creepfest around that time, When Michael Calls, about a woman receiving phone calls from her presumably dead son. And of course there was the still-classic Trilogy of Terror in 1975 - anyone else remember that doll with the razor-sharp teeth attacking Karen Black in her apartment?
But for me, the hands-down gold standard for made-for-TV horror when I was a kid was a movie shown on ABC in the fall of 1973, Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark:
In this film, a house full of particularly disturbing-looking goblins (that only come out at night, of course) set out to capture or kill the new tenants occupying their home. I sat and watched this one with my brother in our basement family room in Wisconsin, and for MONTHS afterwards, we couldn't enter a room at night without reaching around from the outside and switching the lights on first . . . and for a long time after that, I looked at wall heating grates with fear and apprehension. The ending of this movie (and no, I won't give it away here) is one of the all-time great downbeat horror endings. All in all, the tone and atmosphere of this film lived long in my memory, up until the present day (apparently, I wasn't the only one - director Guillermo Del Toro has been quoted as saying this movie scared the hell out of him as well when he was a kid).
As scary as these television movies were, I think that in some small way, I benefited from experiencing them, in that as I got older, there were fewer and fewer things that could really put the fear of God in me. Before I reached double-digits, I was a thrill ride aficionado, and couldn't wait to ride the roller coasters and other exciting rides at Busch Gardens and Kings Dominion every summer. My friends and I used to play in the woods near our homes well into the night, running through the trees in pitch blackness without trepidation. And I routinely walked home from a buddy's house on gloomy evenings through a long, dark and narrow path through a forest - I never gave it much of a thought at the time. I look at my kids today - who refuse to ride coasters with me at amusement parks, who rarely if so much as walk across the street at dusk to see their friends, and who recoil with fear and revulsion whenever I suggest we settle in for the night with a classic scary movie like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Shining - and just shake my head sometimes. I think that kids today are scared of a lot more things for a lot longer, because so many of them have been protected for so long from experiencing frightening or disturbing things. And that's a shame. Oh well . . .
I'm a grown man now, jaded and cynical after all of these years . . . and yet there are still a couple of things that just freak me right the hell out. For example:
A couple of years ago, when I lived in Maryland, I was flipping around the cable box one night and landed right in the middle of Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof, probably the only one of his movies I never caught when it was first released in theaters - I recall that night it was airing on HBO or something. I arrived just before the first 'accident', a graphic head-on high-speed collision between Kurt Russell's "death-proof" stunt car and a sedan full of women - a crash that Tarantino felt the "artistic" need to show over and over, from different angles, to show exactly what happened to each of the auto's occupants . . . Jesus. I don't know if you all have ever seen that movie or that particular scene . . . but as bad as it sounds with my description, it's much worse actually seeing it, and it rocked me and shocked me to my core. I don't know what Quentin was trying to accomplish with that section of the film, but if it was to deliver a sickening kick to the viewer's stomachs, then mission accomplished. I bought Death Proof on DVD a couple of years later, to complete my Tarantino collection. For the most part, it's a pretty decent, entertaining film . . . but to this day I avoid watching that particular crash scene. I can't describe how or why it gets to me - I'm not squeamish, and I don't think I'm particularly sensitive. It's just a scene and an experience I have no interest in knowing all that much detail about.
Other than Death Proof, there's probably only one other film that still fills me with the same sort of shock, horror and dread - the original Night Of The Living Dead.
"Night Of The Living Dead?", you may be asking yourself - "That cheap-ass black-and-white zombie-attack throwback from the Sixties - are you kidding? Hell, there aren't even any decent special effects in that movie!" Yes, all of that is pretty much true. But it's that lack of production values - the grainy footage, natural lighting and settings, and odd camera angles - that makes NOTLD what it is. It comes off as less a film and more of almost a documentary, a chronicle of actual events that occurred that night. There's an undercurrent of realism that runs through the movie - in the movements, mindsets and actions of the various victims in relation to their plight - that makes you feel not only like "this really happened", but also "this CAN really happen".
And despite its lack of color, the film contains some of the most shocking scenes in horror film history. It goes without saying that zombie movies as we know them today basically didn't exist before 1968. With Night Of The Living Dead, director George Romero not only invented the genre, he also introduced an unprecedented depiction of gore rarely seen before that time. Animated dead bodies feeding visibly on human flesh and entrails was jolting back then, to audiences more used to the restrained 'shock' of a Christopher Lee Hammer Horror film or a Hitchcock flick. It remains jolting today.
The scene in NOTLD that always gets me is near the end (semi-spoiler alert), when the zombiefied little girl eats her father, then hacks her mother to death with a paving trowel in the basement . . . To me, that's a profoundly messed-up segment, with the girl's arm rising and falling again and again, and the sound of the trowel entering her mother's chest, over and over - brrrr! For me, unwatchable.
Not much thought was given to compiling a Night Of The Living Dead soundtrack when the movie was completed in the late '60s. In fact, it wasn't until more than a decade later that anyone got around to doing so. The album is full of good ol' '60s-style incidental suspense/horror film music, along with a fair amount of dialogue from the film. Apparently, it didn't sell very well - to the best of my knowledge, this disc has never been released on CD.
So here for your listening pleasure is Night Of The Living Dead (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), released on vinyl by the label Varese Sarabande in 1982. I hope that this soundtrack helps set the tone for your scary and spooky Halloween night. So have fun, and enjoy! And as always, let me know what you think.
(As for myself, I have no particular plans this evening, after the final trick-or-treater departs. I don't know . . . I guess I'll just stay in and watch some TV . . .)
Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:
Here's a fun fact: a small snippet from the final selection on this soundtrack album, "Funeral Pyre (End Title)", was used in one of the most disturbing (and yet hilarious) cartoon scenes of all time, the 'Call The Police' segment of Ren & Stimpy's "Rubber Nipple Salesmen" episode on Nickelodeon. If you've never had the chance to experience it . . . bon appetit (and keep in mind that this was a show for children):
Saying "Thanks" for the music you receive from here costs you absolutely nothing, and yet is worth quite a bit to me… If you can't bother leaving a comment on this blog for the first album/set we send you, don't bother making a request For a second album…
