One of us.

“Just pretending to be in the Ramones I felt cooler than I ever have in Black Flag, Descendents, or All.”

-Bill Stevenson (Descendents/ALL) on playing a Halloween show as the Ramones

I’m sitting behind my drumset on Halloween night on a stage that also doubles as a skate ramp. I can hear the crowd cheering, but I can’t really see them. There are spotlights glaring in my face, and I’m pretty sure the same is true for the rest of my band. We’re going to start our set any second now and I can hear Andrew, who’s on guitar, affirm that everything’s OK on his end. We’re greenlit and ready to go and all I can think of are Bill Stevenson’s words.

“This is going to be fun,” I keep repeating to myself like some Orwellian doctrinal entity. I’m hoping it’ll work. I’m hoping I’ll be convinced.

Like they always do in these situations, my hands are getting sweaty. Not good. And, as I hear Ryan yell out “One-Two-Three-Four!” I grip my drumsticks as tight as I can, hold my breath, and pray to whatever celestial being will listen:

“Dear God, don’t let these sticks fly out of my hands…”

How did I get here? If anyone were to tell me a year ago that I was going to play in a Ramones cover band on Halloween, I’d politely give them directions to the nearest mental institution.

You better shut it up.

Truth be told, the idea first manifested as far back as May in a dark and smoky bar in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I remember being with Justin talking about music (which is what we usually do), surrounded by new people and talking about cover bands. I can’t remember whose idea it was to cover the Ramones (it might have been the Yuengling lager), but we both committed immediately. We dissect the idea: we will call the band Halloweenage Lobotomy, and there is a Halloween party in October in Philly that Justin is hosting that we would play. He then points to a skinny, tall, and admittedly handsome fellow (it could have been the Yuengling) and says, “Andrew can play guitar!”

I hadn’t met Andrew previously but his immediate enthusiasm, his inherent knowledge of the Big Apple’s Fab Four, and the assurance that, musically at least, he’s in tune made him a synch. Who would play bass?

‘We’ll figure it out, don’t worry!’ says Justin.

I get to know Andrew as the night goes on and I like the guy…substantially. “This is going to be fun,” I assure myself. However, I should have known there might be a glitch in this Matrix when Andrew and Justin both give me the same exact answer to the question, “When are we going to practice?”

“We’ll figure it out, don’t worry!”

Huh? Days, weeks, months go by, and to my disappointment (and in spite of my heavy persistence), Halloweenage Lobotomy has not developed from its embryonic state at the bar with Justin and Andrew.

Then, in mid-October I get an event invite on Facebook for a Halloween show here in Harrisburg at a friend of ours’ venue called Colormake. I look under the heading:

“Featuring Halloweenage Lobotomy”

Twenty-four hours to go.

What the fuck?! The first thought going through my head is “This isn’t real.” No such luck. A couple of texts verify my fears: there’s a Halloween show two weeks away, we’re playing, there’s people showing up to see us, and we haven’t even practiced once! With no time to spare I decide to take charge, convince a new acquaintance Ryan to play bass, and try to find us a practice space. Slowly, Andrew commits, then Ryan. Unfortunately, Justin has fallen off the face of the earth and in between jokes that he might have either disappeared, died, or turned into a werewolf (the man sports a beard fit for the halls of Valhalla, after all), it becomes apparent that the band isn’t happening…until I get a text message from my Lycan friend six days before the show:

“Practice tomorrow at 1″

The final piece of the puzzle has fallen into place, and like some tragic cosmic wheel made of irony and regret, our practice space is going to be the very same venue that’s hosting the show.

There's no stoppin' the cretins from hoppin'.

“It started as just a joke, but became quite a serious undertaking. We ended up practicing ruthlessly trying to get the stuff to sound “just so” (Ramones, i.e. perfect).”

-Bill Stevenson

I show up to the first practice on a sunny Sunday with a six-pack of Yuengling. What’s the plan? Well over the next three days (!) we’re to pick a setlist, practice it, and have a rehearsal show at Justin’s Philadelphia party (that I had all but forgotten about). This party in Philadelphia will serve as a dress rehearsal. The day after, we’re to drive from Philly back to Harrisburg and play the Colormake Halloween show. The show.

Don’t let anyone fool you, playing the Ramones ain’t easy, and on that very same Sunday, it becomes apparent that I’m the only one who’ even remotely prepared (as I’ve been practicing the songs sporadically over the past couple months). We can’t even play a single song all the way through, and I curse the fact that I brought Yuengling to our practice. We have three more days to get it right, and I’m starting to get nervous. On Monday we make it through a couple songs and finalize a setlist. On Tuesday we make it through a couple more and decide to add a cover of “Monster Mash” at the end. On Wednesday we make it though the entire setlist… sloppily… ONCE… and, much to my amazement, call it a night. We can’t practice Thursday due to everyone else’s commitments, and the next time we’re playing together is at the Philadelphia party on Friday; the “dress rehearsal.” Justin has made us custom shirts with the Ramones emblem in orange and our names superimposed. It makes me feel a little better, but diverts little from the fact that I’m getting a bad feeling about this. Particularly when I’m packing my drums into my car and I hear Justin say:

“I’ve got a GOOD feeling about this.”

At the Philadelphia party we find out there’s a Misfits cover band playing after us.

“Curses!” I think. “We should have done the Misfits instead!”

I know that we’re not prepared for this show, and I’m right. We start the set with “Rockaway Beach” (MANDATORY opener for any Ramones cover band – no excuses!) and Andrew misses the cue halfway through and ends up playing something different. At the same time, I don’t know what the fuck Ryan has chosen to play instead of the songs we practiced. Luckily, we make it through the set, sloppily, awkwardly, but kicking and screaming.

“Well, let that be a lesson,” I say to myself. “Besides, how much better can the Misfits cover band be?”

As it turns out, the answer to my question is much better. I can’t hear their set clearly through the dark basement room, but it’s painstakingly and embarrassingly obvious that these guys are dishing out a smooth and tight set effortlessly. I must be hallucinating. It must be the Yuengling I’ve been drinking all night.

I remember being there on Halloween night playing, and thinking, “this is the coolest I’ve ever felt.”

-Bill Stevenson

So, here I am. Sitting behind the drumkit. In front of a hundred people. At Colormake. On the ramp. Where you came into the story. This is the one that counts.

“ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR!!!”

I hit the crash and hope for the best.

We sound good this time. Better than I expected. Rockaway Beach is sounding better than ever.

“OK, Ollie, do everything you can to stop any mistakes from happening.”

So, I start singing the words along at the top of my lungs just in case someone in the band gets confused as to what part of the song we’re at. Much to my surprise, we don’t need it, because our playing tonight is tight, and it makes me smile. I take off my leather jacket and this time let the drums really have it; “Teenage Lobotomy.” I look around and everyone is having a good time. Ryan’s walking on the vert and keeping control, Justin’s owning the crowd, and Andrew is singing right along with me. This is what I was hoping for! “Do You Remember Rock ‘N’ Roll Radio?” People from the crowd are making their way on ‘stage’ and singing along in the microphones. It seems like they do.

The set blazes by; “Sheena is a Punk Rocker,” “The KKK Took My Baby Away,” “Do You Wanna Dance?” “Beat on the Brat,” and our own rendition of “Monster Mash.” Every beat is there, every transition is made, and every word is spot on. I can’t see the crowd, but I can hear them having a good time. It’s nothing short of a miracle. We end the set, and thank the crowd. I take off my wig immediately and go outside to get some fresh air. Everyone’s congratulating us on the set, and I’m eternally grateful to them.

Later that night, after numerous beers, many familiar faces, and countless stories with friends, I’m driving home, with my drums in the backseat of my car and my leather jacket on thinking about the show. This time I know it’s not the Yuengling. Bill was right.
It’s the coolest I’ve ever felt.

Ollie Mikse is a graduate anti-student at Penn State Hershey. When the professors aren’t looking, he does freelance writing for Ground Control Magazine, Punknews.org, and sometimes, Razorcake. In between hazy days and sleepless night, he spends his time with his band The Ottomans and his mistress Red Sound Records. Photos by Britany Ziegenhagen.

PC Treasures, Inc has a quality website.

In a world where experimental electronic music exponentially splinters into a multitude of rogue genres that slowly shuffle the globe from demilitarized dance floors to sleeper cell bedroom studios and back, a team of disparate scientists tracks this solanum-like pandemic while desperately trying to interpret cryptic field recordings of Samhain’s past, not one day at a time, but from Amen to Zombie…

ZOMBIE

So right out of the gate this one is a 30 minute mix.  Which to me says “Get ready for the journey.”  An easy way to spilt up these audio compact discs, as they are often called, is dividing them into two camps.  Camp one isolates each individual sound, plays them out in order, and then invites you to record Witch’s Laughter and Thunder and Rain together to synthesize your own continuous spooky mix.  Camp two does that for you and tries to make it interesting.  One is like a break record, the other like a mixed disc.

Here’s some data:

Scary Sounds:

Frighten Your Friends and Maybe Even Yourself with these Horrific Halloween Sound Effects (copy from front cover)

(a list of what are assumed to be tracks)

Demonic Laughter / Creaking Door / Bats / Cats / Howling Wolves / Rattling Chains / Evil Laughter

“Devilish demons creap through the dead of night, slowly opening the doer to a horror-filled evening filled with black cats and fluttering bats.  Have you been transported to a dimension of scary sounds or are you just listening to a frighfull authentic CD packed with the ghoulish sounds of Halloween? Either way it’s great for scaring party guests or terrifying a porch full of tremulous Trick-or-Treaters!” (description on the back of the jewel case)

2009 PC Treasures. INC.

2765 Metamora Rd.

Oxford, MI 48371

Don’t worry about me following up on some of these studios that are producing these scary sounds discs.  The fact that they’ve decided to put their address on the back of the product means a that they are just begging to be contacted by a candy sac’s worth of weirdos.  And will no doubt be prepared.  So look forward to that in post-Halloween posts, when I actually have time to travel around, visit, and interview some of the fine ladies and gentlemen that are involved.  Now on with press play:

Thunder crash to start out with, kind of cliché.  But, ethereal wind blowing, piano stabs, laughing, screaming, werewolves or rabid dogs, and every thing is just going nuts by the second crack of thunder.  And then there’s an awesome appearance by the synth blast from Volton or Robotech.  I love that sound, it’s like a lo-pitched synth cord with a french horn voice from ’81.  Nice little piano lines skittering around on the floor.  The first Creaking Doors section has a lot of nice metallic sound. Corrugated iron, scraped metal bowls full of water, some sheet metal, maybe a clock spring, nails on piano strings, with this awesome heartbeat slowly morphing back and forth to bubbling cauldron, underneath it all.

So now we’ve succumb to the evils of the night.  We’ve gone through the gates of the cemetery and what do we hear as we come upon the lonely grave diggers?  That organ music that you know you know.  I don’t mean to sound like I’m still in high school, but this CD three minutes in is freaking awesome.  Then for, kind of, no reason, the Westminster-Abbey chimes?  I usually think of some urban afternoon in Tokyo and the ever present, everyone’s buying things and having coffee at noon in Japan scene in just about all anime when I hear those chimes, but fair play I guess.  One of the grave diggers leaves and starts dragging a coffin from stereo right to stereo left as the chimes have been pitched down three octaves and the creatures of the night come out once again.  I think this is a nice way to pause slightly before going back into the sound designer’s bag of tricks.  The pace is still fast and disorienting, but there is a real dynamic and measured pacing to the sound narrative.  By the time Howing Wolves comes around, there’s a different wind, less sinister more of a back drop then full of miscellaneous demons. Another crack of thunder around 5 minutes, and it’s time for some sine wave action.  That rising tone, that evokes 1950′s sci-fi movies.  This is one of the things that I love about a good scary sounds disc.  If it includes, and even appropriately places ‘sounds from outer space’ in the mix, it makes it all the more scary and other world-ly and disorienting.

This time the opening of a door announces our next transition of setting, and a chorus of de-tuned and phased incubui (plural of incubus).  And we transition into Evil Laughter.  Which was to be the name of the Jimi Hendrix and Miles Davis’s 5 disc live box set that would have been released if either had lived long enough, the title taking a cue from “Miles Smiles” and “Live Evil.”  Elsewhere… there is the continuation of the entire spectrum of evil voices wailing and laughing.  Where you might ask?  That’s exactly the point of  the sine waves you heard earlier.  Are you in space?  You were just in a grave yard.  Perhaps you’re in the grounds keeper’s house.  Or in a crypt?  Maybe just shrunk down to size of an atom that happens to be on the back of a zombie’s neck?  You’ll never know.

You go through several doors, opening and shutting, hall-of-mirrors style, and you end up in a deathly slow Leslie tone cabinet.  Then high pitched harpsichord cords spike and shrill at you, while a Farfisa wails in the background, cello figures swipe at your feet, and a timpani gongs like some cruel and funny sound effect.  Screams dart in and out.  A descending/ascending piano leads you out of whatever alternate reality you were just in, while effected laughter and time-warp screams remind you of that compromised space.

The piano trudges on, only to devolve at the end of the keyboard into a John Carpenter vs. Bernard Herrmann vs. David Lynch orchestration of sound and instrumentation.  Rapidly cycling through the synths and bells and strange noises before going on to a proper synth-pop song.  Yes, 18 minutes in there is, unexpectedly but I don’t want to use completely, a synth piece that sounds a bit like the inspired panic of Gremlins before the shit goes down in the department store.  All decision time, this nice little ’80′s number builds to… a reprise of Creaking Doors. Kind of a let down, but the first of the whole CD I might add.  With about 8 minutes to go, there’s still some surprises.

A staccato cello section, preceded by screaming and Predator snarling, gives way to the wind again, and more Howling Wolves. With four minutes left the same piano skittering on the ground, Robotech/Voltron french horn cords, and ethereal wind comes back in for a reprise.  Usually this is a tried and true technique to account for the fact that if you are playing this on your front porch on Halloween, you’re going to have the repeat/loop button meshed and intergraded so that when it comes time for you to give away the last Reese’s, the neighborhood has hear the tape 10 times and knows exactly when the jump-in-continuity will occur.  And so those who make these sound publications take that into their minds and come up with the idea that what is on the beginning of the recording, should be at the end, so that when this tape is looped it will sound like the sound effects and mayhem have just seamlessly  continued.

Then something amazing happens.  Every sound effect stops.  Just squealing sine waves and feed back appear.  This time both narratively and sonic-ly they have no reference to the rest of the spooky sounds you just heard.  The wind and rain close out the 30 minutes.  Evoking a hell that is neither below or around or above us.  Pause for dramatic effect.

It occurs to me that the elements listed on the back of the CD are like themes, leitmotifs, breaks, refrains, breakdowns, riffs, chunks of sound, that occur throughout the cd, but have the distinct luxuory of describing the sound in a very direct way.  Creaking doors are actual sounds of doors creaking, whereas most Flaming Lips‘ song titles do essentially the same job but in a slightly more circuitous fashion.  So, I think unconsciously, I’ve been really excited about Halloween music because it in some ways resembles a DJ mix, or a symphony, or some multifaceted piece of music.  But more likely vice versa, since I’ve been listening to scary sound effect tapes longer than I’ve been listening to any kind of music intentionally.

Goodnight out there, whatever you are.

A true innovator

ZOMBIE

So I’m about to dig into the first of four CDs that I bought in Dayton.  We’ll be starting with:

2. “Danse Macabre,” Camille Saint-Saëns

3. “March Funebre Des Marionettes,” Charles Gounod

4. “March of the Gallows,” Hector Berloiz

5. “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” Edvard Grieg

Right, down to it then.  I’m not even going to sit here and tell you that these compositions are spooky or scary by our modern sound designed horror movie standards.  You could actually put on a CD with creaking doors and bubbling cauldrons and I’m sure that given the right state of mind, those sounds would be scarier than this CD.  But, it’s Creepy classics.  A bit softer, and hopefully a little more cerebral than just out-and-out scare the shit out of you.  Like knowing the back story is what makes these compositions a little taboo?  And while this CD fails as a sound effects weapon to frighten trick-or-treaters, and you’ll never hear it inside a haunted house, there is some interesting back story to the pieces.  Most of them that is.

“Night on Bald Mountain,” Modest Mussorgsky – Right off the bat the best stuff is at the beginning.  You may remember this piece from Fantasia where some demon calls forth the dead in the form of skeleton-ghosts by casting his shadow on a town from high atop a ‘bald’ (meaning no trees) mountain, then having a demon orgy in the center of the mountain.  AKA the awesome part of Fantasia.  This version is the second more popular version, that omits a choir.  The original concept was a tone poem composed by Mussorgsky that had at its center a witch’s sabbath.  That’s right this piece is all about cold-gates-of-Keiv-wicked-Russian-demonic-gathering-of-the-damned-hell-fire-and-brimstone-soundtrack-of-midnight.  The piece was never performed in Mussorgsky’s life time, as we know it and was arranged properly after his death.  The original tone poem had the following program: 1. Assembly of the witches, their chatter and gossip  2. Cortége of Satan  3. Black service, Black mass  4. Sabbath.  So while the creepiest thing about the piece may be circling violins and violas from the hook that you know, with the brass and percussion swooping in like vampire bats, it’s really that slow and peaceful ending that is truly a terror.  I like how the piece ends all sweet and 1800′s dainty, but at a black sabbath, and those last few notes played by harp and violin and viola.  Like a chamber door made of witch’s nails shutting closed as dawn breaks.

“Danse Macbre,” Camille Saint-Saëns – I know what you’re going to say once you hear this one.  ”What’s up with the violin at the begining?”  Well Saint-Saëns was re-working this one from an original vocal and piano piece into a tone poem for orchestra and replaced a vocal line with that Dixieland violin peppered throughout the piece.  Bad move I know.  But as with Night on Bald Mountain, you’d be hard pressed to find a recording of the super ethereal original version, and have it available for pillaging by PC Treasures Inc. out of Oxford, MI.  But as legend tells, every Halloween at midnight,  Death has the power to use his fiddle to call the dead to dance for his pleasure until dawn breaks.  And this is the music by which the dead dance.  In most European cultures there is the allegory of ‘”he Dance of the Dead.”  The allegory is used to teach people about the temporary nature of this life and that Death has the ability to make all people, rich or poor, dance together.  Still, Danse Macbre is no where near melting your face the way Sam Shakleton can with haunting music.  But there’s no façade to Death is Not Final.  Saint-Saëns has his ghouls dancing around in flowing gowns and fancy pantaloons.  All nice and proper, while their flesh rots behind their party masks.  Which is why by the second track of this CD you see why it’s already failed.  No one is going to believe that you are culture jamming a haunted front door step by playing something this Victorian.  And no one will want to hear the back story, not even if you have double packed Resse’s cups and not just the singles.

“March Funebre Des Marionettes,” Charles Gounod – Even more French sounding that the previous piece.  And miss-labeled (actually “March Funébre d’une Marionette”).  But a few things to remember.  Gounod composed, I think, the first opera around Goethe’s Faust, and that this piece was just an instrumental B-side to his already impressive body of work.  Not really rep-ing the best of his works, or the creepiest.  The theme here is of two pallbearers lamenting the death of a marionette (the person, not the doll) who lost a duel.  So the music is supposed to explore themes of control, fate, and the seemingly cruel shortness of life.  Oh, it’s also where Alfred Hitchcock got his theme.  So there’s that I guess…

“March of the Gallows,” Hector Berloiz – Very deceptive in its name.  And it’s execution.  One minute of tension before we get to the gallows, some cellos shed some tears, then it’s Romantic crap the rest of the way out.  Nothing scary, spooky, or haunting here.  So much so that I didn’t even bother to research the piece.

“In the Hall of the Mountain King,” Edvard Grieg – Nothing to see here.  Keep moving son.

So in the end, you should probably avoid any thing labeled both “Creepy” and “Classical.”  It’s probably not going to have George Crumb’s A Haunted Landscape and will most definitely need a bunch of explaining.  In the case of “Night on Bald Mountain, “it enhances the cultural relevance of the piece today.  In the case of pretty much anything else, it just means you are going to get your candy sac punched.

Goodnight out there, whatever you are.

One of the possible candidates...

Easy Freddy. This right here is to be a blog about two important subjects.
1. Drum & Bass
2. Halloween spooky sound effect CDs

Come with us now on a journey through time and space. Every week I’ll be typing up some words to update everyone on this seasons offerings of Halloween spooky sound effects CDs. The Zombie part of this blog.  The Autumn season is upon us, and that means Halloween excitement for me.  Halloween is by far my favorite holiday.  And with the chill in the air also comes seasonal goodies.

One of which is, of course, those cheap Halloween spooky sound effect CDs that you can find at just about any store that sells discounted high fructose corn syrup.  I’m sure you’ve seen them before, usually done up in orange and black with lots of creaky doors, dragging chains, screaming, etc.  Sometimes they have scary stories on them.  I’ve been collecting these recordings for years.  In all formats: CD, tape, record, etc.  (if any one has seen a mini-disc spooky sound effects ‘official’ release, please let me know)  And the thing I love the most about them is their poor quality.  Usually there is an inverse relationship between how much you pay for the recording and how awesome the recording is.  Beyond some of the interesting stuff that has passed as ‘haunting music’ it fascinates me to no end how and why these CDs are produced.  I imagine some failed sound designers and some goths getting together and mass producing these CDs for my entertainment.

I’ve just gotten my first batch of CDs during a recent trip to Dayton, Oh.  4 discs from CVS.  I’ve listened to a bit of them, but I’ll throw up some fotos and a review later…

Now to our Amen portion of the blog.  I’ve been asked to bring some of the gems from the drum & bass end of the electronic spectrum to Ghettoblaster.  So to best facilitate my rants and to superimpose some sort of narrative on to the blog, I’ve got some ground rules that I’ll abide by.  My task is to go through the entire back catalog of d&b records available on Juno.  Juno records is a London based electronic music specialist that’s been around since ’96.  Defiantly one of the biggest record shops that specializes in electronic dance music.  Right now they have about 2700 records in their back catalog.  So I’ll be writing and reviewing for a while.  Additionally, they update their catalog every week, and if you know how quickly singles come out in the d&b world, it’s almost an impossible task to complete the entire catalog.  But it’s my spring board.  I enjoy dubstep and just ‘bass’ music, or what ever you’d like to call all the splinter genres with roots in dub, jungle, what-have-you.  There’s a lot of genre pollination right now, so I feel it’s a good time to spot light some of the newness.  Drum & Bass was the one that got me into electronic dance music, and I’ve been a DJ for about 8 years.  And sometimes I get more than free drinks when I play out!  But it always surprises how other DJs hate on d&b.  Or how people sometimes have no idea how to dance when you’re playing d&b.

So for our benefit I will take stock of what’s good, what’s bad, and what is just plain ugly.  I’ll take 20 singles at a time, basically one page of the back catalog, and muse about what I’ve been know to call “jazz’s redemption from fusion and its natural evolution.”  Pumpkin flavored ale is also a seasonal treat I enjoy.

That’s the impetus.  Basically.  Stay focused on your computer screen.

N