The Misfits “She” (Blank Records 7″ Version) “Skulls” (Master Sound Sessions) “Night Of The Living Dead” (Lost Recording)

Happy Halloween, dear fiends, uh, friends.

Y’all knew the Misfits post was coming, right? As I said earlier, they’re probably my favorite punk band (Minor Threat’s up there too).

On the surface, the Misfits were sort of the ne plus ultra of American trash culture: kids from Jersey hyped up on b-movies, Elvis and too much caffeine, regurgitating the plots of horror movies and conspiracy theories as too-fast-too-loud garage rock, roaming the country like Huns to preach their disposable gospel.

And that’s fucking charming to begin with. But Glen Danzig, as easy a target for mockery as he is/was, had a sort of songwriting genius. The tight focus of his lyrics drew both humor and pathos from this late-night TV received material. And more importantly, his melodies were soaring, as infectious as the zombie’s bite.

For all the trash posturing, Danzig was also a weird type of perfectionist, recording and scrapping and re-recording so many versions of his songs, firing or driving away band members at such a clip, that it might’ve derailed the Misfits’ legacy–if they weren’t so goddamn classic.

Today I’m presenting a trio of songs from the “lost recordings” disc of the Misfits box set, which I only got around to purchasing this year. Before that I was hooked on the excellent self-titled collection.

This “She,” a bit of a curiosity, comes from the band’s 1977 debut single, featuring Glen on electric piano(!) and no guitars(!!), an early formulation I wasn’t aware of before picking up the box. It’s thin and crispy, but the song’s there, as is Glen’s howl and the balls-out tempo. Hell, there’s even a little flashy bass playing.

I love “Skulls” partially for the overkill of its lyrics (noted previously). Structurally, it deploys what became at a later point the default “catchy” chord progression, I V vi IV, although Google tells me that it goes at least far back as doo wop. Catchy, gory, perfect Misfits distillation, and maybe my favorite song by the group.

I’ve mostly picked out “Night Of The Living Dead” because it’s an adaption of my favorite horror movie. It’s sort of a precursor/inversion of “Astro Zombies”–those awesome gang vocals at the start of both, the invasion story, even some of the vocal cadences–which feels like a slightly superior song to me.

As in “Astro Zombies,” “Teenagers From Mars,” etc., etc., Glen sympathizes not with the terrified humans, but with the undead other in “Night Of The Living Dead.” (My friend (A Superhero Named) Tony might have something to say about that.) This approach really best draws out in the Misfits’ music all those classic themes of horror–the existential discomfort of being human, man’s alienation from his own body, fear of the other, fear of contamination, fear of fear, et al.

And these Jersey boys get to play the ultimate outsider–ghouls, ghosts and spooks.

The Box Set at Newbury Comics.
The Misfits at Newbury Comics.

Lemonheads “Skulls”

So here’s the fun Halloween-themed post that I aimed for and thoroughly botched this morning. Evan Dando, king of the alt-rock covers, gives the solo acoustic treatment to a Misfits classic, off 1991 EP Favorite Spanish Dishes.

Take your pick from the irony bin: the natural tension of gruesome lyrics about a serial killer sung prettily; or “hack the heads off little girls/and put ‘em on my wall” after this morning’s debacle.

The Lemonheads were never my pick of the hometown homestate scene, but Dando acquits himself well here. Then again, “Skulls” is a killer pop tune, so it’d be tough to fuck it up.

Now, the NKOTB cover off the same EP–there’s some horror for you.

[Favorite Spanish Dishes is out of print.]

Sebadoh “Vampire”
Helium “Baby Vampire Made Me” “Wanna Be A Vampire Too, Baby”

Today, three songs about the undead, all alt-rock from the Commonwealth. But it’s turned into fair warning (to me) that when you pick songs by title you can blunder into deeper, more harrowing waters than you intended.

The vampire in Sebadoh’s “Vampire,” off 1992’s Rocking The Forest, is needy and grasping, playing passive-aggressive games, sucking the life out of the relationship and the air out of the room. Somehow they managed to even produce a passive-aggressive arrangement. Stinging guitar work through amps distorted to the verge of failure, often tuned down in the mix, are set against mellow vocals and thrumming indie guitar swing.

Mary Timony and co. shoehorned the off-kilter rhythms of the Fall and My Bloody Valentine’s gauzy guitarscapes into a uniquely fractured, doomy style on their early work. Helium’s A/B burners “Baby Vampire Made Me” and “Wanna Be A Vampire Too, Baby” from 1994 EP Pirate Prude exploits this heavy trip to go real dark–diving into the real-life horror of an unwanted pregnancy and abortion.

In “Baby Vampire Made Me,” the vampire is in the womb, not a gift but a parasite, and it threatens to turn the woman into a vampire as well, latched on to a would-be father the verses address. Around 4:40 the song coalesces into an almost-bluesy riff and the words turns elegaicly to the child never born.

“Wanna Be A Vampire Too, Baby” gets a lighter, prettier musical treatment, but cutting through the mystery of what it’s telling is tough–it seems that in the aftermath, the previous song’s speaker feels at once haunted and watched-over, thinking of an afterlife where she joins that never-born baby.

This post was hard for me to write–something intended as just-this-side-of-jocular turned heartbreaking and confusing. Which actually gets at something I love about Helium’s work before they turned prog. There was this bizarre mix of fanciful, little-girl imagery and just the most pitch-black ruminations on women abused, feeling like whores, feeling dirty inside. It would be a women’s-study thesis if it weren’t so vividly, deeply felt, so forceful.

I use the word mystery above. As much as I feel that essentialism is a trap, I’m also reminded at times like this that there’s a well of sadness that, as a man, I can’t possibly know in this life.

Smash Your Head on the Punk Rock (U.S. CD with “Vampire”) at Newbury Comics.
Pirate Prude is out of print, but at the moment is gettable cheap via Amazon.

Low (Live @ Spaceland, 10/31/98 aka The Misfits Show) “Words/Turn/Over The Ocean”
(all three as one file)
“Over The Ocean” (album version)

Here’s a little seasonal post with a dash of “I was there” egotism. Halloween, fast approaching, got me thinking about the Misfits, maybe my favorite punk band. And naturally, the Misfits got me thinking about Minnesota’s glacially-paced Low.

Make sense?

Eight(!) years ago, rather than doing the typical Halloween party thing, my g/f-at-the-time and I went to see Low play Spaceland. I can’t remember much about their main set, mostly that we found seats in order to fully enjoy it. They make pretty music, but their spare, slow, pristine style doesn’t make for dancing. It’s tough to even sway.
By 1998 they hadn’t really diverged much from their signature refinement of Galaxie 500, and you sort of wondered whether was the only kind of music those three people could make together.

So their encore was one of the most memorable concert experiences of my life.

The band-members turned their backs to the audience and… did each other’s make-up? We couldn’t really quite tell what they were doing. The bassist helped the guitarist clip a Danzig-style devillock onto his bangs–things were starting to become clearer; the Sharpie tattoos of stuff like the Black Flag logo were starting to make sense. Then the group reached into a bag and started chucking pieces of candy, rather aggressively, out into the audience, screaming, “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!” (Unfortunately not captured in today’s mp3s.)

And then the slowest band in the world played a revved-up, messy five-minute encore as the Misfits.

And it was good.

These were not Misfits covers, but the band doing their own songs as the Misfits. Three adults rocking out with the abandon of hyped-up children and poking a little fun at their own collective persona. Conceptually brilliant, and much more fun than a Low show is supposed to be. I apologize a little for the crappy quality of the mp3s I found, although the low (oops) fidelity might complete the impersonation.

They bring back a great memory for me. I hope they capture, and this post communicates, a little bit of why.

I Could Live In Hope (home to “Words”) at Newbury Comics.
Long Division (home to “Turn”) at Newbury Comics.
The Curtain Hits the Cast (home to “Over The Ocean”) at Newbury Comics.

The Mountain Goats “You’re So Vain”
Cat Power “Satisfaction”

John Darnielle. Chan Marshall. Both indie singer-songwriter types. Both single individuals who record under a band name. Both have band names with animals in them. Both recorded gender-flipped covers of hits from a bygone era. Both skipped singing the choruses on said covers.

Coincidence? I think n–well, OK, it was probably a coincidence.

Gender-switching on covers is subversive by nature, even if the extent of that subversion’s sorta been dulled at this late date by repetition.

At any rate, “You’re So Vain,” a Carly Simon tune recorded by the Mountain Goats for the ultimately unreleased but recently leaked 2000 effort Hail and Farewell, Gothenburg, is an unmistakable kiss-off. But it betrays a distinctly “feminine” vulnerability, at least according to the constructs of the time. The object of scorn is masterful, self-possessed, jet-setting, using and disposing at will… basically the kind of shit dudes got away with from time immemorial, but that would mark a chica with scandal, etc.

I take it that part of the point here, other than the joy of playing a great song, is the way a lover can become a star in your eyes, no matter who you are, and the sting of betrayal sometimes blowing things up beyond their reasonable bounds.

So the flip-side of the coin, Cat Power’s narcoticized take on the Stones’ classic, from her appropriately titled Covers Record of 2000, shoots for ultra-minimal, excising all but the entitlement and bravado that was the cornerstone of Mick’s persona. (He was, after all, a lover of Carly’s, did sang backup on the original “You’re So Vain” and was a suspect for being the song’s subject, although she’s said it ain’t him.)

Slowed-down, and with “can’t you see/I’m on a losing streak” given extra weight, “Satisfaction” becomes both an exposé of the hollowness behind that pose of “masculine” cool and an expression of the human need and yearning it seeks to hide.

Interrogating a motive behind Marshall’s chorusectomy seems a little easier–it went out the window with the song’s titanic riff, part of cooling down the tune’s macho. “You’re So Vain” without the chorus removes the sort of brainfucking irony (or illogic) that was, at least to me as a child, part of the song’s hook. “You’re so vain/you probably think this song is about you,” OK, right, but if it is then… but… if he thinks… uh, OK.

Or maybe they’re both a way of saying, “Y’all know this part.”

Sweden (another 2000 MG record) at ArtistDirect.
CP’s Covers Record at Target.