A Spooktacular in Screaming Sound!

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

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Spike

Drop Dead!

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

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


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

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 Obler

Lone Rager

Dunno why, but I pulled my entire Metal section from the shelves, all 300+ LP's I've held onto with a sick grasp since my early teens, and flipped through all of them, reminiscing on each individual cover art. 

Maybe it's that time of year, when things are getting all dark and spooky: a lot of metal falls into that bleak arena, if not for the music than certainly for many of the covers holding in the vinyl. Picked out some Venom and Danzig for the wall for the next few weeks, spun a few discs to make sure I hadn't grown up and actually still liked it all and then shuffled everything away again, with one extra exception.

Lone Rager's "Metal Rap" EP out of 1984 on Megaforce Records. 

Megaforce is a record label run by Jon & Marsha Zazula, formed early after Jon opened a record shop in New Jersey called Rock 'N Roll Heaven (legend has it that he was originally going to name it "Metallica Records", but a certain Lars Ulrich convinced him otherwise, calling it stupid, and then copped the title for his recently-formed band) after getting Metallica's demo in the mail & deciding he wanted to release their first album.

And this here Metal Rap release is Jon's loving ode to the genre he still promotes to this day. Now, there's no official evidence that the "Lone Rager" IS Jon Z, but as the back cover states: music & lyrics - Jon Zazula, Producer - Jon Zazula. So I think it's safe to say that the hefty boy on the front sweating through the pillowcase is Jon Zazula.

The music? Aheh. Um, well, it's exactly what it says it is. Doesn't get much more earnest than this. This is love, baby, love for metal. And if you hear tiny voices in the chorus it's not your ears ringing from the banging of the head, it's The Children of Steel Singers - a chorus of 15 kids aged 3 months (!) to 10 years old, including a Rikki Zazula.

The first side is the rap, the second side is the same tune minus the vocals which are replaced by a blistering (?) mass of guitar-soloing by Andy "Duck" MacDonald and they both clock in at 5:26. 

And, in case you're too busy swingin' that hair around (or laughing) to listen properly, here's the lyrics from the rear cover, clickable for readability -

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Metal RAPsody
Special Air-Guitar Head-Banging Dub

Etobicoke Accordion Youth Orchestra

Many kids feel the need to rush into adulthood, while many of us adults want to run screaming back into the carefree days of childhood, usually once we realize that that door has closed and locked solidly behind us. I mean, it doesn't have a handle or even a keyhole on the other side.

Hey! No one told me this grown-up world was gonna be so ugly, and now I can't go back?! Get up on your tiptoes, rub frantically on the grimy windowpane with your coat-sleeve and gaze back in before heaving a sigh, turning around, and waking up to an alarm-clock. 

Reason being for bringing this up is that I could get more than 3-4 posts up a month if I were a kid again and wasn't collecting responsibilities like so many unwanted hockey-card doubles. 

Sure, I could quit my job, but this crap doesn't buy itself, kids. 

But while on the subject, one can sort of revisit kidhood in various ways, some ways being going through old school artifacts like yearbooks or report cards. 

One rather rare artifact of one's academic years is the school record album, most of the time a recording of the school band and/or choir. Personally, none of the schools I ever went to put out an album that I'm aware of, but that could just be an indicator of the quality of the students' abilities. And judging from the others in my guitar class (that we all took just for an easy grade), uh yeah, we sucked. 

Rarer than the albums themselves are the nuts who actually seek out and collect these things (me being one), which range in quality from "utterly tragic", to "so good it sounds like a normal band, which equals crap" - because who wants normal, anyhow? You wanna find something that stands out, screams incongruity, spells out "remember this" on a chalkboard with fingernails instead of chalk. "Adequate" is never memorable. 

Then there are the good school bands that stick in your head out of the left turn they took, something like the rather famous Langley Schools Music Project, and something like this. 

Found somewhat recently in the basement of a local Sally Ann, this was originally a product out of Etobicoke (k is silent) - once a municipality, but now a part of, Toronto (which if you'll check any map, is actually quite far from Vancouver) - and happily I more recently made contact with someone who actually played on this album, so now I can relate a little info attached.

Seems the album was conceived out of a need to raise money to fund a trip to Los Angeles for a battle of the bands competition in 1980, but after all the recording and studio costs were covered, they still had to fund the trip anyways. "Limited Edition", the title of the album, comes from the fact that only 1500 copies were pressed, maybe because that was the most the school could afford, but more likely it's from the fact that in 1980 accordian-based music wasn't setting fire to the Billboard (or any?) charts and expectations of shifting as many units as The Knack weren't really high or considered sane.

And the LP cover itself is unique: most if not all of the time on these things we either get a xeroxed copy of a photo of the kids in the band or some abstract art piece that was requested from what the art teacher thought of as the most gifted student in his/her class, but here we're given a shiny black cover depicting quite the classy hottie perched at a candle-lit Steinway knockoff, smoking a hell of a long cigarillo, holding a single red rose with a bottle of champagne at the ready (I was going to guess Baby Duck, but it's Martini Spumonte), waiting for someone. Probably the drummer. 

I was thinking it was just a stock photo being used, but as my informant tells me, her name is Yolanda and she's actually the older sister of the (then) head music teacher who made the suggestion of making the album. Sad to say, guys, but last we heard, Yolanda married and moved to England in the 90's.

And while most of the performers here have most likely gone on in life to be accountants, firefighters, or won huge lottery wins straight after University, a few have stuck to music: lead guitarist Silvio Simone is currently in a musical called Rock of Ages (as well as being a regular session musician) and a Maureen Bynoe is a smooth-jazz singer with her own band.

Okay, now music-wise, I'd give this a boost up over many recordings I've heard, partially from musicality but also from inventiveness. Some standards on here sandwiched between a few 70's/80's modern tunes, definitely check out the cover of Peter Gunn, the effects-spattered Star Wars theme and the Saturday Night Fever medley - which starts out with seagull-sounds that were apparently manufactured in the studio.

And an extra big thanks to Maria for making contact and giving me some background!

Track list:
A1 Theme From "Peter Gunn"
A2 Liberty Bell
A3 Moon River
A4 Pennsylvania Polka
A5 Instant Concert
B1 Gonna Fly Now - Theme From "Rocky"
B2 At the Hofbrau House
B3 Star Wars "Title Track"
B4 Saturday Night Fever (Medley)
B5 Bandstand Boogie

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