What makes a song feel scary? This week, we welcome podcaster (Horror Movie Night) and musician (Ichabod Crane) Scott Roger to our first ever Halloween episode! Scott guides us through the classic tunes of the spooky season, especially from the teen pop craze of the late-1950’s and early-1960’s. We try to figure out the tropes they used to give a song that macabre flavor, and see if some of those tricks have been brought back from the dead in some modern music. Ooooooh, surf guitar is scaaaaryyyy!
Music heard in this episode: Jim Burgett - “Jekyll and Hyde”, Oingo Boingo - “Dead Man’s Party”, Billy Lee Riley - “Nightmare Mash”, LaVern Baker - “Voodoo Voodoo”, Bert Convy - “The Monsters Hop”, Danny Elfman - “Introduction” of Edward Scissorhands, Danny Elfman - “Theme to Beetlejuice”, Jerry Goldsmith - “The Gremlin Rag”, Léonin - “"Viderunt Omnes (David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London)”, Bohuslav Martinů' - Fantasia for Theremin, Oboe, String Quartet, and Piano (Apollo Chamber Players), Duke Ellington & His Orchestra - “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo”, Squirrel Nut Zippers - “La Grippe”, The Moontrekkers - “Night of the Vampire”, Cris Kevin - “Haunted House”, Jack Marshall - “The Munsters Theme”, Fallout Boy - “Uma Thurman”, Vic Mizzy - “The Addams Family Theme”, Charles Fox - “The Green Slime Theme”, Gerrit Graham - “Life at Last” (from Phantom of the Paradise)”, Dead Man’s Bones - “Buried in Water”, Dean Man’s Bones - “In the Room Where You Sleep”, The Dickies - “Killer Klowns from Outer Space Theme”, Ichabod Crane - “Raining Leaves”
Check out Scott’s retro playlist here, and his full epic Halloween mega-playlist is here.
Send us your thoughts at NeverMusicPod@gmail.com
Nevermind the Music is part of The Lorehounds Network. Join the Nevermind the Music Discord channel by visiting https://discord.gg/xdN4XCdtxU or thelorehounds.com
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
00:00 --> 00:01 [SPEAKER_06]: It's super campy.
00:02 --> 00:05 [SPEAKER_06]: Like it's because it's all very on the nose.
00:05 --> 00:10 [SPEAKER_06]: Like as you said, Jacqueline Hyde is about as deep as you're going to get.
00:10 --> 00:17 [SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I'm racking my brain through all of the songs that I am aware of and I'm thinking, it's probably the only one with a metaphor.
00:18 --> 00:30 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure there's one of your sociological brethren has done a dissertation in the monster mass is actually like about the red scare or something and it's about like censorship in the era of the Cold War.
00:30 --> 00:40 [SPEAKER_06]: That might be a bit of a of a of a of a reach that I don't necessarily agree with because I'm pretty sure that it was just Bobby Bores pick it being like let's make some cash and that's fine.
00:40 --> 00:44 [SPEAKER_01]: But what what is a dissertation a doctor of the dissertation except a bit of a reach.
00:44 --> 00:44 [SPEAKER_01]: Come on.
00:44 --> 00:47 [SPEAKER_01]: That's your big major publication.
00:47 --> 00:48 [SPEAKER_06]: Sure, sure.
00:48 --> 00:49 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm okay with that.
00:49 --> 00:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
01:00 --> 01:01 [SPEAKER_01]: Hi, I'm Mark.
01:08 --> 01:10 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is never mind the music.
01:11 --> 01:12 [SPEAKER_01]: Nicole is not here, everybody.
01:14 --> 01:23 [SPEAKER_01]: I have an awesome guest, and I'll explain Nicole's absence sadly in a moment, but before I just talk to myself into the wide internet.
01:23 --> 01:25 [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome Scott Roger to never mind the music.
01:26 --> 01:27 [SPEAKER_06]: Thank you so much for having me.
01:27 --> 01:28 [SPEAKER_06]: Great to be here.
01:28 --> 01:31 [SPEAKER_06]: I'm sad that Nicole couldn't make it.
01:31 --> 01:36 [SPEAKER_01]: I think Nicole was too scared when she heard some of the music.
01:36 --> 01:38 [SPEAKER_06]: He spoke to you discussion to be had today.
01:38 --> 01:48 [SPEAKER_01]: spooky discussion, and sadly because we are trying to meet a Halloween release deadline, the scheduling suddenly bit us in the rear end.
01:48 --> 01:57 [SPEAKER_01]: And so I am doing first ever a guest conversation without my dear partner in horror, I guess myself.
01:57 --> 01:57 [SPEAKER_01]: So,
01:58 --> 02:02 [SPEAKER_01]: So Nicole's not joining us, but we wanted to with with dedication, continue with the episode.
02:02 --> 02:15 [SPEAKER_01]: So we can get it out because we have an awesome Halloween themed episode and Scott, if folks don't know Scott Roger, you should definitely check out his band, his podcast, guitarist, right?
02:15 --> 02:16 [SPEAKER_01]: Guitarist, you also vocals.
02:17 --> 02:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Guitarist and vocalist, yeah.
02:18 --> 02:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Guitarist and vocalist of the metal band, it's about crane.
02:22 --> 02:23 [SPEAKER_01]: What would you say?
02:24 --> 02:25 [SPEAKER_01]: Death metal?
02:25 --> 02:29 [SPEAKER_06]: Well, we always make the joke that we're not real death metal.
02:29 --> 02:31 [SPEAKER_06]: So I say we're near death metal.
02:31 --> 02:32 [SPEAKER_06]: Near death.
02:32 --> 02:33 [SPEAKER_06]: Uh, love it.
02:33 --> 02:39 [SPEAKER_06]: Because like a lot of people, you know, like death metal people think Campbell Corpse or they think, you know, they have a specific, right.
02:39 --> 02:41 [SPEAKER_06]: When people ask us what we sound like, I say,
02:42 --> 02:46 [SPEAKER_06]: put apigates and juice priest in a blender.
02:46 --> 02:53 [SPEAKER_06]: So, I mean, it's melodic, it's fast, I scream a lot, but I also do falsettos.
02:54 --> 02:57 [SPEAKER_06]: So it's, I might call it an acquired taste for some people.
02:58 --> 03:13 [SPEAKER_01]: but what it tastes, I found myself so I'm not, I listen to some metal, but I'm no if it's you, not, as I'm sure anybody who listens to my podcast probably has a sense based on, you know, we've done Metallica, but we haven't gone, I do enjoy some cannibal corpse, but we're not doing an episode on it.
03:13 --> 03:15 [SPEAKER_06]: I know, I know, no cannibal corpse for you today.
03:15 --> 03:25 [SPEAKER_01]: But there's sort of a switch that I use like is the vocal style tells me whether is this death metal is this black metal and your band is like a little bit hard.
03:25 --> 03:34 [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't fit the label in the classic sense where I could just hear five seconds of vocal and go, oh that's a death metal got a roll like it's a little different so because I'm not good at gutter.
03:36 --> 03:45 [SPEAKER_06]: I've learned to to play to my strengths and my bog which scream is usually where I where I sit.
03:45 --> 03:47 [SPEAKER_06]: I'm not the only vocalist in the band.
03:47 --> 03:51 [SPEAKER_06]: I'm the main vocalist, the guitar player and bass player, other guitar player in the bass player.
03:52 --> 03:57 [SPEAKER_06]: Also do vocals and so we get to do some awesome layering live, which is something that I've always wanted for the band.
03:57 --> 03:58 [SPEAKER_06]: Itch about has been around since 2006.
04:00 --> 04:21 [SPEAKER_06]: And so I started it right out of college, you know, obviously in 20 years plus something like eight years of an active hiatus, you know, I'm the founding member, I'm the only continuous member, but the other guitar player has been, you know, he's he's been with me for most of it and the bass player our current bass player has been.
04:21 --> 04:48 [SPEAKER_06]: the band for a very, very long time and they add like the base player is really good at lows and so we layer that and I think that the other guitar player is very good at mids and so we can get kind of like a cascading style and it also gives me a chance to catch my breath because we play fast and I'm playing pretty intricate guitar work, you know it's harmonized, guitar work and then me screeching like a banjo or top of it and you know it's it's it's a workout
04:48 --> 04:51 [SPEAKER_06]: But I do love, I very much love doing it.
04:52 --> 04:58 [SPEAKER_06]: And all the songs are about monsters or, you know, religious trauma and things like that.
04:58 --> 05:00 [SPEAKER_06]: So it also, it all plays into the Halloween.
05:00 --> 05:01 [SPEAKER_06]: Beard anyway.
05:01 --> 05:02 [SPEAKER_01]: Love it.
05:02 --> 05:04 [SPEAKER_01]: And you also, you all have an EP.
05:04 --> 05:06 [SPEAKER_01]: We'll shout this out again at the end of the episode.
05:06 --> 05:07 [SPEAKER_01]: But it's coming out soon.
05:07 --> 05:08 [SPEAKER_01]: What's the date on that?
05:09 --> 05:20 [SPEAKER_06]: It actually has come out by the time this drops, but it's called Rott Your Teeth, and so it's cover songs that are Halloween or Halloween adjacent.
05:20 --> 05:29 [SPEAKER_06]: So the Goosebumps theme, Fault Children, which is an AFI song, Dream Warriors by Docin, which was featured in Nightmare
05:31 --> 05:34 [SPEAKER_06]: And then the Gremlins theme by Jerry Goldsmith.
05:35 --> 05:44 [SPEAKER_06]: And we also did an original song called Raining Leaves because it's kind of like a joke about Slayer because Slayer's biggest song arguably is Raining Blood.
05:45 --> 05:50 [SPEAKER_06]: And I've wanted to do a song called Raining Leaves for about 12 years, 14 years at this point.
05:50 --> 05:55 [SPEAKER_06]: And to have the song actually live on the internet now is kind of a head trip.
05:56 --> 06:13 [SPEAKER_06]: But yeah, that's, so that's the new, that's the new Ickabadi P. And then the other half of the reason why I think that you entrusted me with coming on your shows because I have been doing or a movie night with Matt Kelly for 11 plus year.
06:13 --> 06:17 [SPEAKER_06]: I think we're in year at 12 now of doing an episode a week.
06:17 --> 06:18 [SPEAKER_06]: Wow.
06:18 --> 06:19 [SPEAKER_06]: Never missed an episode.
06:19 --> 06:20 [SPEAKER_06]: I've missed one episode.
06:21 --> 06:37 [SPEAKER_06]: Matt's never missed an episode and he is such he's so good at scheduling that we I don't think have ever missed a week drop in 12 year 11 and a half years so close to Matt absolutely maniac for the fact that he can get that bad scheduling done
06:38 --> 06:44 [SPEAKER_01]: and he only did one episode without his co-host in those eleven and a half years and I'm only three years in and it's already happened.
06:44 --> 06:44 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh no.
06:45 --> 07:03 [SPEAKER_06]: Well, this the thing is that I understand that we did have a little bit of a time crunch to have a spooky episode scheduled and then get it out within the uh, because you know you got a strike when the iron's hot when it's October because people are into the Christmas spirit as soon as November 1st hits.
07:04 --> 07:19 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is great because obviously we have an expert here because not only do we have and and let me just say like I was going to talk about Halloween episodes in general, but people should check out horror movie night really funny I would say safe to say like most of the stuff you do is
07:20 --> 07:38 [SPEAKER_01]: sort of with with love bad movies like there's a lot of beef films but like some of the ones I've listened to like I love the one how it wasn't that long ago you did orka yeah that was only a couple months ago at this point and Kyle picked it are our third co-hosts and it's one just good but a killer whale but I love that
07:39 --> 07:44 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a really fun and funny episode, but also there's like a heart, like a pathos to it.
07:44 --> 07:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Like there's like an emotionality to your conversation.
07:47 --> 07:50 [SPEAKER_01]: And then because the spoiler, like the killer whale dies at the end, right?
07:50 --> 07:53 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's this sort of like, wow, was he the good guy all along?
07:53 --> 07:54 [SPEAKER_01]: And it should people just check it out.
07:54 --> 07:57 [SPEAKER_01]: I think our network podcast network is the Lorounds.
07:57 --> 08:02 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think we have a lot of horror fans and be movie fans in particular.
08:02 --> 08:04 [SPEAKER_01]: So folks should check you out and check out
08:09 --> 08:11 [SPEAKER_01]: And we wanted to do to that point.
08:12 --> 08:14 [SPEAKER_01]: We wanted to do a Halloween episode in season two.
08:15 --> 08:25 [SPEAKER_01]: And we instead were cowards and we did a holiday in Husek episode, because we were like, I don't know that we can, like, how many times can I talk about Deadman's party or whatever?
08:25 --> 08:27 [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, well, I mean, but you can still talk about Deadman's party.
08:28 --> 08:29 [SPEAKER_06]: Maybe the hell's a great story.
08:29 --> 08:32 [SPEAKER_01]: But what we have is an expert and we have,
08:32 --> 08:48 [SPEAKER_01]: a pretty cool conversation and if I could just oversimplify it, it seems like what we're talking about is what makes a Halloween song a Halloween song and we want to really zoom in especially on some of the stuff the novelty stuff from the
08:49 --> 08:55 [SPEAKER_01]: What is it like, 1957 to 1963, there's this era that sounds about, right?
08:55 --> 08:56 [SPEAKER_01]: The monster mash, right?
08:56 --> 09:02 [SPEAKER_01]: The monster mash being kind of the, I would say the standard bearer of that style.
09:03 --> 09:12 [SPEAKER_01]: And there's a whole lot of it, some of which people who have Halloween playlists know intimately, but a lot of it has been kind of forgotten to history, right?
09:12 --> 09:15 [SPEAKER_01]: But some of these songs were like huge hits, and so yeah, I think
09:16 --> 09:32 [SPEAKER_01]: you were kind enough to create a big playlist of listen to these and so I'm walking around when it's way too dark way too early in October, walking my dog, listening to Halloween music and going like, this stuff is crazy and so what makes this stuff Halloween?
09:32 --> 09:34 [SPEAKER_01]: What makes this stuff spooky?
09:34 --> 09:35 [SPEAKER_01]: What are the musical triggers?
09:36 --> 09:44 [SPEAKER_01]: What will do our best to talk about the psychology of it, though, our fearless leader, Nicole, is not here for us on that conversation.
09:44 --> 09:45 [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, you want to start us off.
09:45 --> 09:46 [SPEAKER_01]: That's our topic today.
09:46 --> 09:47 [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
09:47 --> 09:55 [SPEAKER_06]: So I've really tried very hard to curate a playlist for you guys that was succinct.
09:55 --> 09:59 [SPEAKER_06]: And it was still long because there is so much.
10:00 --> 10:06 [SPEAKER_06]: material that I mean, but it's also because I have, I mean, I, I love Halloween.
10:06 --> 10:07 [SPEAKER_06]: Halloween is my favorite time here.
10:08 --> 10:09 [SPEAKER_06]: And I love 50s music.
10:10 --> 10:16 [SPEAKER_06]: I have a massive playlist of all of this novelty Halloween stuff.
10:16 --> 10:23 [SPEAKER_06]: I mean, and there's stuff that predates, you know, that's the pre world war, too, even that was that is fun, you know, spooky,
10:24 --> 10:31 [SPEAKER_06]: big band stuff or, you know, stuff that you would probably have had to have found through a lot of digging.
10:31 --> 10:41 [SPEAKER_06]: And we won't touch on any of that, we're strictly going to start with, you know, post-World War II, kind of like when teeny-bopper music kind of became a thing.
10:41 --> 10:46 [SPEAKER_06]: So 57 is probably the perfect year to look at that.
10:46 --> 10:53 [SPEAKER_06]: And when teenagers became a concept, you know, like high schoolers became a concept,
10:54 --> 11:14 [SPEAKER_06]: Disposal income and they're buying records and things like that, every musician and a lot of horror movie horror show hosts, like, you know, Boris Bobby Pickett and a lot of the people that were doing things that were monster mash or similar to that where they're using those spooky voice to kind of like,
11:23 --> 11:28 [SPEAKER_06]: There's also a lot of charm to how cheesy it really is.
11:28 --> 11:33 [SPEAKER_06]: Like Monster Mash is so ubiquitous that I don't even listen to it anymore.
11:33 --> 11:44 [SPEAKER_06]: I put it on our shared discussion list because that playlist because it's a great kind of like that common ground for anybody listening as well as you and I discussing, it's everybody knows the Monster Mash.
11:44 --> 11:48 [SPEAKER_06]: Everybody like Americans, I'm guessing, you know, all know the Monster Mash.
11:48 --> 11:49 [SPEAKER_06]: But that's a little bit later.
11:49 --> 11:50 [SPEAKER_06]: That was 62.
11:50 --> 12:09 [SPEAKER_06]: So in 57, we're looking at some of the more proto monster mesh stuff where there's theorem in, I don't know if they're using a waterfall or not, but they're kind of using this spooky voice or they're using this ghostly kind of
12:10 --> 12:20 [SPEAKER_06]: singing style and the with their background singers to talk about, you know, ghost and goblins or, you know, the universal monsters.
12:20 --> 12:26 [SPEAKER_06]: And I really, I have a quite exhaustive list of stuff.
12:26 --> 12:28 [SPEAKER_06]: And there was literally any movie you can think of.
12:28 --> 12:33 [SPEAKER_06]: There was either a tie in song or there was a song that was kind of like talking about that movie.
12:33 --> 12:33 [SPEAKER_06]: It's a
12:34 --> 12:35 [SPEAKER_06]: hilarious.
12:35 --> 12:49 [SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I think that, you know, drive in movies, teenagers going to drive in movies, and all, and having that, you know, post-World War II money, you know, that's really, what led to both the popular times.
12:49 --> 12:59 [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, yeah, these teenagers, the first time a teenager was a a term, and this, this population had disposable income, and free time, and
13:01 --> 13:30 [SPEAKER_06]: They liked going to be scared at the theater or at the drive-in, and you know, there are songs about There was a song I don't think I put it on the list, but it's talking about This guy singing about how he has a girlfriend and she only wants to go watch scary movies and It's hilarious because he's saying like Blood is the only thing that wants to like hug me, you know, and like I have to to
13:31 --> 13:38 [SPEAKER_06]: try and woo her away from the monster or the killer on the screen, I love it, it's just so charming.
13:38 --> 13:44 [SPEAKER_06]: But if we're talking about, you know, there are two sides to the discussion here, it's lyrically.
13:44 --> 13:48 [SPEAKER_06]: And I think the lyrical discussion is really simple and easy.
13:48 --> 13:48 [SPEAKER_06]: I think that it's...
13:49 --> 13:51 [SPEAKER_06]: because they just talk about spooky stuff.
13:51 --> 13:56 [SPEAKER_06]: But the more interesting part, I think is what makes something sound spooky.
13:56 --> 14:10 [SPEAKER_06]: And I think so much of that is the vocal attack and the the instrumentation and the vocal presentation of the lead vocalists as well as if not more so the background singers.
14:10 --> 14:13 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I think we got to get into to all that.
14:13 --> 14:16 [SPEAKER_01]: I should say like that playlist.
14:16 --> 14:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Is that something we can share?
14:18 --> 14:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, put that in our, now we could do the playlist that you share with Nicole and I, but as your massive Halloween playlist, something that we could add to them, so she would have like said it too.
14:28 --> 14:29 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Emily.
14:29 --> 14:30 [SPEAKER_01]: It's like hours long.
14:30 --> 14:31 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh man.
14:31 --> 14:32 [SPEAKER_01]: But people are,
14:33 --> 14:35 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, this comes out just before Halloween.
14:35 --> 14:36 [SPEAKER_01]: People have parties this weekend.
14:36 --> 14:40 [SPEAKER_01]: They're going to need to I mean, I think people might get a little sick of it.
14:40 --> 14:43 [SPEAKER_06]: Because they're going to want to hear thriller and thrillers not on it.
14:43 --> 14:45 [SPEAKER_06]: And they're going to want to hear something that are not on it.
14:46 --> 14:48 [SPEAKER_01]: And even if thriller was on it, there's 1100 other songs.
14:48 --> 14:50 [SPEAKER_01]: And so you're going to have to wait three days to hear it.
14:50 --> 14:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
14:50 --> 14:51 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
14:51 --> 14:54 [SPEAKER_01]: The one, whatever you want to do, I can put the shorter one.
14:54 --> 14:56 [SPEAKER_01]: And the shorter one is really mostly
14:57 --> 15:01 [SPEAKER_01]: this era that we're talking about, yes, a couple later ones that we can get to.
15:01 --> 15:07 [SPEAKER_06]: And it tries to, and I tried to do it like semi chronologically, at least like in eras, like the 50, 60 share.
15:08 --> 15:16 [SPEAKER_06]: And then we, I think there's a little mid late 70s and then touched on a tiny bit of 80s and then what we're going to end with a couple modern things.
15:16 --> 15:19 [SPEAKER_01]: So, I think it really is interesting.
15:19 --> 15:43 [SPEAKER_01]: We haven't talked about this on the podcast before, but this idea of the invention of the teenager, and that it's this novelty music all being wrapped up in sort of the commercialization boom associated with teens in the 50s, which is a fascinating thing that also is understandably linked to the rise of rock and roll at all, right, and like it's transition from what would have just been R&B to this car culture,
15:44 --> 16:08 [SPEAKER_01]: people playing music on the radio while driving and it happened to be this new style of music that mom and dad hated and yeah I never really thought of because the monster mash and all this stuff like I'm learning as a little kid in the 80s right and then the 90s and I'm not really processing yet that there would be a little kid or a 13 year old in 1962 or whatever that was actually
16:11 --> 16:33 [SPEAKER_01]: I never really thought like who a song that came out when my parents were little kids like to process like oh wait, that was actually for them back then yeah, I mean how many of these do you know just like chart wise obviously I assume monster mass was a huge hit I didn't do any research on that I mean like somebody I know that was popular right was pop I mean like a lot of these were popular, but I think that they were popular
16:35 --> 16:50 [SPEAKER_06]: they were cash grabs at the end of the day you know like they're like oh let's have this song come out you know in September capitalized on on Halloween time and then you know move on and with you know it's it's also an interesting concept about like disposable music
16:51 --> 16:54 [SPEAKER_06]: Um, which I think that I'm getting a lot more in the weeds.
16:54 --> 16:57 [SPEAKER_06]: I mean, like I have a sociology background.
16:57 --> 17:09 [SPEAKER_06]: Uh, so I'm I'm probably steering this a little bit too far into the sociological aspect of this and not the musical aspect because, um, I'm trying to discuss.
17:10 --> 17:32 [SPEAKER_06]: why I'm trying to just set the stage of why we had this like boom, but I think that they all share this common DNA of let's hit all these tropes in two and a half minutes and you know it was for sock hop or whatever you know those those cultural those those middle America
17:40 --> 17:44 [SPEAKER_06]: making so many points about that culture.
17:45 --> 17:48 [SPEAKER_06]: And you and I are the same relatively same age I'd say.
17:48 --> 17:54 [SPEAKER_06]: So our parents were probably baby boomers, and then we were grown up in the 80s.
17:55 --> 18:04 [SPEAKER_06]: And so the idea of stock hops and drive-ins and car culture and all this stuff, like that was what they grew up with, and then it,
18:04 --> 18:14 [SPEAKER_06]: as parents, like it had a resurgence in the 80s, because of, you know, they were in charge and they were feeling nostalgic and boom, it comes back.
18:14 --> 18:23 [SPEAKER_06]: I mean, like, I remember going to sock hops when I was a kid, too, because it was like, in their stinky, like, I remember feeling like, oh, I don't actually really like a sock hop because everybody's feet smell.
18:24 --> 18:29 [SPEAKER_06]: But these were all things, and that they were doing, and just, I liked what
18:33 --> 18:50 [SPEAKER_06]: they were having a Halloween party at like the gymnasium, you know, and, and they would put on monster master they'd put on, you know, I don't know, strippin' some spiders or, you know, um, she's my witch by Kip Tyler, you know, all these songs that...
18:51 --> 19:17 [SPEAKER_06]: People that are, especially people that are in like the rockability culture are more aware of, but because there are full compilations like when you post a show notes and you see the extensive playlist, there's going to be, there are entire compilations that are on this playlist because people went and they found the 45s that were, you know, just the A side B side that had probably the spooky song
19:22 --> 19:27 [SPEAKER_06]: old lost media at this point until YouTube came along and then people made these compilations.
19:28 --> 19:42 [SPEAKER_06]: But yes, there's a lot to it where, in my opinion, where people wanted to feel, so in the, in the 50s, people wanted to feel slightly scared, or slightly, they wanted to get in the mood of the season.
19:43 --> 19:44 [SPEAKER_06]: And so these
19:45 --> 19:54 [SPEAKER_06]: audio cues, um, and like wind blowing in the background or crow's calling, you know, those come up a lot as well.
19:54 --> 20:00 [SPEAKER_06]: And it's it's because they're setting this like a sound atmosphere for something like a hop.
20:01 --> 20:18 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, so we're still in the kind of universal monsters face to pressure right like I know that been going on, but we're still doing that stuff where you're going to that you're watching where will movies or whatever it would have been the seven version of Frankenstein.
20:18 --> 20:19 [SPEAKER_06]: When we say like
20:22 --> 20:47 [SPEAKER_06]: I may be I'm getting two in the weeds because of my own podcast, but what we mean here is like you know the wolf man Frank size monster Dracula mummy and then probably there's going to be aliens because a lot of like that post World War II stuff is like you know they're going to talk about aliens and you know invaders from Mars and things like that but if you think about a drive in movie a driving monster movie black and white
20:48 --> 21:12 [SPEAKER_01]: there's a song about it and they there are multiple songs about it and the or they'll be songs that are talking about all of them like the monster mash right so like send some of these guys like you mentioned Bobby Boris pick it of course monster mass like he was was he an actor whatever because like what's his name the guy who did mad witch Dave Gardner right what is like a full-on stand-up comedian like some of these guys it was a passion of like
21:16 --> 21:33 [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, and that's what I'm saying about like the financial side of it is very funny to consider as like adult in, you know, 2026, but you know, they or they were TV personalities, you know, like the empire was a thing before Elvira, but that you know that as soon as there was television.
21:34 --> 21:38 [SPEAKER_06]: And there was the ability to put on a late night movie show.
21:39 --> 21:40 [SPEAKER_06]: There were late night movie show hosts.
21:40 --> 21:43 [SPEAKER_06]: And I believe the Bobby Boris pick it was a movie show host.
21:44 --> 21:48 [SPEAKER_06]: But there are other people like, I mean, I'm from Northeast Ohio.
21:48 --> 21:50 [SPEAKER_06]: Goularty was the big one here.
21:51 --> 21:53 [SPEAKER_06]: And so he had like, you know, he would wear.
21:53 --> 21:58 [SPEAKER_06]: He had his hair slipped back and he had like a go-t. That was very pointy kind of like.
21:58 --> 22:00 [SPEAKER_06]: And so he had this almost.
22:00 --> 22:10 [SPEAKER_06]: devilish luck to him and I believe if if Google already didn't have a song to go along with his late night TV show I I would be just doing it wrong.
22:11 --> 22:28 [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, but the a lot of them were either comedians or like I show hosts and they would do this because it was like they had notoriety for being you know horror Jason or or or the stuff like that and so they're like well, that's
22:29 --> 22:30 [SPEAKER_06]: is good cash.
22:31 --> 22:34 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like if Elvira and the 70s did like a disco record or something.
22:34 --> 22:36 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, like just don't capitalize.
22:36 --> 22:37 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm probably good.
22:38 --> 22:39 [SPEAKER_01]: But wow, that's a trip.
23:01 --> 23:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you mentioned like, lyrically, they're all pretty straight for it.
23:06 --> 23:09 [SPEAKER_01]: I think I detected one metaphor in listening to your playlist.
23:09 --> 23:14 [SPEAKER_01]: The song, Jim Berget, Jekyll and Hyde, which is named Jekyll and Hyde, like, so good.
23:22 --> 23:36 [SPEAKER_05]: Hey, well I look like a long time ago, I guess I ain't too A personality, a split set in two Check all it out, can't check all it out I guess I'm just a jack-o-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l
23:39 --> 23:42 [SPEAKER_01]: I listen to that and I'm like, oh no, this is just about a guy like talking about that.
23:42 --> 23:44 [SPEAKER_01]: He's just a bad guy, right?
23:44 --> 23:45 [SPEAKER_01]: He's not a good.
23:45 --> 23:46 [SPEAKER_01]: He's kind of a player.
23:46 --> 23:46 [SPEAKER_01]: Boyfriend.
23:46 --> 23:47 [SPEAKER_01]: He's a player.
23:47 --> 23:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
23:47 --> 23:49 [SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, oh, clever boy.
23:49 --> 23:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Because I'll tell you a lot of the other ones, like, no, I think they're actually talking about a vampire or they're actually talking about a witch.
23:55 --> 23:57 [SPEAKER_01]: Whereas he's maybe is not talking about.
23:58 --> 24:02 [SPEAKER_01]: actual jekyll and hide, but there's not as much nuance right, lyrically.
24:02 --> 24:02 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
24:02 --> 24:13 [SPEAKER_01]: But it's interesting though because they're all, you know, when you get to the 80s and 90s, you're going to have, I feel like, and you're going to be way more of an expert on this.
24:14 --> 24:15 [SPEAKER_01]: than I am.
24:15 --> 24:20 [SPEAKER_01]: But you've got artists going more deep for their references or at least obscuring them a little bit.
24:20 --> 24:29 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, if you've got a reference to a literary work, they may not just literally name, I mean, sure there's for whom the bell tolls or whatever, though, that's not horror.
24:29 --> 24:38 [SPEAKER_01]: But like, you have an artist just sort of using the occult imagery, whether it's slayer, or whether it's some of the occult stuff imagery that Black Sabbath was using.
24:38 --> 24:39 [SPEAKER_01]: They're not like,
24:39 --> 24:52 [SPEAKER_01]: necessarily, or even Reannon, but I feel it would match like it is this Welsh witch, but she's not like spelling out the narrative and it's not, she's not talking about something we've all heard of, necessarily you have to work with.
24:52 --> 24:56 [SPEAKER_06]: I will say Reannon, that's, that's some, that's based on a book that was popular at the time.
24:57 --> 24:59 [SPEAKER_01]: So I do think that was kind of in that case.
24:59 --> 25:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Wow, so that's like her doing a credit song for the movie, except it's a song for a book.
25:06 --> 25:12 [SPEAKER_01]: So like, maybe it's not universally true, but it does feel like there's a more obvious.
25:13 --> 25:37 [SPEAKER_01]: surface level and maybe it's because you're talking to teenagers, although I don't know the metal artists of the 80s are probably marketed to teenagers too, but there's something about the 70s and the 80s leading up more modern, whether there's less obvious, you know, and maybe it just might be that like the reference to your parents, it would feel too much like your parents, all the way music, and so you can't do that.
25:37 --> 25:40 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, and there's exceptions to that.
25:40 --> 25:41 [SPEAKER_01]: I mentioned dead man's party.
25:41 --> 25:48 [SPEAKER_01]: There are some 80s Halloween songs that are pretty that's of course Oh and go bull and go and maybe some of them will come up later
26:08 --> 26:13 [SPEAKER_05]: Let me go, I'm not here to talk Need for a bite and so
26:15 --> 26:35 [SPEAKER_06]: Well, Ongo Bongo and any Alphan specifically, I think that so much of what they were doing is almost pastiche, like 60s pastiche, because the cult of Ongo Bongo was kind of like a, it was beyond a musical group.
26:35 --> 26:39 [SPEAKER_06]: It was like kind of a, it's like nights of Ongo Bongo.
26:39 --> 26:41 [SPEAKER_01]: I think they were called, yeah, and they were just like,
26:41 --> 26:43 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I lived in LA for a decade, right?
26:43 --> 26:45 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's where they were from.
26:45 --> 26:56 [SPEAKER_01]: And people that I went to grad school with who were a few years old who would just talk about like, you'd be at some house party and there would be this experimental theater group there with instruments and it was only go by and go.
26:56 --> 26:58 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is like in probably 1980 or something like that.
26:59 --> 27:01 [SPEAKER_01]: And then, of course, they turned into a band.
27:01 --> 27:02 [SPEAKER_01]: But, yeah, so I think...
27:03 --> 27:21 [SPEAKER_06]: there might be more almost camp associated with that which isn't representative of what death metal bands were doing or some of the absolutely not they take away too seriously but the the the funny thing is is that if you're looking at the through line of 50s and 60s novelty Halloween music
27:22 --> 27:32 [SPEAKER_06]: it's super campy like it's because it's all very on the nose like as you said Jacqueline Hyde is about as deep as you're gonna get.
27:33 --> 27:40 [SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I'm racking my brain through all of the songs that I am aware of and I'm thinking it's probably the only one with a metaphor.
27:41 --> 27:53 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure there's one of your sociological brethren has done a dissertation in the monster mass is actually like about the red scare or something and it's about like censorship in the era of the Cold War.
27:53 --> 28:02 [SPEAKER_06]: That might be a bit of a of a of a of a reach that I don't necessarily agree with because I'm pretty sure that it was just Bobby Bores pick it being like let's make some cash and that's fine.
28:03 --> 28:07 [SPEAKER_01]: But what what is a dissertation a doctor of the dissertation except a bit of a reach.
28:07 --> 28:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Come on.
28:07 --> 28:09 [SPEAKER_01]: That's your big major publication.
28:09 --> 28:10 [SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
28:10 --> 28:11 [SPEAKER_06]: I'm okay with that.
28:11 --> 28:12 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
28:12 --> 28:29 [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I mean, is it is it worth diving in now to some of those please use a call like obviously there's the I was working in the lab later like the monster mass is pretty ubiquitous, but some of these have other and all drop in some samples of it, but like
28:30 --> 28:41 [SPEAKER_01]: Billy Lee Riley is like, oh, it's the monster mash except the guys doing that kind of scratching bluesy kind of goofy voice and then when you listen to that guy's actual disrockabilly songs, he's also doing that.
28:58 --> 29:02 [SPEAKER_04]: I was sweating at the pool, yeah I was kicking at the pool
29:04 --> 29:09 [SPEAKER_01]: And so we just sort of leveraged his skill set to make it sound like a goblin or something like that.
29:09 --> 29:29 [SPEAKER_01]: So I mean, how universal no pun intended is the weird voice in these songs because some of them have like crunars not to interrupt you, but like some of them like I'm trying to remember like jimberg at that jackland hide song he's a little more just like singing right, but how often do you hear on the lead vocalist?
29:29 --> 29:33 [SPEAKER_01]: the goofy or creepy theatrical voice.
29:33 --> 29:36 [SPEAKER_06]: I feel like it's 30, 70, honestly.
29:37 --> 29:42 [SPEAKER_06]: You know, like I feel like they're the really obvious goofy voice.
29:42 --> 29:44 [SPEAKER_06]: Those were people that couldn't really sing.
29:44 --> 29:46 [SPEAKER_06]: You know, they were like, you know,
29:46 --> 29:50 [SPEAKER_06]: Well, think about my fair lady, Rex Harrison, right?
29:50 --> 29:54 [SPEAKER_06]: He's the doctor and he can't really sing.
29:54 --> 29:56 [SPEAKER_06]: So they have him sing, toxing.
29:57 --> 29:59 [SPEAKER_06]: And it works for his character.
29:59 --> 30:03 [SPEAKER_01]: And so this is gonna be mad to not be here because I haven't seen that.
30:04 --> 30:05 [SPEAKER_01]: And I haven't seen my fair lady.
30:05 --> 30:08 [SPEAKER_01]: Promise you, she has seen it multiple times.
30:08 --> 30:10 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, she has more of a great film.
30:10 --> 30:10 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no.
30:10 --> 30:13 [SPEAKER_01]: I heard people in my family love that.
30:13 --> 30:14 [SPEAKER_01]: And I just somehow it's one of those.
30:15 --> 30:29 [SPEAKER_06]: Well, you know what I'm talking about because of the fact that it's like this idea of kind of speaking with the lilt in in time to a song and Brextona is that what the Germans would call it, but that's all right.
30:29 --> 30:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's a music like a historical term, but
30:34 --> 30:34 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, totally.
30:35 --> 30:37 [SPEAKER_01]: And you do that to suit your performer, right?
30:37 --> 30:38 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
30:38 --> 30:38 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
30:38 --> 30:42 [SPEAKER_06]: But there were people like you're saying there are people that were actual singers.
30:42 --> 30:50 [SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I honestly think the Dave Gardner was that's a really great voice for in Mad Witch because I think that he is playing within his range.
30:50 --> 30:52 [SPEAKER_01]: Kind of a country vibe a little bit too.
30:52 --> 30:52 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
30:52 --> 30:55 [SPEAKER_06]: That's definitely like a spooky like a murder ballot almost.
30:55 --> 30:56 [SPEAKER_06]: I mean, it's about a witch.
30:57 --> 31:01 [SPEAKER_06]: But it's also kind of about a woman treating you badly.
31:01 --> 31:02 [SPEAKER_06]: So it does have a bit of a metaphor.
31:04 --> 31:16 [SPEAKER_07]: But Laverne Baker, I didn't put this on the shortened list, but she has a song called Voodoo Voodoo, an amazing blues singer from that era, and she's just belting.
31:45 --> 31:47 [SPEAKER_06]: And there are a lot of people that we're doing that.
31:47 --> 31:50 [SPEAKER_06]: And so I think that maybe in the wider
31:51 --> 31:56 [SPEAKER_06]: kind of population of this material, you'll get a lot of that.
31:56 --> 31:59 [SPEAKER_06]: And it's people that were established singers.
31:59 --> 32:07 [SPEAKER_06]: And then I don't know if it was like, they were doing a lot of ANR and their agent was like, maybe you should do this song that we have.
32:08 --> 32:18 [SPEAKER_06]: in the playbook, in the songbook rather, that we'll gain you some cash and attention during the spooky season.
32:19 --> 32:22 [SPEAKER_06]: And I honestly have no problem with that because everybody does it.
32:22 --> 32:23 [SPEAKER_06]: People do it now, you know?
32:24 --> 32:25 [SPEAKER_06]: I just did it.
32:25 --> 32:27 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we're doing a Halloween episode.
32:27 --> 32:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, everybody knows it.
32:29 --> 32:30 [SPEAKER_06]: Get that.
32:30 --> 32:30 [SPEAKER_06]: Get that.
32:30 --> 32:31 [SPEAKER_01]: Get that bag.
32:31 --> 32:32 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
32:32 --> 32:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Because Halloween's fun.
32:34 --> 32:35 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's just like who is caching in, right?
32:35 --> 32:43 [SPEAKER_01]: If it's a comedian, although Dave Gardner was a comedian who also had a good voice, but if it's an actor or comedian who isn't, do this spooky voice.
32:43 --> 32:49 [SPEAKER_01]: If you happen to be a killer rockabilly singer or a blue singer, just do your own style and just.
32:50 --> 32:54 [SPEAKER_01]: capitalized on some goofy lyrics or some of these other musical elements, right?
32:54 --> 32:58 [SPEAKER_01]: That you already mentioned the back and the vocal thing.
32:58 --> 33:06 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think I think like the monster mash sort of is separate because the backing vocals there are just sort of dooppy, right?
33:06 --> 33:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's nothing to do about dooppy backup vocals that you'll hear too, but that's not really getting at.
33:11 --> 33:16 [SPEAKER_01]: I think what you're getting at is like in that Bert convi tune, the
33:19 --> 33:25 [SPEAKER_05]: That's why these, these, the best square flyin' and the boom was fun.
33:25 --> 33:28 [SPEAKER_05]: The crazy witch Doctor was nonson with a ghoul.
33:29 --> 33:32 [SPEAKER_05]: The old gun was playing, but no one was there.
33:32 --> 33:36 [SPEAKER_05]: And the headless horseman was common as hair.
33:36 --> 33:37 [SPEAKER_05]: There was Frankenstein.
33:37 --> 33:50 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, and I trace this line, if I could go out of, out of turn a little bit and fast forward, I trace this back to Danny Elfman all the way to like Beetlejuice or even, okay, Edward Scissor Hands.
33:50 --> 34:02 [SPEAKER_01]: I know that's maybe more Christmasy, but that's the whole Timber's deal is like it's Christmas mixes with Halloween and all pipe it in, but there's the really spooky introductory music to Edward Scissor Hands,
34:05 --> 34:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, 1990, which has the Chalesta, this like soft, chimie keyboard instrument, and then these beautiful, but very kind of mysterious
34:37 --> 34:43 [SPEAKER_01]: And then, Beetlejuice theme, but specifically, you hear it in the animated version.
34:43 --> 34:43 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
34:43 --> 34:44 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
34:44 --> 34:45 [SPEAKER_01]: Anybody watching me?
34:45 --> 34:45 [SPEAKER_06]: It is shows.
34:45 --> 34:47 [SPEAKER_06]: Oh, I love the Beetlejuice.
34:47 --> 34:47 [SPEAKER_01]: It's first of all.
34:47 --> 34:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Beetlejuice, probably too young when I saw it, because I saw it when it came out.
34:50 --> 34:52 [SPEAKER_01]: And I was probably like five or something.
34:53 --> 34:59 [SPEAKER_01]: And that had an animated version of the show that I watched every Saturday morning or whatever.
34:59 --> 35:04 [SPEAKER_01]: And that had like a kind of a weird thing, all pipe it in later.
35:07 --> 35:09 [UNKNOWN]: Thank you for watching!
35:28 --> 35:31 [SPEAKER_01]: Even you mentioned Gremlins and I hadn't thought of Gremlins, but Gremlins is like a...
35:32 --> 35:32 [SPEAKER_01]: It's coming.
35:32 --> 35:34 [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
35:35 --> 35:37 [SPEAKER_01]: There's like something about- There's vocals in that too.
35:54 --> 36:15 [SPEAKER_01]: either hunting high ooze or like neiner neiner neiner kind of la la la that are like chanting and childlike in a disturbing way am i picking up on the back of local cues you're talking about absolutely yeah yeah i think that's so much of it is supposed to sound kind of ghostly or spooky in that way uh... inferior but
36:24 --> 36:34 [SPEAKER_01]: I think I have a theory, and tell me if this is crazy, and I think this is going to connect into a grand unified theory, and maybe a of course, I think it sounds old world.
36:35 --> 36:39 [SPEAKER_01]: There's something scary about a European Catholic church at night.
36:40 --> 36:41 [SPEAKER_01]: Like think about that.
36:41 --> 36:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Like there's something about like a church that's a thousand years old and there's sculptures on the wall and it's candle lit and you're like this is supposed to be a place of safety, but there's something at least in the American psyche that makes me feel like I'm in a Gothic horror film right sure.
36:57 --> 37:19 [SPEAKER_01]: And so there's something about a wordless solo or single line with multiple singers choir sound then feels almost medieval and maybe I'll type in some like you know late Renaissance or medieval like a motet or organoom or something and I'll shout out what it is in the show notes if I find something good but
37:36 --> 38:01 [SPEAKER_01]: something about this old religious music is kind of spooky sounding to a modern ear and I don't know if that's because of what we're talking about that then you and I are programmed to think old booze and Oz or spooky because of TV shows or if actually that's just a thread that has been going on because it's so we associate it with like old Europe and darkness and time when
38:01 --> 38:05 [SPEAKER_01]: when the religion felt a little more real because it was projecting you from something evil.
38:06 --> 38:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Like I don't know, like that's my the step one of my grand unified theory of why that's gonna add a little a little sprinkle to it because I am fully in agreement.
38:15 --> 38:17 [SPEAKER_06]: I think that the ghostly ooze,
38:18 --> 38:29 [SPEAKER_06]: can be traced back even further to the idea of like in old if we're talking about European kind of this this etherealness supernatural sound.
38:29 --> 38:39 [SPEAKER_06]: If you are living on the edge of like the black forest and the wind blows through the trees, it's gonna sound like ghostly whispers and
38:43 --> 39:05 [SPEAKER_06]: and sound like a ghostly choir and so I think that you're absolutely right and I think that I think that we're looking at it through multiple crystallizations of you know it's getting more and more solidified as you know like pop music takes it on but you know if we go back 50 years
39:06 --> 39:16 [SPEAKER_06]: or we go back 70 years to when when, you know, that these songs were brand new, you know, were we're looking back at music that's like 70 years.
39:17 --> 39:27 [SPEAKER_06]: If we look back 70 years before that, and then 70 years before that, I think that this, it's going to be like the same kind of fear of the unknown because we can't see, well, humans can't see, well, I'm the dark.
39:28 --> 39:36 [SPEAKER_06]: And we have always been afraid of the what was at night, I'd say, because that's an unsafe place for a human.
39:36 --> 39:47 [SPEAKER_06]: And so if you go back 70 years, 100 years, 200 years, 500 years, 1000 years, it's going to be ingrained in the human psyche to kind of fear that unknown.
39:47 --> 39:50 [SPEAKER_06]: And that sound is like, what is that sound?
39:51 --> 39:52 [SPEAKER_06]: Is that a human sound?
39:52 --> 39:56 [SPEAKER_06]: And if that's a human sound, why is that sound coming from a place that humans are not supposed to be in?
39:57 --> 40:05 [SPEAKER_01]: totally like you mentioned the wind and a bit ago you mentioned the ferraman and there's something of the ferraman.
40:06 --> 40:14 [SPEAKER_01]: Now the ferraman though, parenthetically, is kind of weird because the ferraman, by the way, focuses essentially the first electronic instrument, it's the woohoo!
40:15 --> 40:20 [SPEAKER_01]: sort of sounds like a musical saws, the other thing, and the on-demarternos is another early synthesizer.
40:20 --> 40:29 [SPEAKER_01]: These are analog instruments, not keyboards, but the theorem and you literally move your hand closer to like a magnetic field and adjust the pitch.
40:29 --> 40:32 [SPEAKER_01]: And so it has the slidiness sliding around kind of characteristic.
40:32 --> 40:36 [SPEAKER_01]: That is sort of maybe triggers the uncanny
41:08 --> 41:11 [SPEAKER_01]: But not, it's unreal, it doesn't quite sound human.
41:11 --> 41:18 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think we don't need to get deep into it, but that also gives it a role in earlier generations and sci-fi, right?
41:18 --> 41:24 [SPEAKER_01]: Because it sounds like aliens, like it's not human, but sounds like technology, but also sounds like a person.
41:24 --> 41:25 [SPEAKER_01]: And so, yeah.
41:26 --> 41:28 [SPEAKER_01]: But also you're mentioning that now, it sounds like wind.
41:28 --> 41:31 [SPEAKER_01]: There's something like a high-fairing-minute note is like,
41:31 --> 41:51 [SPEAKER_06]: wind plus soprano plus alien technology all in one sound yeah but it just doesn't feel safe right we like to feel unsafe around Halloween because it's it's it's funny because like you know Halloween was you know a pagan Irish cultural like a like a harvest festival and you know um it got
41:52 --> 42:12 [SPEAKER_06]: consumed by Christianity with all Saints Day, but I think that humans live in a most most people in like the first world are going to live in a relatively safe society where the desire to feel a little spooked is fun.
42:12 --> 42:13 [SPEAKER_06]: It's the way to
42:14 --> 42:31 [SPEAKER_06]: Raise your blood pressure and get a little bit of endorphin rush without actually being in a dangerous situation and I think that's what so many people like and I think that this is just micro dosing that like the spooky song is like micro dosing the concept of being spooked
42:32 --> 42:50 [SPEAKER_01]: This is where somebody who actually is an expert in the sort of research side of pop culture could tell us like I wonder in times of war and distress like does the desire for the population that is not fighting the war so this is I'm not talking about you.
42:51 --> 43:07 [SPEAKER_01]: your country's being bombed because that's different, but if you're your soldiers are off at war and it's a major war, is that more associated and so like the desire for spooky entertainment goes down or do the people at home feel like they have to participate in that adrenaline rush.
43:07 --> 43:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Like I wonder like
43:09 --> 43:10 [SPEAKER_01]: World War II.
43:11 --> 43:17 [SPEAKER_01]: There was I'm sure economic consequences to that that maybe would have affected, but was there a desire for the people stuck at home to be scared?
43:17 --> 43:22 [SPEAKER_01]: And so they were watching more universal monster movies, or is it more like actually get this out of me?
43:23 --> 43:26 [SPEAKER_01]: I do not want to be any around death and violence in the cinema.
43:26 --> 43:29 [SPEAKER_01]: And then again, we can look in Vietnam like because the eighties.
43:30 --> 43:33 [SPEAKER_01]: And the 60s, relatively speaking, had less war.
43:33 --> 43:36 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we've got Korean war coming out in the 50s and all that.
43:36 --> 43:39 [SPEAKER_01]: But until Vietnam starts, right?
43:40 --> 43:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe this era, there wasn't really a war.
43:42 --> 43:50 [SPEAKER_01]: And then the 80s, at least in the United States, felt relatively speaking, like, you know, a cold war was all that was active, right?
43:50 --> 43:54 [SPEAKER_01]: Plus some stuff that people would be brushing under the rug that was obviously happening, too.
43:54 --> 43:58 [SPEAKER_01]: But I don't know if I'm off base here, but I would be curious to see, like, what?
43:59 --> 44:08 [SPEAKER_01]: is there a chart, a rise and fall based on how much of that adrenaline or even murder rates or things that are actually causing that distress to happen naturally.
44:08 --> 44:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Put it that way.
44:09 --> 44:10 [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, yeah.
44:28 --> 44:31 [SPEAKER_01]: I also pick up on a lot of minor key.
44:31 --> 44:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Of course.
44:33 --> 44:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Probably shouldn't be surprising.
44:35 --> 44:36 [SPEAKER_01]: And...
44:37 --> 45:01 [SPEAKER_01]: I think it is worth mentioning though that a lot of this music comes in a musical context of pop music that was relatively rock and roll based, which means at the time relatively blues based, which tend to be major key songs that doesn't mean universal, it's universally true that they're in major key and blues music is not like vanilla major key, it's got a lot of
45:02 --> 45:17 [SPEAKER_01]: you know, we've talked in our weasel episode two seasons ago about blue notes and stuff, but there is something when you have just like the weight of a full minor key that maybe would stand out on the radio when everything else was a bunch of 12 bar blues or things that were a little more bright.
45:17 --> 45:20 [SPEAKER_01]: So I don't know though, it's that sort of surface level, right?
45:20 --> 45:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Minor key, kind of the easy.
45:22 --> 45:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
45:22 --> 45:23 [SPEAKER_01]: It's obvious for sure.
45:23 --> 45:25 [SPEAKER_01]: It's all, well, a lot of it's minor key.
45:25 --> 45:32 [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, or it'll be, you know, some sort of more exotic scale, you know?
45:32 --> 45:34 [SPEAKER_01]: Monster Mashes major, I'm pretty sure though.
45:34 --> 45:35 [SPEAKER_06]: It really caught correctly.
45:35 --> 45:35 [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
45:36 --> 45:43 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's like some of these, especially the country adjacent ones, you mentioned Mervellants, I think that fits that mold really well.
45:43 --> 45:46 [SPEAKER_01]: But as in that, like, what are their other tricks?
45:46 --> 45:52 [SPEAKER_01]: Because I have some questions for ones that confuse me, but like, do you, what are the other traits that pop in?
45:55 --> 45:57 [SPEAKER_01]: cackling and wind and water.
45:57 --> 46:11 [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, the cackling knows you like they'll do monster sounds, but that's I feel like that's all novelty, you know, and it's it's it's it's it's super Expected but I think that those are the main aspects
46:11 --> 46:39 [SPEAKER_06]: we don't have to delve too deep in because this is like beyond those things because this was for the masses this was for you know mass consumption so they they had to kind of beat you over the head with with the lyrical content being spooky and the the audio you know the audio side of the the musical side of it being pretty obviously spooky in its own right right being in minor and having those ghostly sounds to it
46:40 --> 46:45 [SPEAKER_01]: So like the only other thing in this goes to my Grand Unified Theory of the whole world, right?
46:45 --> 46:46 [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of umpa baseline.
46:46 --> 47:00 [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of umging, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh uh, uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh
47:01 --> 47:04 [SPEAKER_01]: you know in a the streets of Paris a hundred years ago or something.
47:04 --> 47:10 [SPEAKER_01]: There's something about especially the country adjacent songs that country has that bomb bomb bomb.
47:10 --> 47:12 [SPEAKER_01]: But that gets like pulled out.
47:12 --> 47:18 [SPEAKER_01]: So when we heard like or when we talked about Mad Witch by Dave Gardner, that's got the Umpah baseline.
47:19 --> 47:23 [SPEAKER_01]: The Beetlejuice theme I mentioned has a bomb bomb bomb bomb.
47:23 --> 47:25 [SPEAKER_01]: That I think it's just
47:26 --> 47:45 [SPEAKER_01]: old folk music calling that to mind feels like you're not going to have we're talking about the the 50s or the 60s if you have like a shovel do do do do do do do do do do do do like a boogie wookie base or a in the 80s like a a new wave pop or synth bass sort of
47:46 --> 47:49 [SPEAKER_01]: FM synth baseline sound in the 80s.
47:49 --> 47:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Those things feel too modern.
47:50 --> 47:54 [SPEAKER_01]: They feel too contemporary and safe for the current climate.
47:55 --> 48:07 [SPEAKER_01]: And so there's like an idea of going back to something older, whether it's an American folk reference like a country baseline, or I'm thinking almost like a central or eastern European kind of.
48:07 --> 48:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
48:07 --> 48:08 [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
48:08 --> 48:11 [SPEAKER_01]: creepy polka sort of sound.
48:11 --> 48:20 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm thinking of like you mentioned pre-world war too, and I'm interrupting both of us, but there's that Juno St. Louis Tudalu by Duke Ellington.
48:41 --> 48:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so you've heard that like yeah, that's 1926 I think and you know who it reminds me of What is it about right, but screw on a sipers.
48:57 --> 49:03 [SPEAKER_06]: Oh, it was a huge screw on a sipers fan and they same are spooky adjacent to me as well
49:03 --> 49:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Shout out to myself, folks, who like, who remember Scott's co-host Matt Kelly does, of course, one at Thunder.
49:11 --> 49:15 [SPEAKER_01]: And my first ever episode of that is doing hell.
49:15 --> 49:16 [SPEAKER_01]: Hell, I did.
49:16 --> 49:20 [SPEAKER_01]: I was on for school nut zippers and trying to convince Chris Phafalia that they were actually amazing.
49:29 --> 49:31 [SPEAKER_05]: So we must go, and then sound, yet we must go, as tonight.
49:31 --> 49:57 [SPEAKER_01]: I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love
49:59 --> 50:03 [SPEAKER_01]: to like face, some of those songs might have tuba as the bass instead of the string bass.
50:03 --> 50:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Like they're still connected to this older style of jazz.
50:06 --> 50:09 [SPEAKER_01]: That song feels spooky and it is not supposed to be spooky.
50:10 --> 50:11 [SPEAKER_01]: But that sound, I don't think.
50:11 --> 50:12 [SPEAKER_01]: It's St. Louis, Tudaloo.
50:12 --> 50:14 [SPEAKER_01]: Like I don't think there's no lyrics.
50:14 --> 50:19 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think the reference point is supposed to be scary, but it has this old...
50:20 --> 50:42 [SPEAKER_01]: world kind of sound to it too with the horns moving and obviously the the muted wah wah mute on the trumpet is a very jazz thing so that doesn't sound old but it also has a human but not human almost like a person singing kind of reference and so there's something about some of this old jazz that also has that evocation so anyways like I said I'm interrupting myself.
50:43 --> 50:47 [SPEAKER_06]: I absolutely feel the connection between the two
50:48 --> 50:59 [SPEAKER_06]: And I think that this goes back to your Grand Unified Theory is that a non-human sound that is, a sound that is being made by a human that is almost inhuman.
50:59 --> 51:10 [SPEAKER_06]: The trumpet or the trombone using the, or a, a brass instrument using a mute is very much like mimicking human vocalizations.
51:10 --> 51:13 [SPEAKER_06]: And when you put it in minor, you put it in a more exotic scale.
51:14 --> 51:16 [SPEAKER_06]: It's absolutely going to sound
51:17 --> 51:24 [SPEAKER_01]: So the weird thing that doesn't fit that with me, and we are soon going to record an episode on Death Punk.
51:25 --> 51:27 [SPEAKER_01]: We have a death punk episode spoiler everybody.
51:28 --> 51:29 [SPEAKER_01]: Sorry to spoil.
51:29 --> 51:31 [SPEAKER_01]: We normally don't don't share too much.
51:31 --> 51:31 [SPEAKER_01]: What's coming up.
51:31 --> 51:34 [SPEAKER_01]: But later this fall, we have a death punk episode.
51:34 --> 51:37 [SPEAKER_01]: And what does everybody know about death punk is they've got the robot voice.
51:38 --> 51:42 [SPEAKER_01]: They've got the vocoder voice in most of their songs that people know at least you hear that.
51:43 --> 51:45 [SPEAKER_01]: But that doesn't sound spooky.
51:45 --> 51:47 [SPEAKER_01]: It sounds sci-fi.
51:47 --> 51:48 [SPEAKER_01]: It sounds futuristic.
51:48 --> 51:49 [SPEAKER_01]: But there's something about
51:50 --> 52:03 [SPEAKER_01]: the more kind of analog feeling of some of these inhuman sounds that feel scary, whereas, obviously, if you heard a disembodied in the middle of the wood, you heard a disembodied vocoder deaf punk voice, that would be scary.
52:03 --> 52:06 [SPEAKER_01]: But there's something about the digital computery
52:07 --> 52:25 [SPEAKER_01]: Inhumanity, that does have a different sort of psychological effect versus a more organic, even if it's done with technology and organic spookiness that we get with the due going to track or a lot of these ooze and odds in these older style spooky songs.
52:25 --> 52:29 [SPEAKER_01]: So you're going to convince me now why some of these are scary though.
52:30 --> 52:32 [SPEAKER_01]: Because some of these I marked, I'm going to call
52:59 --> 53:01 [SPEAKER_01]: Chris Kevin Haunted House?
53:01 --> 53:03 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, I love that song.
53:03 --> 53:05 [SPEAKER_02]: We're lovin' on it, I'll sit the top of the hoop.
53:05 --> 53:07 [SPEAKER_02]: This pooch skill will round with us.
53:07 --> 53:10 [SPEAKER_02]: There's skill, let's grow gold, we'll let go at night.
53:10 --> 53:13 [SPEAKER_02]: If you see this such a bright hit, let's fly.
53:13 --> 53:14 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
53:14 --> 53:16 [SPEAKER_02]: Stay still, wait.
53:16 --> 53:18 [SPEAKER_02]: When the goop is stab, we go up and play.
53:18 --> 53:21 [SPEAKER_02]: When the hands of the clutch belong to midnight.
53:21 --> 53:25 [SPEAKER_02]: But again, I'm on a side.
53:25 --> 53:27 [SPEAKER_01]: The monsters theme?
53:27 --> 53:28 [SPEAKER_01]: It's surf.
53:47 --> 53:57 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a surf rock and that's anything so many of these have surf rock and I'm like what like the moon trackers tune is basically surf rock with the 20 is hard with with tremolo on it or something.
53:58 --> 54:02 [SPEAKER_01]: What is that to to will pause before we get to some of the stuff from the 70s?
54:03 --> 54:05 [SPEAKER_01]: What's scary about this music?
54:05 --> 54:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Some of it may be the lyrics, but some of these, if you took the lyrics out, just sound like surf rock or like a ballad or rockabilly track, is there something I'm missing or is that part of the point?
54:18 --> 54:43 [SPEAKER_06]: Well, I tried to do a wide net, so that you had the base information of what I think kind of the different buckets were of the time frames, and Surf Rock was very big at the time, and that moon tracker's song, Love It Night of Vampire is probably my all-time favorite instrumental track besides the monster's theme from this era in this style of music.
54:46 --> 54:53 [SPEAKER_06]: I think that that's a trim because that would have been going through probably like 1960 some base man or something like that.
54:54 --> 55:01 [SPEAKER_06]: You know, if they were going through a fender like this Yet Or was that no, I bet that's like mid-60s.
55:01 --> 55:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Like tremolo folks is when you got that The sort of pulsing in out of the amphibroso is is is changing the way to farm up and down
55:12 --> 55:18 [SPEAKER_06]: they might be some of both on there and Leslie is is kind of like a circular sound.
55:18 --> 55:20 [SPEAKER_06]: It's utilizing the Doppler effect.
55:20 --> 55:22 [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, you're spinning the speaker.
55:22 --> 55:22 [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
55:22 --> 55:22 [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
55:22 --> 55:22 [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
55:22 --> 55:23 [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
55:23 --> 55:23 [SPEAKER_06]: So, yeah.
55:23 --> 55:24 [SPEAKER_06]: So, Doppler effect.
55:24 --> 55:26 [SPEAKER_01]: That'll give us a little bit of pitch bend.
55:26 --> 55:27 [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
55:28 --> 55:32 [SPEAKER_06]: But that's spooky to me because it's the sound of somebody's voice trembling.
55:32 --> 55:39 [SPEAKER_06]: Again, this is, I think these are taking these human fear traits or fear inducing traits.
55:39 --> 55:43 [SPEAKER_06]: Putting them into non-human voices or human voices, I suppose.
55:44 --> 55:50 [SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I think about the vibrato of the spooky background voices and a lot of these songs, I think that that's what makes something.
55:51 --> 55:56 [SPEAKER_06]: We are social creatures, and so if someone else is scared, we're like, should we be scared?
55:56 --> 56:01 [SPEAKER_06]: And so if you hear a spooky sound, it sounds like somebody being scared, like maybe tremolo vibrato.
56:02 --> 56:05 [SPEAKER_06]: I think that some part of the back of our brain is like, should we be scared?
56:06 --> 56:07 [SPEAKER_06]: So that's my argument.
56:07 --> 56:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
56:07 --> 56:13 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's weird because we're dealing with to a certain extent, I think if we're talking about why is the theorem in spooky.
56:13 --> 56:14 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it's the wind.
56:14 --> 56:15 [SPEAKER_01]: It sounds like aliens.
56:15 --> 56:20 [SPEAKER_01]: There's like a lizard brain reason, but some of this is just arbitrary too, right?
56:20 --> 56:30 [SPEAKER_01]: Like what you mentioned in surf music as being obviously part of this movement because that's the early 60s like one of the big popular movements, especially an instrumental rock music.
56:30 --> 56:31 [SPEAKER_01]: But that's
56:31 --> 56:35 [SPEAKER_01]: But the aspects of surf music that are surf, it's so weird in the arbitrary.
56:35 --> 56:45 [SPEAKER_01]: Why does a twanging, almost country sounding guitar with a lot of spring reverb on it and maybe tremolo with aggressive drumming that doesn't have to be boom, ca-ca-poo.
56:45 --> 56:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Why does that sound like surfing?
56:47 --> 56:52 [SPEAKER_01]: None of those, with like an Eastern European influence scale, none of that makes any sense.
56:52 --> 56:55 [SPEAKER_01]: It's just that like Dick Dale and some other guys chose that.
56:55 --> 56:59 [SPEAKER_01]: And then the rest of the popular and forever, just associated with that sound.
56:59 --> 57:01 [SPEAKER_01]: So I think we're also dealing with some of that.
57:01 --> 57:17 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, yes, if those things are then as of the late 50s and early 60s, baked into or the fairmen and sci-fi music or sci-fi film scores before that, they get established as a part of a certain emotional, in this case, Halloween, you vibe.
57:18 --> 57:18 [SPEAKER_01]: It's just,
57:19 --> 57:24 [SPEAKER_01]: there forever and there doesn't have to be an actual real reason why it works that way, right?
57:24 --> 57:26 [SPEAKER_01]: I can absolutely accept and agree with that.
57:28 --> 57:32 [SPEAKER_01]: So, so Pagas over, everybody believe it, pretend you didn't listen because there's no logic.
57:34 --> 57:38 [SPEAKER_01]: But like the monsters theme, first of all, now it just makes me think of fallout, boy.
58:03 --> 58:08 [SPEAKER_06]: Right, because that fall out, I will never forgive fall out boy for stealing that and making it popular.
58:09 --> 58:10 [SPEAKER_06]: I don't care if they gave attribution.
58:10 --> 58:17 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the weird thing, so I actually happened to like that fall out boy song, but the reason I like that fall out boy song is not because of the monsters sample.
58:18 --> 58:23 [SPEAKER_01]: It's because of the weird phrase structure in the chorus, I think is actually clever, but I don't understand.
58:23 --> 58:29 [SPEAKER_01]: There is kind of a vaguely surf guitar sound to that monster's theme, even though it's this jazz tune.
58:30 --> 58:36 [SPEAKER_01]: And they're talking about, she wants to dance like Uma Thurman, which is obviously a reference to pulp fiction.
58:37 --> 58:38 [SPEAKER_01]: Hmm.
58:38 --> 58:40 [SPEAKER_01]: Why are they not sampling miserly?
58:41 --> 58:43 [SPEAKER_01]: Why are they sampling the monster's theme?
58:44 --> 58:46 [SPEAKER_01]: And not the song, isn't that the dance?
58:46 --> 58:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Doesn't she dance to, does she do it by detail?
58:50 --> 58:53 [SPEAKER_06]: She's been a long time since I've seen it's helped fiction about she does.
58:53 --> 58:56 [SPEAKER_01]: This is to something and it is not The monsters theme.
58:56 --> 58:58 [SPEAKER_01]: No, I know I don't understand.
58:59 --> 59:00 [SPEAKER_06]: Oh, it's you can never tell by Chuck Berry.
59:01 --> 59:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you can never tell by Chuck Berry Okay, so misrelu is in that in other other points.
59:05 --> 59:08 [SPEAKER_01]: I think and then later there's girl You'll be a woman soon by urge overkill.
59:08 --> 59:12 [SPEAKER_01]: I think she's also dancing though It's not that famous scene with John Travolta.
59:13 --> 59:14 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, none of that is the monsters theme
59:14 --> 59:17 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's cool musical sample.
59:17 --> 59:19 [SPEAKER_01]: I get it, but it's a confusing musical sample.
59:19 --> 59:24 [SPEAKER_01]: Why not sample the Chuck Berry or whatever other songs from that film anyways?
59:25 --> 59:27 [SPEAKER_01]: So what makes the monster's theme spooky?
59:27 --> 59:33 [SPEAKER_01]: At least the Adam's family has like a, is it a harpsichord or kind of an old sounding piano?
59:42 --> 59:58 [SPEAKER_05]: They're creepy and they're kooky Misnerious and spooky They're all together kooky They have a family Right, like that sound feels again Only I should have put Adam's family instead of monsters on But I totally, the monsters seem has that
59:59 --> 01:00:24 [SPEAKER_06]: But I just can't explain why except I think it just has to be because of it being in the zeitgeist I think that you're not wrong with we have been programs to think At this point in you know modern society we have been programmed to think that so and so things are spooky and surf music it just has like and And and you know other worldliness to it that must have to do something with
01:00:26 --> 01:00:37 [SPEAKER_01]: And like this, once we get into the later era as it feels like a lot of these references aren't like radio hits, but they are coming as TV show and movie themes, right?
01:00:37 --> 01:00:41 [SPEAKER_01]: So that one, you called out the green slime theme.
01:01:03 --> 01:01:07 [SPEAKER_01]: which is sort of like psychedelic, grock, honestly, adjacent.
01:01:07 --> 01:01:15 [SPEAKER_01]: I have to say shout out to Charlie Fox, who composed that, who I took class with, when I was a master student, really a teacher, a really cool guy.
01:01:16 --> 01:01:28 [SPEAKER_01]: You want to talk about the 70's stuff because I haven't seen Phantom of the Paradise, but there's a lot of references to that in among musicians and pop culture fans, especially who like kind of cult stuff.
01:01:28 --> 01:01:29 [SPEAKER_01]: What's spooky?
01:01:29 --> 01:01:30 [SPEAKER_01]: It's glam rock, right?
01:01:30 --> 01:01:31 [SPEAKER_01]: What's spooky about that?
01:01:31 --> 01:01:32 [SPEAKER_06]: Right.
01:01:32 --> 01:01:44 [SPEAKER_06]: Well, it's it's the rock opera, but it's family opera, but it also has like a Frankenstime theme within it too because there's like a musical within a musical kind of thing.
01:01:45 --> 01:01:50 [SPEAKER_06]: And that's 74 directed by Brande Palma, Paul Williams is the main music composer for that.
01:01:50 --> 01:01:58 [SPEAKER_06]: And the song that I put on the list was Life at Last, which is sung by this rock star character named Beef.
01:01:59 --> 01:02:09 [SPEAKER_06]: who is performing in the paradise and then the phantom of the paradise who was like this composer who was then or a thickly disfigured by a record press.
01:02:09 --> 01:02:13 [SPEAKER_06]: It's a great film also quite hilarious and great great music.
01:02:13 --> 01:02:26 [SPEAKER_06]: My life at last is he's presenting his Frankenstein's Monster and he's all the lyrics are saying like I'm a horny Frankenstein's Monster and I want to you know like I'm alive now and I'm gonna get it on.
01:02:44 --> 01:02:52 [SPEAKER_01]: This is sort of in a piece with Rocky Horror Picture Show, kind of as in terms of the cultural movement.
01:02:52 --> 01:02:54 [SPEAKER_01]: So it predates Rocky Horror by two years.
01:02:55 --> 01:03:00 [SPEAKER_06]: People think that it's kind of in the same vein, I mean they are contemporaries, I suppose, but it predates to by two years.
01:03:01 --> 01:03:06 [SPEAKER_01]: When did Rocky Horror the show not the the film come out though?
01:03:06 --> 01:03:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I don't know.
01:03:07 --> 01:03:11 [SPEAKER_01]: The Rocky Horror picture show is a based on the musical, right?
01:03:12 --> 01:03:12 [SPEAKER_01]: That's no.
01:03:13 --> 01:03:15 [SPEAKER_01]: That's 1973.
01:03:16 --> 01:03:19 [SPEAKER_01]: So I also want to be in conversation, right?
01:03:19 --> 01:03:19 [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
01:03:20 --> 01:03:21 [SPEAKER_01]: But I also don't know like.
01:03:21 --> 01:03:24 [SPEAKER_01]: No, I'm looking the rocky horse show has time warp.
01:03:24 --> 01:03:26 [SPEAKER_01]: It has touch of touch of touch.
01:03:26 --> 01:03:27 [SPEAKER_01]: It has the same song.
01:03:27 --> 01:03:33 [SPEAKER_01]: So like it is that I didn't know if there was some kind of thing where look there was a massive expansion when the film came out.
01:03:33 --> 01:03:35 [SPEAKER_01]: But no, I think the film is like a version of the musical.
01:03:36 --> 01:03:39 [SPEAKER_06]: Well, at least the family paradise predates it by a year then still.
01:03:39 --> 01:03:40 [SPEAKER_06]: So one year or not here's a
01:03:40 --> 01:03:57 [SPEAKER_06]: They're in the they're in kind of the same temporary it's it's probably the same cultural feeling artistic movement So yeah, yeah, but then you know We already kind of talked about on go boingo there there the you know the mystic nights of oligo Boy go I said it incorrectly as cult of oligo bongo at first, but
01:03:58 --> 01:03:58 [SPEAKER_06]: Mr.
01:03:58 --> 01:04:04 [SPEAKER_06]: Knife's a bungalow or doing their stuff in like 70s, and then a bungalow is getting pretty big by the early 80s.
01:04:05 --> 01:04:12 [SPEAKER_06]: So we get Debance Party, obviously weird science, which is, I think it's Halloween adjacent, it's sci-fi, but I think that, that
01:04:13 --> 01:04:24 [SPEAKER_06]: Danny Elfman as a composer is, I agree completely that he is being very heavily influenced by Eastern European folk music.
01:04:24 --> 01:04:27 [SPEAKER_06]: So much of his work really, really ties back to that.
01:04:27 --> 01:04:35 [SPEAKER_06]: Those traditions, and I mean, I think that he is one of the greatest pop composers of this time period of the 80s.
01:04:35 --> 01:04:39 [SPEAKER_06]: You know, he did, he did the music for at-risk history and he did the music for
01:04:43 --> 01:04:52 [SPEAKER_06]: But again, I think that you already hit on the reasons why those things kind of have that flavor, which is that it's touching on Roma music.
01:04:52 --> 01:04:58 [SPEAKER_06]: Roma folk music has our huge and, you know, French and Greek folk music.
01:04:58 --> 01:05:07 [SPEAKER_06]: I think so many of those traditional styles of music are, I mean, and probably also Irish, you know, it's an Irish ballad stuff because anything from
01:05:13 --> 01:05:19 [SPEAKER_06]: and they're going to be bringing those traditions to America, and those things are going to come up through families and boom.
01:05:19 --> 01:05:28 [SPEAKER_06]: And so we're, we are, we as, you know, um, millennials, I suppose, elder millennials were consuming that in the 80s and into the early 90s.
01:05:29 --> 01:05:44 [SPEAKER_06]: And I did want to talk about, I know I'm rushing us through the 70s and 80s because I really want to mention another millennial who people might not know about who did, they know about him, but they might not know about this piece of art that he did.
01:05:45 --> 01:05:48 [SPEAKER_01]: I had no idea until Ryan Gosling all the south.
01:05:48 --> 01:05:50 [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, did a record in 2000.
01:05:50 --> 01:05:53 [SPEAKER_06]: Is that 2016?
01:05:53 --> 01:05:54 [SPEAKER_06]: What was the year?
01:05:54 --> 01:05:55 [SPEAKER_06]: No, it's it's 2009.
01:05:56 --> 01:05:59 [SPEAKER_06]: 2009 that I that was in my head and I was like, it can't have been that old.
01:06:00 --> 01:06:00 [SPEAKER_06]: Okay.
01:06:00 --> 01:06:03 [SPEAKER_01]: So he was like fresh off the notebook basically, right?
01:06:03 --> 01:06:03 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it was.
01:06:04 --> 01:06:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Really career still, roughly speaking, early career, I'd say, Ryan Gosling.
01:06:09 --> 01:06:25 [SPEAKER_06]: But he did an album called Dead Man's Bones, and he, he and his co-writer, Zach Shield, they wanted to do a spooky, I don't even know, I mean, it's kind of like, a children's, it's kind of like a spooky kid's record.
01:06:55 --> 01:06:58 [SPEAKER_01]: So this is really like children's quiet.
01:06:58 --> 01:06:59 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, started by things on it.
01:07:00 --> 01:07:01 [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, from actually.
01:07:01 --> 01:07:02 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
01:07:02 --> 01:07:06 [SPEAKER_06]: But the funniest thing about it is that like Ryan Gosling is a good singer.
01:07:06 --> 01:07:10 [SPEAKER_06]: I mean, but he does what makes it spooky is his vocal affectations.
01:07:11 --> 01:07:13 [SPEAKER_06]: Uh, he does this spooky voice and, um,
01:07:14 --> 01:07:32 [SPEAKER_06]: I really love it, but I also think that most of the songs are kind of like song ideas, and not truly fleshed out songs, which is charming, because it also makes them feel a bit amateur, and that makes me happy in a different way.
01:07:32 --> 01:07:35 [SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I like well composed songs, but I also think
01:07:43 --> 01:07:46 [SPEAKER_06]: album of song concepts.
01:07:46 --> 01:07:47 [SPEAKER_06]: Just charms me and I love it.
01:07:47 --> 01:07:49 [SPEAKER_01]: I listen to it every every October.
01:07:49 --> 01:07:56 [SPEAKER_01]: And I had never heard any of this and I listened to several of the songs on that record and I think it's really just that one record, right?
01:07:56 --> 01:07:57 [SPEAKER_01]: But all they did, they never did anything else.
01:07:58 --> 01:08:01 [SPEAKER_01]: This is fascinating for probably a millionaire at the time.
01:08:02 --> 01:08:27 [SPEAKER_01]: to learn that they were like kind of self-imposed limits like I don't remember the specifics but they weren't going to I think maximum three takes for every recording they gave themselves like like they basically did it as if you know people would go oh everybody in the band put in a hundred bucks we've got three hours of studio time we got to record a whole EP they almost did it like that where they weren't going to polish any of it and he just has this
01:08:31 --> 01:08:49 [SPEAKER_01]: obvious use of reverb just like let's dump tons of reverb on it to make sounds spooky but it's sort of works and it feels like it's amateur even though they had every reason and ability to make it not that way but then they have how maximalist is it to get a children's choir like the opposite
01:08:49 --> 01:08:50 [SPEAKER_01]: We have a children's choir.
01:08:50 --> 01:08:52 [SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna teach all these kids, which that takes a lot of time.
01:08:53 --> 01:08:54 [SPEAKER_01]: They paid for that, I assume.
01:08:54 --> 01:08:59 [SPEAKER_01]: The director of that children's choir had to teach, because they're on the children are on multiple songs.
01:08:59 --> 01:09:01 [SPEAKER_01]: They're not just, I think it's an honor.
01:09:01 --> 01:09:04 [SPEAKER_06]: Of the nine tracks, I think that they're on seven of them.
01:09:05 --> 01:09:08 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like they are, I think if I remember correctly, the album is like label that.
01:09:08 --> 01:09:13 [SPEAKER_01]: As dead man's bones band with the silver-like children's choir, or whatever.
01:09:13 --> 01:09:15 [SPEAKER_01]: They are credited collaborators
01:09:16 --> 01:09:29 [SPEAKER_01]: that it actually took a ton of time on that end and somebody had to arrange all those vocals and stuff like that, but that it has this, we just sort of fell into it sound, which you know, really fits with the sort of 2000s era.
01:09:30 --> 01:09:38 [SPEAKER_01]: When you said, if 2016 was correct, it makes less sense than late 2000s, because this sort of indie rock vibe was very still very
01:09:44 --> 01:09:50 [SPEAKER_01]: whether it's a modest mouse sort of roughness or some of the indie folk that was popular in that era.
01:09:51 --> 01:10:11 [SPEAKER_01]: It feels a piece of that, even though the music that they're playing is kind of like almost reminds me of 60s garage rock, like there's a Farfisa Oregon, I'm pretty sure I'm hearing, which I associate that instrument with like L.A. garage rock bands, like Question Mark and Mysterians, that kind of thing, that sound happening in this spooky context.
01:10:11 --> 01:10:14 [SPEAKER_01]: It's such a strange but compelling record.
01:10:14 --> 01:10:14 [SPEAKER_01]: You
01:10:26 --> 01:10:28 [SPEAKER_06]: people need to know that it exists.
01:10:28 --> 01:10:30 [SPEAKER_06]: I guess that's really why I wanted to touch on it.
01:10:31 --> 01:10:33 [SPEAKER_01]: It's quite different from La La Land, right?
01:10:33 --> 01:10:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
01:10:33 --> 01:10:34 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
01:10:34 --> 01:10:37 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm pretty sure Nicole's a fan of of Ryan Gosling.
01:10:37 --> 01:10:39 [SPEAKER_01]: So I was very curious to hear her thoughts on it.
01:10:40 --> 01:10:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Nicole right in, right into your podcast.
01:10:42 --> 01:10:43 [SPEAKER_01]: We will read your feedback.
01:10:43 --> 01:10:45 [SPEAKER_01]: I have written in feedback to our podcast ones myself.
01:10:45 --> 01:10:47 [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, like it feels like
01:10:48 --> 01:11:10 [SPEAKER_01]: the culture has gone in a different direction though that like spooky music now even going back to fan of the paradise and then attack of the killer tomatoes in the seventies like it feels like things are very tied to media like visual media or yeah songs i mean even in the eighties of course ghostbusters theme is not that's scary about most of that except it's like the hui luis
01:11:11 --> 01:11:17 [SPEAKER_01]: Sampled baseline sort of with some spooky synthesizers, but otherwise, not really very all lonely.
01:11:17 --> 01:11:34 [SPEAKER_06]: Just synthesizers in the, I mean, and I've never thought that Ghostbusters is a spooky song, but the synthesizer, I mean, I guess the synthesizers layered with guitar in the chorus before he says who you can call, I think that that's about in there's some like bridge or whatever that I think has them too.
01:11:35 --> 01:11:39 [SPEAKER_01]: But like you've got punk bands, you put on the playlist killer clowns from outer space, the Dickies.
01:11:40 --> 01:11:40 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
01:12:01 --> 01:12:27 [SPEAKER_01]: playing like what is it that's a circus check that that that that that that that that that entry of the gladiators that that tune from eight to not tune but like the orchestral composition from god who is that Julius food chick I don't even know if I'm pronouncing it right but yeah the circus song except it's like punk and that's Gary in 1980's film right it's just such a different pastiche it's really I think that's what it is it's whatever it is
01:12:30 --> 01:12:39 [SPEAKER_01]: If you're taking punk and interpolating this old central European kind of essentially light romantic kind of classical piece, that can be spooky.
01:12:39 --> 01:12:48 [SPEAKER_01]: In 2009, you take like Indy Rock and you interpolate a children's choir in it, or you blend a children's choir in it, that can be spooky.
01:12:48 --> 01:12:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's the contrast that does it.
01:12:50 --> 01:12:53 [SPEAKER_01]: The cultural contrast that makes something spooky.
01:12:54 --> 01:12:54 [SPEAKER_01]: it must be.
01:12:54 --> 01:12:55 [SPEAKER_01]: It has to be in this era.
01:12:56 --> 01:12:56 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
01:12:56 --> 01:13:01 [SPEAKER_01]: So like maybe this will be a good place to end, but it's about crane.
01:13:01 --> 01:13:03 [SPEAKER_01]: Like what is it that you do?
01:13:04 --> 01:13:05 [SPEAKER_01]: What's spooky, right?
01:13:05 --> 01:13:11 [SPEAKER_01]: You're doing songs that are inspired by either that some of you are actual covers, right?
01:13:11 --> 01:13:13 [SPEAKER_06]: But some of you don't have a lot of original material.
01:13:13 --> 01:13:17 [SPEAKER_01]: If you're original, like are there what are the tricks, or are you just relying
01:13:19 --> 01:13:25 [SPEAKER_01]: metal is intense and that'll do do the work for us or are you using some of these tricks.
01:13:26 --> 01:13:41 [SPEAKER_06]: I would say that a lot of what I a lot of my writing style is heavily steeped in that Eastern European tradition like that general style and also American traditional music
01:13:47 --> 01:14:08 [SPEAKER_06]: surrounded by musicians playing American traditional and blue grass, which is all basically, you know, that's any Appalachian music is really fed by, you know, that by that Irish music, by a lot of people coming over from Europe and settling in this general swath of America.
01:14:08 --> 01:14:14 [SPEAKER_06]: And I think that that just kind of informs a feeling of if it's in minor and it's got that,
01:14:15 --> 01:14:21 [SPEAKER_06]: European, traditional folk music vibe to it when you add a crappler to distortion.
01:14:21 --> 01:14:23 [SPEAKER_06]: It sounds like, I mean, sounds like spooky metal to me.
01:14:23 --> 01:14:32 [SPEAKER_06]: I've always said that we that I write, I specifically, but I think the band as a whole writes creepy carnival music just really fast.
01:14:33 --> 01:14:35 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's that contrast element, right?
01:14:35 --> 01:14:41 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, carnals already have like, carnals is like, oh, it's childhood glee and there's also creepy elements.
01:14:41 --> 01:14:45 [SPEAKER_06]: We've got like, grown so happy.
01:14:45 --> 01:14:53 [SPEAKER_06]: I don't think I'm scary, but I also think that that idea is, is why there is that slight bit of menace to them and plenty of people do find them scary.
01:14:53 --> 01:15:04 [SPEAKER_06]: Um, and a good example of what we do with that kind of creepy carnival music is raining leaves, which is the original song on rott your teeth that we did.
01:15:04 --> 01:15:06 [SPEAKER_06]: It's four cover songs of then one original.
01:16:06 --> 01:16:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Cool, yeah, definitely.
01:16:08 --> 01:16:14 [SPEAKER_01]: Gosh, it feels like we covered kind of a lot, but then there's, I'm sure there's stuff in all these other decades we've ignored.
01:16:14 --> 01:16:18 [SPEAKER_01]: We didn't mention the 90s once, but maybe that's a good of a place as any to stop.
01:16:18 --> 01:16:29 [SPEAKER_01]: So folks, for sure, check out Ikobad Crane's, write your teeth, just came out just in time for your Halloween playlist and check out the Halloween playlist that I've put in the show notes.
01:16:29 --> 01:16:31 [SPEAKER_01]: And what's going on with horror movie night lately?
01:16:31 --> 01:16:33 [SPEAKER_01]: What, so mid-October to late october?
01:16:35 --> 01:16:36 [SPEAKER_01]: school spooky season.
01:16:36 --> 01:16:44 [SPEAKER_06]: Well, every Halloween or the week of Halloween are our episode is a children's movie and this year we are like a children's Halloween movie.
01:16:45 --> 01:16:47 [SPEAKER_06]: So, you know, we've done, I don't know.
01:16:47 --> 01:16:47 [SPEAKER_06]: I don't know.
01:16:47 --> 01:16:47 [SPEAKER_06]: I don't know.
01:16:47 --> 01:16:48 [SPEAKER_06]: I don't know.
01:16:48 --> 01:16:48 [SPEAKER_06]: I don't know scared stupid.
01:16:49 --> 01:16:49 [SPEAKER_06]: I don't scare stupid.
01:16:49 --> 01:16:51 [SPEAKER_06]: And this year we're going to do goosebumps.
01:16:52 --> 01:16:54 [SPEAKER_06]: Um, is that from 2015, though, I'm Jack Black.
01:16:54 --> 01:16:55 [SPEAKER_06]: Um,
01:16:56 --> 01:17:01 [SPEAKER_06]: So it's we always do that for our Halloween episode and it's fun.
01:17:01 --> 01:17:09 [SPEAKER_06]: It's it's a nice little reprieve from Gore for a week Right, which doesn't bother us, but it is always fun.
01:17:09 --> 01:17:11 [SPEAKER_06]: But we're spooky all year round.
01:17:11 --> 01:17:14 [SPEAKER_06]: So hmentpodcast.com you can listen to
01:17:15 --> 01:17:26 [SPEAKER_06]: Over a decade's worth of material and just search for a movie that you know or like, and it may come up because we've done a lot.
01:17:26 --> 01:17:27 [SPEAKER_01]: Awesome.
01:17:27 --> 01:17:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Everybody check it out.
01:17:28 --> 01:17:29 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, thanks so much for coming on Scott.
01:17:29 --> 01:17:31 [SPEAKER_01]: I was really fun conversation.
01:17:31 --> 01:17:32 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for having me.
01:17:32 --> 01:17:35 [SPEAKER_01]: And Nicole, I think you can come out from under the covers now.
01:17:44 --> 01:17:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Never mind the music is hosted by Nicole Vatter and hosted and produced by Mark Poppinney.
01:17:52 --> 01:17:59 [SPEAKER_00]: You can email us at nevermusicquaditkmail.com and give us a follow on social media.
01:17:59 --> 01:18:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Never mind the music is also part of the lorehounds network.
01:18:02 --> 01:18:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Please join the conversation on their discord server.
01:18:06 --> 01:18:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening.