Obviously Halloween

So, okay, it's been a while, because I had three different albums lined up to post and they all looked promising, but like ten minutes into the first sides I caught myself staring at the turntable with that sadness that puppies have when you tell them that you're actually a cat-person and they have to leave. Many, many times albums that aesthetically seem ridiculously awesome turn out to actually devour both your time AND expectations in an aural frenzy of really boring shit.

One of these was Woody Woodbury's "First Annual Message from the President of the Booze Is the Only Answer Club" from 1960. 

Woody was or maybe even still is a comedian who specialized in drinking-humor - not to be confused with those comedians whose routine was playing drunk while doing their act - which is basically telling an audience of drinkers that drinking is just great, so I feel the routine is a little limited. The album here is made up of a live recording in Florida where Woodbury pretty much just wanders the crowd asking rather tame questions and hopes for the drunks to fill in for the laughs. It's failing hard on my ears but I dunno; different types of humor are for the most part only funny in the era they came from, excluding the very talented work. 

A shame, as the LP comes in an amazing package; a shiny gold gatefold-box holds everything, including a small catalogue that features other albums on the label, a newsletter, and a little 130-page paperback full of jokes and "witticisms", set into a separator that sits above the vinyl. I's love to know the stat's for this - what the production cost was and how well it sold, if there was a profit made, etc. 

Hmmm. Okay, just did a quick Wikipedia visit and went to WW's official website, and it's pretty fascinating! Click here to check the gallery section out! Might have to do a piece on the guy after all!

And the otheralbums I may mention in the next posts, but right now I'll do the obviousest thing and put up a goddamn Halloween sound-effects LP. (Seriously, I just ran out of Halloween-themed stuff, and while I'd love to post some old Misfits, it's just too done to death by others)

So this is "Sounds to Make You Shiver!" on kid's label Pickwick. Good and weird cover-art. Cheap-ass effects.
Side 1 is "A Night in a Haunted House", and you'll realize a few minutes in that the owners should really close the windows - the wind blowing through the place in insane. It's actually not a bad listen, and the mish-mash of everything is so non-linear it can really get your imagination running around wondering what the exact hell is happening.

The second side is shorter chops of separate effects, many you'll recognize from the first side. The "Cats" and "Dogs" tracks, well, they're human-made cat and dog noises. Ask your friend to meow and it'll pretty much be better than this, but nowhere near as spooky, I guess. Back-cover!!:

Download:  

A Night in a Haunted House
Blood-trembling, skin-curdling effects

Seduction Through Witchcraft (and your pet turtle)

Unrequited love is like being buried alive in a heart-shaped coffin.

YES I'm going through this AGAIN so I'm gonna bleed here for a bit and I just hope it's not too cringe-inducing for those happy souls entwined in the blissful embrace of some form of relationship that isn't sour yet that is more awesome than anything and certainly better than this chicken & capellini in homemade sauce made from the tears of the clearly unwanted and dined on alone in an empty apartment that mocks my existence with hollow echoes of utter, utter solitude.

Haha - just kidding. I have a cat, it's not that empty (the mocking continues, however).

Months of correspondence with someone who is an 80% match with my twisted soul and I was reading her all wrong so big deal, it's my fault for wishing too much and JESUS when that oxytocin starts pumping through your system like nitro in a dragster's fuel lines (see last entry) the mind goes completely batshit with infatuation-fantasies and damn I feel stupid now. But not really, because it's all very human and we all go through it and blah blah blah and honestly I've done this so many times in my life I actually have a planned schedule on how to survive the bombed-emotions process in a complicated chart that helps immeasurably. Okay, it's actually a big photo of a bottle of Jack Daniels. Same thing.

I'VE WRITTEN A POEM ABOUT IT ! READ IT NOW !

soliloquy into a dead phone

I want to experience life with you;

drink beer with you,

walk down terrible alleys in the rain with your hand in mine,

hear you sneeze from another room,

miss you when you're out,

wonder about a look you gave me the other day,

ride in a cab with you,

fall asleep with you in a booth in the Ovaltine Cafe
    only to be shaken awake by an aggravated waitress.

hold your hair back as you vomit in the toilet.

place a surprised smile of yours in the palm of eternity

and smell cigarette smoke in your hair.

I want to bring you tea when you're sick in bed (with a spike of whiskey obviously),

see you cry to know you're human and be shaken to the core by it,

and feel your heartbeat with my ear to your breast.

I want to taste something you've made, seen something you've created, be a part of your history

 and

crumble to dust in our old age together knowing this hasn't all

 been some sort of mistake.

Now was that so bad?

I haven't given up hope, though, and thankfully before passing out hideously drunk and naked halfway through my door into the hallway of the lobby last night I dug this thing out of my collection and prepared to woo her back through falsitudes and Satan, probably. Apparently I still need a special type of beetle and a live turtle though so maybe I'll do it next week.

And, yes, of course I'm kidding; if I can't win over the Morticia to my Gomez, the Connie to my Dee Dee Ramone, the Poison Ivy to my Lux Interior, the Mallory to my Mickey purely with my wit and charm then I'll just OH GOD I'M GOING TO DIE ALONE! 

So here we have something that has seen other music blogs before but so what it's awesome.

 

Keep in mind that the last of the sixties into the mid-seventies was rife with activities and such that you'd be arrested for (probably) today; morally, the USA was like Weimar Berlin in this 5-to-6 year period, but way tackier and culturally-benign in comparison. Butterfly-collared Sammy Davis Jr. and Jayne Mansfield partying down with Anton LaVey? C'mon.
Recorded in 1969 by the world's only "Officially Appointed Official Witch" (it's true), this gem of echoey weirdness will ensure you get some form of love from somebody somewhere - perhaps in an orgy - if you do the exact steps necessary for what it is you're looking for. If that sounds vague, take a look at the tracks on the album;

The Self Fascination Ritual for Increased Power
The Isis Full Moon Ring for Magical Protection
The Demon Spell for Energy
Orgies: A Tool of Witchcraft
Sun Sign Amulets for Spiritual Protection
The Coleopterous Charm for Romantic Adventure
The Turkish Bean Spell for Tender Love
Seduction Spells From Around the World
The Emotional Bondage Spell
The Earthquake Spell for Unwanted Lovers
Witches and Wizzards

Yeah and there's no way in hell you're not listening to this. And play on some windy half-drunk night preferably inside a pentagram (which historically is NOT 'satanic' so there) with wild animals scampering about and for christ's sake buy a cloak already.

Download here:
Seduction Through Witchcraft 

(There's click/hiss in the first few tracks, but removed thereafter)

And check out her site! (Looks like it hasn't been updated since '03)

I'm off to sob uncontrollably and/or watch American Horror Story.

A Spooktacular in Screaming Sound!

Spike Jones was a bandleader and musician specializing in satirizing contemporary & popular music in the time-period of 1940's-1950's, much of the time utilizing odd, purposely-juxtaposed or even non-musical instruments resulting in hugely popular de-compositions. Just in time for Halloween.

Download here:
Spike

Drop Dead!

Arch Oboler, born in 1907 (d.1987), was a nuclear blast of energy & ideas involving himself in movies, plays, television, directing, producing, screenwriting, writing novels, and had a long-running horror radio show by the name of "Lights Out" - one cut from the album being one of the episodes - and apparently made film history with his use of effects in two of his 3-D movies from the early fifties, and during the war years made anti-Nazi films that stars of the era (Joan Crawford one of them) lined up to be a part of, some taking pay-cuts for the chance.
Unfortunately, horror was to touch his life literally when his six year old son drowned in a ditch used for excavation that filled with rainwater on the site where Oboler's new house was being built in 1958.

Drop Dead!, with it's iconic cover, was released in 1962, and features in it's cast Mercedes McCambridge, a minor star of movies and TV of the era and who would later be cast as the wife in TV's long-running series The Coach in the 90's.


Track listing:
    A1 Introduction to Horror   
    A2 I'm Hungry (Movie-Type Horror)   
    A3 Taking Papa Home (Suspense-Type Horror)   
    A4 The Dark (Radio-Type Horror) 
    B1 A Day at the Dentist's (Comedy-Type Horror)   
    B2 The Posse (T.V.-Type Horror)   
    B3 Chicken Heart (Science Fiction-Type Horror)   
    B4 The Laughing Man (The Ultimate in Horror)

Download here:
 Obler