Scar Stuff

"Halloween" by Kay Lande and Wade Denning - iPhone/Hipstamatic Stop Motion Video

2011-10-05T11:41:00.045-07:00

Direct YouTube link

****
Psst! Visit the official Golden Records Facebook Page for a free download of the "Halloween" MP3! It's a "Limited Time Only" type deal so act fast!
****

Hey everyone, it's great to see you all again! I certainly hope that the last year has treated you kindly and that you're all doing well in your various crypts, lairs & decaying manors.

Okay, okay -- let's get down to business, huh? October is finally here and that means it's time for another one of my annual "Halloween projects that I'm using as an excuse to try new stuff" posts. Yeah! All right!

Since I figured that whatever I did would be unlikely to match the over-the-topness of last year's Eerie Publications/ Johnson-Smith "Horror Record" mashup (and let me just pause here to say that the reaction to that video was absolutely mind-blowingly amazing to me. Tweeted by Harry Knowles! Championed by Poison Ivy! Played in-house at the Alamo Drafthouse and Cinefamily theaters! I don't think I could ever have predicted such an awesome collection of responses for something so replete with severed heads and werewolf-on-vampire gore, so thanks again one and all) -- wait, where was I? Oh yeah -- since I doubted I could mimic THAT vibe, this year I decided to try and take things in a less gruesome direction by giving myself a project that might teach me a few new tricks while simultaneously paying homage to another (and slightly more kid-friendly) corner of my mental Halloween time-machine brain.

I'm sure that by now most of you have come to the same conclusion as me: time to make a stop motion video for one of my favorite childhood songs and shoot the whole thing using an iPhone and the "Hipstamatic" photo app. Perfect!

Okay so here, (if you're interested that is) is way too much info around what that little story looked like:

Choosing the song was actually easy enough -- ever since I was 5 or so I've been in love with the Kay Lande and Wade Denning "Halloween: Games, Songs and Stories" record (here's my Scar Stuff write up from March of 2006), and as far as children's Halloween tunes go I think the opening track comes pretty damn close to perfection. So yeah -- song: check.

The decision to use the iPhone actually took me a bit longer to get to, but it made total sense thanks to some evolving patterns in my creative projects/art/WhateverYouWannaCallIt over the last year or so. Basically I've been playing with the idea of using my phone as a kind of creative Swiss Army Knife; shooting video of random events so I can do more editing, getting reacquainted with the idea of always having a camera around, and generally just trying to approach every day as having the potential to become a document-able project of some sort (the results aren't always pretty, but now and then I will post examples over at my JasonWillis.com site.)

In particular I found that I was having a lot of fun using the Hipstamtic photo app on my phone, and quickly enough my to-do list became rife with time-draining ideas like "Gridstamatic Collages" (which are cubist type grids composed of multiple square images that kinda-sorta form a whole when taken in at once, sometimes in conjunction with a hardware accessory like the macro OlloClip lens [also used here in the Halloween video]), and "Tucson Motels Are Anxious for Your Patronage" (which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like).

So all that was missing was the stylistic component, and since I-have-always-loved-but-have-never-done-any-stop-motion, I finally decided to mix everything together and give this combo of elements a shot (well, more like several thousand shots). I started out with a few crude photo tests in the second week of September, and just last night I managed to export the complete mess via Final Cut Pro. It was a little more intensive that I thought it would be (see the "Post Mortem" below), but I genuinely had a great time and I truly hope that you guys dig the results.

And hey -- Happy Halloween everyone!

Post mortem:

This project was a huge amount of fun, but it was also just WAY the hell more work than I thought it would be. In fact to all you professional stop motion folks let me just say: Holy Crap! You are clearly wired with much more patience than I am. Wow.

Another thing that I didn't really factor in is that the Hipstamtic app can only (currently) process a maximum of 9 photos during any given stretch. That certainly slowed some image capture sessions down but to be honest those pauses were usually pretty helpful because I ALSO needed way more time to build the little characters, props & environments for every scene in here than I had initially envisioned. Obviously I need to work on both my time estimate and time management skills.

Still, and with all of that said, I'd totally do it again. The end result is almost exactly what I hoped it would be: a mishmash of styles, aesthetics and techniques, all wrapped up in a 60's-70's home-movie vibe. I had fun, I learned a huge amount, and I had a good excuse to buy a whole bunch of cheesy Halloween toys. All in all I'd call that a pretty win/win/win scenario; I heartily recommend that anyone so inclined give it a try.

And finally, if you'd like to check out some uncropped stills (and all of my Hipstamatic setting details), here's a gallery of images representing each video segment, along with some behind-the-scenes type jive. Most of my favorite Hipstamtic combos make an appearance, and this project even helped me cipher out a few new ones that I really liked. Hooray!

The Cast of Eerie Publications perform the Johnson-Smith Novelty Company "Horror Record"

2010-10-22T15:04:00.011-07:00

Direct link

Fiends! Boils! Ghouls! So forth! Gather 'round while I spin a tale of... ah hell let me just jump right in -->

So what we've got here is an annual Halloween post that comes wrapped up inside of a link to a project I just finished. How about THAT for a set-up opening sentence! No?

Okay, okay let's get down to the specifics:

This is a short film I made which marries the audio from the probably the WorstBest Halloween record I own (which as you may remember I mail ordered from a comic book ad when I was 8 or so) with the crude and gruesome cover art favored by the company that gave me the most nightmares as a child, Eerie Publications. I know, I know -- "At last!" right?

Some (general) technical info:

It was primarily created in three programs:

Photoshop: This was the most time consuming part. I did lots and lots of visual prep work like eliminating cover text, completing any truncated images (like if there was only half of a vampire or something because it hit the end of the cover page), breaking components out into separate layers and then creating new art that would fill in the holes left by moving those elements around, and so forth.

Motion: This is the program that allowed me to do all of the animation in XYZ (or "3D" you could say) space. Here's the part where I'd move the images around like pieces of paper on popsicle sticks inside of a shoebox stage (well at least that's how it felt to me) and sync them with the audio.

Final Cut Pro: This was what I used to do the final editing together of the various scenes, add the transitions (like the cross fades, etc), and to do the final exporting to video.

All of this took me about 4 weeks from start to finish, which accounts for more than a few false starts and obsessive tweaks. This was actually the first project I had ever attempted to do in Motion and while it turned out to be waaaay more work than I had initially bargained on, I really had a lot of fun.

(Oh, and yeah -- I eventually came to terms with the fact that I was going to have to cut the flogging scene; Eerie Publications just didn't have a single decent whip-heavy cover that I could find. Too tame for their tastes I guess.)

Okay! Hope you folks enjoy the video & my fingers are crossed that I'll see you all again next year!

Boo!

Jason and the Monster Problem

2009-09-19T06:56:00.006-07:00

B&W mockup and color "final" that I drew at age 6 for a book written by my Mother. Cubist!

Well hey there everyone! Nice to see you, nice to see you.

So I've gotten a lot of really great and supportive emails lamenting the lack of activity (ahem, not to mention *files*) here on Scar Stuff, and while I've done my best to catch up with most of them I figured that it's probably well past time for me to post a somewhat more public explanation regarding my absence/ silence/ total lack of awesomeness/ etc.

The short story is that a while back (after a brief period wherein Blogger had inexplicably frozen the site) I was hit up w/ a "Cease and Desist" demand concerning an OOP file I was sharing, and since I preferred to pay for bandwidth and host things myself (rather than utilizing a file hosting service like Rapidshare or whatever) my provider was hit up as well. After a day or two of reflection this led me to decide that I might as well go ahead and delete the majority of the files here and essentially close up (virtual) shop. To be honest the timing wasn't bad; I was finding spare time in my life to be in short supply and since my original intent wasn't much more than to get the "share ball" rolling (trust me, I succeeded *well* beyond any initial hopes I might have conjured up) as well as connect with other like-minded folks, it all seemed to be something close to kismet.

That said, I wouldn't have traded this experience for anything. While I'd never intended for Halloween records to be my main focus (no, really), before I started up Scar Stuff I can't say that I'd ever found anyone else who cared much about them. When I'd tour the US with one of my bands I'd hit the used record stores to see what kind of weird/ spooky audio they had, and was usually met with a response something akin to "meh". When I'd poke around on line for info (or audio) I'd inevitably come up completely empty handed. Yet as soon as I started posting vintage Halloween records myself the response was instantaneous and overwhelmingly positive; across the board I was met with a highly receptive and enthusiastic audience who were anxious to share tons of fascinating info, memories and experiences around this junk. Whether emailing me directly or using the site comments I honestly received nothing but scads and scads of positive feedback (certainly I never had any trouble w/ "trolls" or anything of the sort), and in the intervening time I've seen my LP rips and cover scans (credited or not, I don't really make a distinction), not to mention dorky *passion* for this stuff spread rapidly all over the world. Not bad!

"Kid Dish Originals" that I drew when I was 5 & 6

Another awesome side effect that I didn't expect: I've scored simply tons of cool stuff thanks to the great folks I met here. Over the duration of Scar Stuff's activity people would send me records (either digitally or physically) on a regular basis, and whenever I managed to aquire some long wished for childhood item (like the Gayle Records "Haunting" 7", the Moon Monster poster, or a 16mm print of the Centron Halloween Safety Film in which I had a role as a kid), I was guaranteed a built-in audience of like-minded folks to share it all with. Very, very cool.

So yeah, that's pretty much it. The files are indeed gone but they were snatched by so many folks that I'd think with a little digging people should be able to scare them up online somewhere. Over the years I've occasionally ripped sets of 4 DVDs composed of the Scar Stuff files which I've given to cool people who have hit me up and are working on like-minded projects. As a kind of final "giving back to the community type" thing (and to show my appreciation for all the great stuff this project has brought me), if some enterprising soul out there wants to set up the infrastructure for a "sharing tree" along these lines I'll be more than happy to kick out the first 10 or so sets. To be honest my organizational skills are horrible when it comes to that kind of thing, but for the 2009 Halloween cycle I'll be happy to kick start what I can. It's really a one-time seasonal offer (as I'm sure I'll find that my intentions rapidly fall behind my situational reality), but don't be shy about cooking it all up if you think you can swing it; sharing has been the whole point.

And again, thanks for all of the emails and kind words everyone; I'm glad to say that I'm doing fine. As for me, these days I'm mostly busy with work and a few other projects I've been tinkering with (a book composed of letters to porn stars, a music documentary that I'm v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y piecing together, some new drone/ psych/ audio nonsense, etc), as well as plain old general life. It's good.

Thanks again, and Happy Halloween everyone!

best,

Jason

Modeling my 1976 "Creature from the Black Lagoon" Halloween Costume

Flyers: Punk Rock & Then Some (1981 - 2006)

2008-01-01T11:40:00.001-07:00

While it's still very much a work in progress, I thought a few folks might enjoy seeing what I've scanned in from my collection of (real, physical, paper -- I ignored digital versions even if I created them) flyers. As it turns out there are actually a few more to come (I just found another small pile), but this is easily the lion's share.

My history with these things is pretty casual/ non-obsessive really. I'm not sure why exactly, but I started grabbing them off of utility poles & record store counters when I was around 10 or 11 years old, then securing them all over my bedroom walls with a wretched substance called "Fun-Tak" (you'll see a lot of oily corner spots as a result). Around 1985 I started making them myself (both because I loved the music so much and because it got me in to the shows for free) and this early design work, along with the little photocopied Punk Rock 'zine I was doing at the time, were most certainly my entry points into the world of graphics -- the field in which I work today.

Of course like most folks who've gotten bit by the Punk Rock bug, these flyers represent a mere fraction of the time I've spent in loud dark rooms (though I didn't see every single show pictured here either), but I'm still both happy and amazed that I've somehow held on to as many as I have. Hope you have fun checking 'em out!

Flyers (1981 - 2006)

Secret Wars II Continues In This Issue

2007-12-19T18:05:00.000-07:00

As part of CRAZY CROSSOVER MULTI-BLOG LIMITED SERIES TIE-IN, I feel duty-bound to alert you to a recent post over at the mighty Secret Fun Blog.

Y'see, over a year ago Kirk posted an old ad that I'd nearly forgotten ("Chimp Artist Will Paint For You!"), but which had captivated my imagination as a kid. As a direct result of some of the info passed along in the comments for that post, I ended up buying a pair of supercool paintings made by Cheeta the Chimp which now grace my bedroom walls & give me no end of delight. After emailing Kirk again to express my thanks (they really are pretty rad), he casually mentioned that he'd one day like to see all the other junk I might've collected & hung up around the house.

Well a project like that sounded kinda cool to me, and to be honest I figured if I did it first I could more easily coax him into doing the same in return (based on what little he HAS shared I'm confident that it'd be worth it -- this public "calling out" is merely phase two of my plan). So yeah, even though the idea had to fester and turn around in my brain for over a year I eventually got it together and took the snaps (figuring that for the end of the story and mostly happy to cross one more item off my mental "to do" list -- my head seems to work on a one-for-one basis at times and to make room for a new idea an old one must be acted upon).

Well THEN, thanks to what I will assume was something of a momentary lapse of judgement, Kirk asked if he might actually be able to share the gallery with his readers on the always-awesome Secret Fun Blog.

What happened next? Sorry, but in true crossover fashion you're just gonna have to follow this link to read the rest of the story...

Christmas 1978, Halloween 1980

2007-10-31T01:53:00.000-07:00

Well I usually don't post stuff like this, but my audio server is tragically out of bandwidth for the month (I'd allotted myself a bit more than $200 for Oct & was crossing my fingers that it would hold out, but I got over 7,000 uniques yesterday alone with lotsa repeat traffic so it looks like I'll really have to up the ante next year). Anyway given the situation it seems like it might be a good time for me to dip into some personal nostalgia in visual form, and to that end here's a quick trip down some of my own spooky memory lane:

The first pic you see is me & my brother Craig on Christmas of 1978. As you can tell I'm proudly modeling my (Sears Wishbook bought!) Famous Monsters sweatshirt here (and while you can't see it, he's actually sporting a Dawn of The Dead shirt himself). I later rebelliously wore this sweatshirt for my 3rd grade yearbook picture; partially because it was my favorite, but mostly because my teacher forbade it & claimed she'd yank me out of line if I dared to come dressed for such an important day with the visage of a decomposing ghoul on my person. She didn't do a thing, and in the finished shot you can clearly see the corpse reaching up out of the bottom of the image. I thought that was pretty cool.

Click to Enlarge

UPDATE: Three pages of ads for the Warren shirt line (Famous Monsters #129, Oct 1976)
01
02
03

Next up it's me flexing my "artistic talent" in public for the first time. In Lawrence KS where I grew up, the downtown merchants allow kids from local grade schools to paint tempra recreations of pictures (that they cook up themselves) on the windows of their businesses for Halloween. It's a really cool program and makes shopping downtown during the Fall extra creepy & special. Somewhat amazingly, this still goes on there today, and you can even see a short video clip about it here.

So back in 1980 I entered a drawing into the competition for the first (& only) time, and here you can see me proudly standing next to my finished piece "Rotting Corpse (with one "Tales from the Crypt" inspired eyeball) Hanging from a Noose in a Graveyard Above a Bloody Axe While a Bat Flies Toward the Full Moon". Extra cool was that as I was painting it, a newspaper photographer came by & took some snaps of me at work (though these aren't those), and I ended up getting a big picture in the paper for my efforts (I think he picked me partially because he thought my painting was good, and partially because he thought it was funny that it was painted over half of an Air Force recruiting office window. Well and maybe because I looked like such a hippy). Oh, and you probably can't tell, but I'm wearing an iron-on t-shirt design that I ordered from the Johnson Smith Novelty Company showing an undertaker excavating a corpse above the words "I Want Your Body". This was by far my favorite shirt in 1980; I guess I had a thing about the rotting (sentient) dead.

Click to Enlarge

Here's a detail of just my painting:

Click to Enlarge

...and to cap it all off here's the (Yeah! That's right!) FIRST PLACE PRICE that I won for my efforts. Naturally, to inspire my current visual output, to this day I have this rather prestigious award proudly displayed on the walls of my home office:

Click to Enlarge

You know, it seems that sometimes my lifelong desire to hold on to weird junk from my past (either physically or as memories) can pay off in unexpectedly cool ways, and the reaction I've gotten from far & wide to this blog is easily the most amazing example of that I've encountered in my life to date. Thanks so much to everyone for making this stuff more fun for me than ever before, and a heartfelt wish to you all for a really, really Happy Halloween (oh and don't worry, I should still be here throughout the rest of the year sharing some of my other audio obsessions.)

Thanks again everyone! Happy Haunting!

Richard Taylor "Nightmare", "Horror", "Terror", "Fright" (Major/ Random Records, 1962)

2007-10-28T08:34:00.000-07:00

Acting as both an addendum and a slight re-cap of two earlier Scar Stuff posts (feel free to check out my earlier entries on "Nightmare" and "Terror"), here's the complete 4 LP run of Edgar Allan Poe stories narrated by Richard Taylor. Well, probably the complete run -- an additional record entitled "Strange" (Random cat #40) is mentioned on the back cover of some volumes in the series, but I can't find evidence of it anywhere else (I'd love to be proven wrong here, so if anyone has a copy please drop me a line.)

Mr Taylor's sketchy profile claims him as "one of the newest sought after 'thriller' actors on the scene today", with producers allegedly finding "his sinister voice mystifying and full of suspense, and in direct contrast to his handsome appearance". Now this all may well be true, but what really strikes me in his delivery is the breathy, manic and nearly unhinged quality he gives these readings. In the best parts (like when the character is all worked up), there's a real sense of low-budget madness coming across -- kinda like the archetypical creep in the cellar was awarded a recording contract or something.

These LPs were initially issued under the "Major Records" name (here's an early ad), but over the years could be more commonly found with the "Random Records" logo attached to a generic cover design (hand stamped in the upper left corner with the word "Nightmare", "Horror", "Terror" or "Fright"). While these dime store sounding recordings got their start in life at the beginning of the "Monster Kid" boom in the early 1960's (they were heavily advertised mainstays in pages of Famous Monsters, Horror Monsters, Mad Monsters, Monster World and probably 50 other magazines with the word "monster" in the title), amazingly enough as late as 1981 you could still pick them up in the back of FM for only $1 each. Since I've already shown the classic early '60's ads on Scar Stuff a couple of times, here's a slightly more "contemporary looking" variant that ran in Creepy, Eerie & Vampirella after Bill DuBay took over as their editor and changed up the art direction in the early 1970's.

Click To Enlarge

Oh and one last warning before you get going, side one of "Fright" (aka "the House of Fright") is missing a few lines right at the tail end, but it really doesn't detract much from the story, which is a two part adaptation of "The Fall of the House of Usher".

Okay! Let's get those "Eerie Midnight Ghoul Parties" started!

Richard Taylor "Nightmare" (Major/ Random, M-36, 1962) (192 kbps)

Richard Taylor "Horror" (Major/ Random, M-37 1962) (192 kbps)

Richard Taylor "Terror" (Major/ Random, M-38, 1962) (192 kbps)

Richard Taylor "Fright" (Major/ Random, M-39, 1962) (192 kbps)

Mail Order Monsters

2007-10-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! Well this week has been a lot crazier than I thought it would be, but I'm still planning on getting my act together enough to post a few more pre-Halloween audio goodies. In the meantime however I figured I'd issue a stop-gap in the form of some visual treats, specifically several scans I've made of (mostly) monster-related mail order items from the 1960's.

Some background: The majority of these come from Charlton Press' "Mad Monsters" & "Horror Monsters" magazines, and a smaller percentage are from even less common mags like "Modern Monsters" (Prestige Publications), "3-D Monsters" ("Fair Publishing" -- actually Myron Fass!) and "Monster Mania"(Renaissance Productions).

Warren Publications and the Captain Company are represented by a few pages from "Monster World" & "Spacemen" (most of the "Spacemen" ones are at the end of page 4 -- some cool stuff I'd love to check out there), but for the most part I tried to avoid the big guns (Famous Monsters, Creepy, Eerie, etc) since many of those ads are readily available online (case in point: here's a great Flickr set.)

I also avoided using anything from the 1970's (Monster Times, Castle of Frankenstein, House of Hammer, etc etc), but I bet I eventually break down & just start scanning everything in. That's how this stuff always starts, isn't it? Anyway, enjoy!

Monster Magazine Ads from the 1960's

Gayle House Records "The Haunting" (Gayle House, GH-101, 1971)

2007-10-12T17:49:00.000-07:00

You know, the last year of my life has been absolutely amazing in terms of fulfilling my childhood comic-book dreams. Nearly everything I'd ever lusted for in those (already) out of date pages has fallen into my lap. Abstract art paintings done by a chimpanzee? Check! That Super-Cool "Giant 'Life Size' Moon Monster Poster" I'd dreamt of for so long? Check! With all of this good fortune sailing my way, what could be left?

Well truth be told, there was only one more "top of the list" type thing I could think of. One more thing that (casually but persistently) still preyed on my comic-book-ad-loving imagination. That's right -- the record described in the ubiquitous early 1970's ad with the cloaked ghoul commanding the reader to "Invite Your Friends Over For A Haunting". Sooooo rad looking; it just HAD to be great. I mean -- how could it not deliver the goods? Just look at that fantastic copy:

"Just imagine how scared your friends will be when you flip out the light and they start hearing creepy sounds like the howl of a wolf, a creaking door, chains rattling, and then a man's voice telling them that the house is haunted and they are to die -- one by one. They'll be scared stiff when they hear footsteps coming across the floor, the sound of people fighting, glass breaking, hideous laughter, terrible shrieks and screams, eerie moaning and then more footsteps, more screams... Each person in the room will think that he is going to be the next victim."

Man. How fucking awesome was this record going to be? Why, completely and utterly off the scale of awesomity, naturally. So yeah; I'd poked around for this one pretty frequently over the years, but the few people I could find who'd actually heard it assured me that it was both "pretty bad", and that it was "basically the same as the Johnson Smith Novelty Company 'Horror Record'". Naturally the first statement made me want it all the more, but the second statement actually gave me pause. In fact the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me that a single company might well have churned out just one 7" 33 RPM record's worth of spookiness in the early '70's, and then licensed it off to a few mail order companies simultaneously. Yeah, that's probably what happened. Oh well, it was still a cool ad.

Well as it turns out that's not what happened at all. In fact as you'll soon be able to discover, not only are the sounds on the Gayle House single unique, the record has a freakishly lame and astoundingly perfect charm all its own. It even manages to scrupulously follow the rules of the mighty Rip-Off Halloween Record genre (those being: a totally half-assed "story telling" side, and a banded "sound effects" side using most of the same audio library just without the narration), while still happily amplifying both their cheapest AND most exploitive qualities! Yeah! I honestly don't want to spoil it for you too much (Threadbare plot! Terrible narrator! One sound effect repeated ad nauseam! Children in peril!), but believe me, as far as I'm concerned it was more than worth the 30+ year wait. And hey, it even works just like the ad said it would!

Oh, and one more side note, here's a link to the current owner of the PO Box featured in the ads. My guess is that they probably don't have a lot of leftover "Haunting" records laying around but hey -- you never know.

(Click To Expand)

Gayle House Records "The Haunting" (192 kbps)

Samhain "Live At The VFW#18 in KC, MO Aug 21, 1984"

2007-10-06T16:16:00.000-07:00

In keeping with the season and my desire to get some more of my old live recordings out there, here's a complete Samhain show I taped way back in 1984. I've only copied this off one or two times over the years, but (as I've seen it pop up on a few tape trader lists since then) I guess that was enough for it to start making the rounds. However the good news is that this is the first time it'll be taken from my original source cassette so even the biggest Samhain fans out there will at least be getting a sonic upgrade.

So let's see, how to frame this? Well I guess it'd be easy for me to open up by casually bragging about how I snagged a copy of the Misfits "3 Hits From Hell" single (ahem, 1st pressing with Fiend Club insert, if you must know) for 10 cents at Kief's Records in 1981. Sounds pretty good, right? Well it's accurate and everything, but to be honest I had no fucking idea who they were at the time. None. In fact I only bought it because it WAS 10 cents, the Misfits logo on the insert was swiped from Famous Monsters magazine, and I noticed that the skull on the back was nicked from the 1972 Amicus "Tales From the Crypt" flick (which had blown my mind during its 1978 re-release). So no, I wasn't the hippest 12 year old in the world or anything, it was just total blind luck. Kinda de-cools it, I know.

Of course that single was GREAT and I played the hell out of it, but somehow I still managed to keep the Misfits pretty low on my radar over the next few years. In fact I was out of the loop enough that by Sept of 1984 I didn't even know the band had been broken up for almost a year -- not till I saw the flyer for this show which announced that "from the ashes of the Misfits" something called Samhain (which my friend Andre kept telling me was properly pronounced "Sow-ween") had risen. So while I was curious enough to wanna check 'em out, my investment level wasn't terribly huge. Really, I was more pumped up about catching 7 Seconds (who were on the same bill) for the first time. Kinda de-cools it, I know.

Flash forward to the show: 7 Seconds went on first and they WERE great; easily the best time I would ever see them over the course of the 80's. They played a very tight set to a packed floor and when they were done I enthusiastically picked up a copy of the "Nuke Your Dink" single (from Kevin) and a semi-slick fanzine called "Hard Times" (from some other guy) outside the hall. Samhain seemed to be taking forever to set up and when I finally wandered back in I noticed that the crowd had kinda... changed. Instead of the "hyper youth" that had been all over the place 30 minutes earlier, these older looking folks were up front and a bunch of local KC punkettes were confusing me by busily screaming the word "Mommy!" over and over (I hadn't heard "Walk Among Us" yet). All of a sudden Samhain started playing and to be honest, I didn't know what to make of them at first either; a lot of their music was slower (with melodies hidden more deeply inside the dirges) than most of what I'd been listening to, and what the hell was this "harmonizer" that they kept demanding be turned on? Where were all of the catchy pop choruses? Did I like this or not?

Well by the end of their set I'd figured out that I liked it a lot (perhaps you can make out some of the, uh, insightful conversation my friends and I are having during the encore clapping), and I played the hell out this tape that fall and for several falls to come, sparking a real obsession. Coming across more of this kinda stuff was somewhat hard in those days (I remember driving for well over 2 hours to the house of a guy I didn't even know so that I could try and convince him to dub me a crappy 10th generation tape of a few Plan 9 singles), but 23 years later the magic of the internet allows me to easily share my little time-travel memory trip with YOU. All Murder, All Guts, All Fun!

Click To Enlarge

Samhain "Live At The VFW#18 in KC, MO Aug 21, 1984" (192 kbps)

Halloween Safety [Second Edition] (1985, Centron)

2007-10-01T07:13:00.001-07:00

Okay Educational Short Film Fans! Direct from 1985 I present "Halloween Safety [Second Edition]", yanked straight from the Centron/ Coronet film vaults. Produced 8 years after the original, this was also filmed in my hometown of Lawrence, KS and stocked with local acting talent & scenery.

Really more a complete reworking than a "second edition", the difference in both era and production aesthetics is apparent within the first few seconds of the film's un-spooling: check out that killer montage of awesome dime-store masks flying through the air! Yeah! This is immediately followed up by some great & simple shots of kids walking around in cheapo store-bought Ben Cooper & Topstone getups, which felt just perfect. I mean, maybe I'm just speaking for myself here, but despite the fact that on the real Halloween night in 1985 I was busily enjoying something billed as "The Scum Of The Earth Costume Party", seeing those kids parade about in their outfits more than managed to resurface plenty of decade-dormant memories. Sadly none of my childhood regional Midwestern candy faves show up during the treat sequences though -- where the hell are the Cherry Mashes & Valomilks? Ah well, I guess you can't have everything.

So anyway, settle back from the vantage point of 22 years worth of hindsight and help yourself to loads of quality advice on pumpkin carving, fire hazards, costume functionality, mask visibility, street crossing etiquette, vandalism & mayhem, treat tampering (bear in mind that this was only a few years after the 1982 Tylenol murders), and more -- all told against a sub-Michael Jackson soundtrack by an animated Jack-O-Lantern narrator!

Part One:

Part Two:

Halloween Safety (1977, Centron)

2007-09-08T12:26:00.000-07:00

Okay! Just amazing! I finally (finally!) acquired a 16mm reel of the Centron/ Coronet Halloween Safety educational film I appeared in back when I was 7 years old! It had been so long that I could scarcely remember a thing about my involvement, and mostly questioned whether or not it would turn out that I was even really in the damn thing after all. But as of today, for the first time in 30 years, I can confirm that: yes, yes I am. The grand screen-time-total of my glorious film debut? About 14 seconds. 14 seconds of complete fucking Halloween awesomeness.

So the basic deal is that in 1976 I was asked to be in this thing by a casting scout who visited my grade school and picked me out of my 2nd grade class's outfit parade. My costume was a homemade Creature From The Black Lagoon getup with a thin rubber mask ordered out of a comic book for the head, and my previous year's Sears-bought "Planet of the Apes" suit turned inside out, dyed dark green and accented with darker green hanging cheesecloth (which was supposed to resemble seaweed) for the body. Well as it turns out -- and I had completely forgotten this 'til I started watching -- I wasn't actually allowed to wear my rubber Creature from the Black Lagoon mask in the film at all, since a key safety point seems to be that masks are oh-so-very-unnecessary for Halloween fun. Instead (and this all came rushing back to me) they had some make-up dude come in & paint my face like a graveyard ghoul -- it looks great! Really crude and minimalist but still completely in step with my cheesecloth-covered-costume, which now looks to be the dismal shroud of the roaming undead. Man, I totally should have ripped off that look for my costume the following year.

So anyway, what actually happens in those earth-shatteringly historic 14 seconds of mine? Well basically you see me put in a set of vampire teeth (with a giant strand of drool stretching from my hands to my mouth) and then start to apply some white face paint to my lips. Next we cut to a "Halloween Party" scene, and here I remember initially being in front of the whole group only to be shamefully sent to the very back after trying to eat a cookie before the camera started rolling. As the scene pans around you can see me talking to a couple of other kids for a few frames (at least 3 of them were grade school pals of mine) and then... well that's pretty much IT for me actually. Totally incidental! Totally forgettable! Totally worth the three decades wait!

Check the exciting "Jason Only" edit here:

...and then don't miss the REAL full-length 1977 version, where you can watch a reasonably creepy Witch costume devolve into an utter wreck of reflective tape and white fabric over the course of 11 minutes.

Part One:

Part Two:

Coming soon: the completely different "second edition" version from 1985. All new plot! All new kids! All new safety tips!

Well, well, well.

2007-09-05T20:56:00.000-07:00

(Click To Expand)

You guys are pretty fucking amazing. So many astounding emails & comments -- I am fully blown away. For real.

Well okay, you win. Since it's quite clear that I've pretty much got to come back for Halloween this year, I'm now on the hunt for a decent hosting situation. Once I've got that together (a few options are in the works) I'll re-up all the old files and then get to work on adding some cool new ones (assuming, that is, that the rest of the increasingly astounding blogs which keep popping up haven't already beaten me to it. It'll be tough, trust me.)

In the meantime I guess I should point out (to any of the fine folks who have emailed me directly & might've missed the links hidden within the comments), that the lion's share of the files I encoded, along with plenty more I wish I had, are actually already being capably hosted on a variety of other super-cool blogs run by some terribly committed people. While I don't have a full list handy, here (off the top of my head) are a couple of good places to check (please feel free to add more in the comments):

Dave's Mostly Ghostly Music Sharing Blaaahhhggg!!!

Cool Kooky Hip and Groovy

And as good as those are I know that if you search a bit you'll find even more are out there as well -- I honestly can't even being to keep up with all the badical new blogs I've seen with even the most casual of searches.

Actually that kinda brings me to another small point I should at least mention: My main goal with this whole Scar Stuff project was really just to get these records back into as common a circulation as possible so that everyone could enjoy them, but during the process of trying to achieve this end I was really wiped out by the sheer volume of new audio that came at me from all angles as a result. So cool!

In fact it strikes me that the obsessive collectors here on the internet have an inborn anxiousness to play against type (read: creepy greedheads using arcane knowledge & rare media as a tool for wielding power over similarly inclined, but less flush, folks) -- in my clicking around I mostly have seen them happy to scattershot a kind of guileless generosity, all of which couldn't make me happier. In fact speaking of generous, if you like the stuff I was posting you probably should check out the Power Records Project Yahoo group -- there are a few people on there who have REALLY set the bar high for friendliness & sharing (Hello Leland Dugger!). Poke around a bit & I doubt you'll be disappointed.

Okay! So I guess now the hunt is on for some place to spend my file-hosting money. Any suggestions while I encode a few LPs & do some research? Thanks for a year of well-wishes & I promise I'll talk to you guys soon!

To Serve(r) Man

2006-11-03T14:11:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone -- just a quick note to let you know that the files aren't gone for good or anything, there's just some behind-the-scenes server craziness that's been going on. A-Number 1 Superfine Scott, the astoundingly gracious fellow who actually HOSTS the files has, in point of fact, been all over it, and there will probably be a full return to form within a week at the very outset. Sorry for the holdup, but we oughtta be back in business soon.

John Ciardi "What Night Would It Be?"

2006-10-31T02:26:00.001-07:00

Back when I was about 4 or 5 my parents introduced me to a really cool series of books written by John Ciardi and illustrated by Edward Gorey. They were just spilling over with imaginative stories and poems, and I would stare at the fantastic art for hours either while reading them or begging to hear them read. While many of the pieces were enjoyably creepy and otherworldly, a particular favorite of mine was entitled "What Night Would it Be?", which dealt directly with (surprise!) Halloween. Man, I could run that one over in my head forever.

Well as a short treat (since the great day is now upon us), here's a recording of Ciardi reading that very poem with his young son John. It comes excerpted from the album version of "You Read to Me, I'll Read to You" which was released by Spoken Arts back in 1962, and to complete the experience the perfectly creepy Edward Gorey art is bundled up with the zip file in a variety of sizes.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Link Removed

Prologue to Siesta Redux

2006-10-29T14:35:00.000-07:00

Well hello there everyone. Nice to see you, nice to see you. So since it's looking as though I'm probably not gonna have the time to adequately post much more before Halloween hits, this is probably as good a moment as any to thank everyone for all their amazing support & interest over the duration of this blog (the astoundingly cool & impressively rapid unearthing of an educational film I acted in back when I was 7 years old is only the most recent example of the great folks that are out there). I'll probably be pausing for a bit here as well but don't worry too much about the hiatus -- I'm not closing up shop or anything. I'll just be taking a short break in order to wrap up a few other things before I get back into the swing of it here.

I also figure that when I return I'll probably concentrate at least a little more on some of my other aural interests for a spell, if only to try & get some balance in place after my mad dash towards Halloween 2006 (okay, okay -- maybe it wasn't really a "mad dash", but you know what I mean). I've still got more creepy sounds to share though, and I sincerely hope that I've rekindled some old memories here as well as helped to provide fodder for new ones. Seeing this stuff pop up in various mixes and comps over the last few months has been amazingly cool (like right offa my turntable & into the spooky gestalt or something), as has the proliferation of all the other great blogs trading in a similar currency. There are a lot of dedicated people out there who are sharing half-forgotten and oddball stuff like there's no tomorrow, and it warms me to the depths of my little baboon heart. I love the internet.

Okay! If I get a spare moment or two in the next couple days I'll throw at least a few more things up but if not, I hope you enjoy spending time with what's already here. See ya real soon, and Happy Halloween!

(original pic swiped from the Halloween Make Up Kits page off of the endlessly excellent Tick Tock Toys archive)

A Request: "Halloween Safety" (Centron/ Coronet Films, 1977)

2006-10-27T10:50:00.000-07:00

So far my film career has been pretty limited; in 1977 I was in an educational short called "Halloween Safety" made by Centron/ Coronet films (here's a still, though this isn't me):

and then 23 years later I was in a feature length porn film called "A Return to Boobsville" (more on this someday, but for now you can just click here if you wanna see a screen grab. It probably falls somewhere between kinda safe & kinda not safe for work, but don't worry; I kept my clothes on the whole time).

Now while these two appearances share a few similarities (I'd suggest that both try to inform and entertain the viewer for example), the main difference as I see it is that I can easily watch "A Return to Boobsville" all day and night on a variety of formats, but "Halloween Safety" vanished from me the day it was made and remains lost in my own mental limbo. I thought I'd catch a break when I was still living in Kansas and Centron threw out tons of their old film around 1992, but a friend of mine salvaged much of it from the dumpster behind their offices and nothing turned up. When "Carnival of Souls" came out in a hotshit double-disc Criterion Collection edition I hoped that, among the other Centron educationals, "Halloween Safety" might appear (there's a spooky thematic bridge there, right?), but no dice. Hey I even asked Something Weird Video to poke around when I was designing box covers for them, but they didn't find a thing.

These days I can barely remember anything about the experience, but here's what remains: in 1976 I was asked to be in the film by a scout who visited my grade school and picked me out of my 2nd grade class's outfit parade. My costume was a homemade Creature From The Black Lagoon getup with a thin rubber mask ordered out of a comic book for the head, and my previous year's Sears-bought "Planet of the Apes" suit turned inside out, dyed green and accented with darker green hanging cheesecloth (which was supposed to resemble seaweed) for the body. I'm pretty sure my screen time is totally minimal and all I really recall is that I told a "Halloween joke" in a party scene, I was scolded for being too rambunctious at one point, and I marched around a bit with the other kids -- that's pretty much it.

So by now I'm sure it's rather obvious that I, you know, need to see this again, right? Well I'm hoping that through the magic of the internet, I can finally close in. From what I can sleuth out through Google it seems that a number of schools claim the title in their collections, and for a while a company called "Magic Lantern" even stuck up a short clip (that's where the picture for this post came from) culled from the 1985 "Second Edition". To be honest I don't really know if the '85 release is a re-editing of the '77 version or if it's 100% unique, but seeing that clip was the closest I've gotten to this thing in years. My question now is: can anyone out there help? Perhaps some obsessive educational film collector or someone with access to a school film library? Anyone? C'mon now! Just hit me up!

Heh. Man, I sure hope that after all these years it turns out I'm actually IN this thing.

Woolworth & Woolco Halloween TV Commercial (1976)

2006-10-27T09:53:00.000-07:00

...yanked from the comments because it's just too cool, here's a vintage Woolworths/ Woolco Halloween TV ad from 1976 that features the "Sounds to Make You Shiver" LP!

Thanks for spotting it Lochnar13, and thanks to Super 8 Monsters.com for uploading it in the first place; you both rule!

George S. Irving "Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark by Alvin Schwartz" (Caedmon, TC1794, 1986)

2006-10-27T05:22:00.001-07:00

I could probably do with a cleaner copy of this record, but since it contains some great stories I decided to post it in time for Halloween rather than seek out an upgrade (and if one comes along I'll just swap out the zip file).

UPDATE: The ass-kickingly generous Dr. Terror was gracious enough to upload a totally great sounding rip in the comments section here, so I've separated out the tracks, re-tagged it & uploaded it w/ album art over the original zip. If you downloaded the earlier version (sourced from my static-laden LP) I think you'll find this new version to be a drastic improvement. Thanks again Dr. Terror!

UPDATE II: Some folks were having trouble extracting a few of the files, so hopefully the third time's the charm here

Sourced from folklore scholar Alvin Schwartz's 1981 collection of the same name, "Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark" features a familiar batch of concepts at work (opener "The Big Toe" is even mentioned in the liner notes as "having almost as many variants as storytellers"), but Irving is clearly having fun with the material and the addition of background music makes the LP almost seem more like an early '70's Troll record (click here and here for examples) than many of Caedmon's other offerings. Still it IS clearly Caedmon -- the literary angle is high, and the mix of jokey quick sketches and creepier bits work well together in conjuring up the intended sleep over/ campfire/ dark room vibe, making the album well suited for kids who like a few hackles.

"So put on the recording, sit back with a friend (or alone, if you dare), and let your flesh crawl. AND TURN OUT THOSE LIGHTS!"

Link Removed

Eddie And The Monsters "Whatever Happened To Eddie?" (Rocshire Records, XR95041, 1983)

2006-10-25T10:42:00.001-07:00

The mighty Butch Patrick's band! Direct instigators for the Mtv "Basement Tapes" series (which as a wee lad introduced me to the greatness of Lubbock, TX's New Wave finest, the Nelsons, but that's another story)! Creators of this great novelty Wave-O tune beloved by many a Dr. Demento listener! Fronted by the coolest kid in Munster-land (not to mention Lidsville)! Pointlessly tied up in rights-issue nonsense & shockingly nowhere to be found! He's the kid from Mockingbird Lane!

Link Removed

The Haunted House Company "Halloween Party Planner Flexi" (Haunted House Company, 81081, 1981)

2006-10-25T06:31:00.000-07:00

In the tradition of the Spearhead Marketing "Halloween Party Instructions & Story" single that I posted some time ago, comes this form and function flexi designed to be used in combination with your own live-action Halloween party. I doubt I could describe it any better than supercool sexploitation expert Terry Thome (who was kind enough to send it to me) did in his email, so let me just quote him here:

"The set had everything needed to throw a Halloween party. Part one of the record is called "NEEWOLLAH, The Witch Story" where "Neewollah the Witch" tells her story of how she became a witch. Part two (on the same side) is the "HAUNTED HOUSE TOUR"; the idea here is the host sets up a room in advance with fabric hanging from the ceiling (cobwebs) and peeled grapes in a bowl (eyeballs) and such. Then, during the party, kids are blindfolded and led through the room while the record plays and they feel the grapes and are basically hit with objects to simulate a haunted house. I never went through with the party, but I played the record enough. Actually, I'm surprised the record plays as well as it does considering it hasn't been treated with the best of dignity through the years."

...and that about sums it up. In fact the only thing he really left out is that it's a sure bet "Neewollah"'s voice is going to drive you to tear all of your hair out by the end, and that's probably just perfect.

The Haunted House Company "Halloween Party Planner Flexi" (219 VBR kbps)

The Creed Taylor Orchestra/ Kenyon Hopkins "Shock" (1958), "Panic" (1959), "Nightmare!!" (1962)

2006-10-25T05:58:00.001-07:00

From well known film composer Kenyon Hopkins came these 3 cool albums of stories-in-sound, released in 1958, 1959 & 1962 respectively. Well described by Tony Maygarden as "lots of spooky sound effects over tone poems with a jazz beat", the first two were recorded for ABC (while Hopkins was semi-moonlighting from Capitol under the "Creed Taylor Orchestra" moniker), and the third was released by MGM under his own name. Over the course of the three albums Hopkins mostly depicts the short tales utilizing his compositional skills, throwing in extra layers of library effects and the occasional voice-over to fully paint the picture. The end result, somewhat in the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" tradition of the day, is both creepy & classy. Hey! Just like you!

"If you were expecting a little dinner music, perhaps you've come to the wrong place. Then, again, when was the last time you had us over?

Link Removed

Link Removed

Link Removed

...and just to round things out, here's a pair of Famous Monsters ads:

Ugo Toppo "Tales of Horror and Suspense by Ambrose Bierce" (CMS, 513, 1969)

2006-10-22T21:42:00.001-07:00

The Famous Monsters ad...

...and the horrifying tales from the past:

Link Removed

Forrest J. Ackerman and Frank Coe "Music For Robots" (Science Fiction Records, MFR-1001A, 1964)

2006-10-22T21:35:00.001-07:00

The Famous Monsters ad...

...and the amazing sounds of the future:

Link Removed

Horrific Child "L'Étrange Monsieur Whinster" (Eurodisc, 913063, 1976)

2006-10-21T13:33:00.001-07:00

This rare French Horror-Psych-Prog LP largely made the audio rounds about a year ago thanks to it's inclusion on the Nurse With Wound list; and assuming you're the kind of person who thinks they might enjoy a little French Horror-Psych-Prog in your life now & then, it's well worth the half an hour you'll need to invest in digesting it.

The work of Jean-Pierre Massiera (a guy behind an awful lot of interesting/ experimental audio), it can been seen as a pretty logical progression from the fantastic & spooky-themed Les Maledictus Sound project which he also helmed (and in fact was similar enough in vibe that the "Les Maledictus Sound" CD re-release even contains a "Horrific Child" excerpt). Weaving Krautrock-esque prog around a spacy horror-soundtrack atmosphere (complete with sound effects lifted from a variety of sources you'll probably recognize), it's a really hypnotizing and singular listen -- and the guy who gave me this file even included a few giant scans of the front & back cover along with the audio. Très bien!

Link Removed

Mort Garson "Black Mass/ Lucifer" (UNI, 73111, 1971)

2006-10-21T13:31:00.001-07:00

A great proto-prog (okay, okay -- I'm really just making terms up now) Moog album from 1971 that's been fairly well documented elsewhere on the web, this was the brainchild of Mr. Mort Garson, working under the conceptual name of "Lucifer". While I know it's mostly just hard to imagine a major label running with something this "out there" today (making it an excellent companion to Louise Huebner's "Seduction Through Witchcraft" LP from 1969), the real surprise for a lot of the folks I've played it for is the compositional tightness of the songs, and how enjoyably it all works as a whole. Not just a cultural artifact from the early 70's, it's got some genuine creepiness to it as well that could easily be seen as pre-figuring a lot of the sounds Goblin would employ only a few years later.

Note: As a bonus for folks who may already have this in their collection I've also included scans of the complete liner notes in with the zip file. Written by Michael Owen Jones Ph.D. (still a professor of History and Folklore at UCLA), they never seem to make the rounds when this record is shared, which is a shame as they're almost half the fun.

Link Removed

The Spooky So Far.

2006-10-18T20:59:00.000-07:00

Heya chums! To aid in your downloading as we get closer to Halloween, here's a clickable visual roundup of the spooky sounds posted so far on Scar Stuff. Collect 'em all!

New and Improved! Now with 100% more alt tags!

Oscar Brand And His Young Friends "Trick or Treat: Hallowe'en Celebrated in Story & Song" (Caedmon, TC1624, 1979)

2006-10-18T01:06:00.001-07:00

Entertainer Oscar Brand has had a long and varied career over the years, and this 1979 LP was one of the many children's albums he recorded for Caedmon. Sounding something like a more kid-oriented take on Dean Gitter's "Ghost Ballads" (with maybe a pinch of Wade Denning & Kay Lande's "Halloween: Games, Songs and Stories" around the edges), "Trick or Treat: Hallowe'en Celebrated in Story & Song" aims to present a folk-song celebration of Halloween traditions, with Brand throwing in some back-story on the origins behind the holiday whenever he can. Of course the spookiness factor isn't terribly high for the most part (I mean hey, while "Hallowe'en, Hallowe'en" might be a cool & creepy quick historical summarization, "Clementine" is just never going to sound very frightening to me no matter how grim the subject matter might've originally been), but since they were clearly going for more of a lighthearted "storyteller" vibe it mostly works, and would be pretty good little-kid listening I'm sure.

Quoting the liners:

"The Celts celebrated New Year's Day on November 1st. It was a logical choice, for the harvest was in and the cold white silence of winter was approaching. The Druids began to celebrate this day to honor Samhain, the Lord of the Dead. Honoring Samhain usually meant sacrificing horses and human beings in his name. When the Romans conquered Britain in 61 A.D. they outlawed the sacrifice and the celebration. This didn't prevent the Druids from continuing the practices, but it did cut down on the publicity.

Since those primitive times, our folk music and folk lore have been overloaded by songs and ballads of apparitions, ghosts, witches, demons, goblins, and other unwelcome personalities. [...] From the thousands of old songs, we have chosen an LP-full. We've enlightened these by a few erudite explanations. We have enlarged these by the use of supernatural sound effects. And we have given the whole a twisted ending worthy of the holiday. If you guess the ending before it arrives, score one for your paranoia. We didn't guess the ending -- it happened suddenly and unexpectedly in the studio, and has never been explained. [...]

If any of this is understandable, blame Samhain... he wrote this collection of notes while I watched".

Link Removed

Louise Huebner "Seduction Through Witchcraft" (Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, WS-1819, 1969)

2006-10-15T15:17:00.001-07:00

Criminally out of print (after a brief digital reissue at the hands of Infinite Zero in the mid 1990's), this amazing mishmash of spoken word narration from still-active witch Louise Huebner and electronic music pioneers Louis and Bebe Barron belongs in any collection of the arcane and unique.

Coming from roughly the same era that produced occult celebs like Anton LaVey and Sybil Leek, Huebner was media savvy enough to conjure a 1968 government-issued designation for herself as "Official Witch Of Los Angeles County", and she followed that coup a year later with this LP. Largely adapted from her book of the same name, it's a reverb-heavy collection of scratchily-voiced incantations centered around "charms of seduction and sexual power", and has always struck me as a fully entertaining listen from start to finish. To be fair though, some of my enjoyment may be circumstantial as I first heard this album (via 8-track, no less!) while barreling down a highway in the middle of the night at the age of 16 or 17. I was en route to work a far-distant record fair for my job, and had been uncomfortably sleeping in the back of the van on several crates of albums before this hazily brought me out of my road-coma -- to say that I was completely confused and disoriented is to sell the experience short.

Link Removed

Go Ape.

2006-10-15T10:16:00.000-07:00

Hey all; I've got a heap of stuff percolating in the background for the upcoming week, but if you want to keep things "interactive" in the meantime you're certainly free to add the site profile to your ever-expanding myspace friend list.

You know, or not.

Sounds Records "Hallowe'en Spooky Sounds" (Sounds EP 501, 1962), "Music for Monsters" (Sounds EP 503, 1962), "Spooky Sounds" (Sounds 1205, 1962)

2006-10-10T05:38:00.000-07:00

Re-packaged a few different ways from the '60's to the '70's, these three links represent the output of the "Sounds Records" company out of Glendale, CA (where they moved around a bit -- looks like their final address is now the site of an Armenian book store as well as some law offices.)

Sounds Records seemed to primarily trade in a largely homemade effects library replete with all of the usual frightening suspects; on the "Hallowe'en Spooky Sounds" single and for much of the "Spooky Sounds" LP you'll find goblins laughing, footsteps with chains, people pretending to be cats & dogs -- all the material that makes these records so great (and their stuff IS great to my ears; striking just the right balance between generic dime-store style scary, and the more primitive personal efforts that impart such a unique flavor.)

Where they really step out to shine though, is in their array of totally cool & weirdo theremin sounds, which are unique to their output. Packaged separately on a 7" as "Music For Monsters" & then again on side two of the "Spooky Sounds" 12" LP, these pieces are bizarre other-worldly delights that, like many of my favorite Halloween records, manage to embody an "anything goes" approach which is pretty avant-garde in its bent. Now I don't know if that was the intent mind you (more likely someone said "Ahh, just make it weird!"), but with evocative titles like "Ghouls Glide" & "Banshee Love Call", it sure sounds like a good time was had conjuring these tracks up, and the results are pretty singular. So yeah -- functioning both as a soundtrack and an incidental time capsule, this is cool stuff all around and a more than worthy addition to yer arsenal of Halloween audio. Dig in!

Sounds Records "Hallowe'en Spooky Sounds" (192 kbps)

Sounds Records "Music for Monsters" (192 kbps)

Sounds Records "Spooky Sounds" (192 kbps)

Voodoo Drums "Voodoo Drums In Hi-Fi" (Atlantic, 1296, 1958)

2006-10-09T06:45:00.001-07:00

Perhaps more thematically spooky than aurally, this 1958 entry into the Hi-Fi genre has some cool on-location recordings of genuine Haitian Voodoo ceremonies, primarily as performed by "country group amateurs". I've included a large scan of the (super informative) liner notes as well, and here's a sample to get you started:

"Haiti may be a dark enigma to most of its visitors, but if one learns the language of the drums, the life and mind of its people open to you like a flower. The drums are never silent; day and night they sound from some vague distant place, muffled but distinctly articulated like a heart-beat. [...] The drum rhythms -- as well as the art of making drums -- came from Africa. [...] From Africa also came voudoun, which is a religious ceremonial and also a deeply ingrained attitude to life and the nature of things[...] Through the boungan (the voudoun priest), man converses with nature. Through him, man supplicates for protection against impending dangers, and through him, sometimes, man strikes at an enemy."

Link Removed

Nelson Olmsted "Sleep No More! Famous Ghost and Horror Stories" (Vanguard, 9008, 1956), "Edgar Allan Poe: Tales of Terror" (Vanguard, 1956)

2006-10-05T15:28:00.001-07:00

A pair of LPs released in a few different formats over the years (as stand-alone albums in the '50's, and then as a double record set in the '60's & '70's), these recordings are culled from the popular NBC radio show that Olmsted narrated from '52 to '56. Largely excellent and highly literary adaptations of famous works that are allowed to unravel in 8 to 9 minute vignettes, I think Olmsted's voice and tone will seem especially well suited to the medium among OTR enthusiasts (who will also find a familiar and more languid sense of pacing evident here). Cool stuff!

Link Removed

Link Removed

Wende and Harry Devlin "Old Witch Rescues Halloween" (Reader's Digest Services, 090, 1974)

2006-10-05T03:07:00.002-07:00

The last installment in the "Old Witch" trilogy from Wende and Harry Devlin, "Old Witch Rescues Halloween" followed 1963's "Old Black Witch" (sometimes remembered as "Blueberry Pancake Witch" and adapted for television in 1969 by Gerald Herman as "Winter of the Witch"), and 1970's "Old Witch and the Polka-Dot Ribbon". While it's a lightweight children's story really (and at about 9:10 or so you'll find a skip that I missed when I was doing my audio reconstruction of side two (there were a LOT of skips), perhaps if you pretend that it's an incantation of sorts you'll be able to get past it more easily), I've run into a number of people over the years with fond memories of the series. To give you some visuals, here are a couple of representative images...

...and here's the story in all its glory:

Link Removed

Erica Frost "I Can Read About Ghosts" (Troll Records, ICR1, 1977)

2006-10-05T02:29:00.001-07:00

Somewhat in the tradition of "Georgie", here's a 1977 audio reading from the "I Can Read About" series from Troll ("I Can Read About Ballet", I Can Read About Good Manners", etc). I confess that the post is a bit of a cheat since I didn't scan each & every page along with the sound, but I think you'll be able to follow the story easily enough all the same -- in fact the Alibris description of this title sums it up succinctly; "Andrew is just a little ghost who is afraid of the dark, but he must be brave if he doesn't want to be a ghostling forever". As with all glimpses into ghostly life there are oddball touches here & there (ghosts always seem to have very specific job demands when it comes to haunting and scaring humans, don't they?); personally I just hope I'll be able to present myself successfully to the "Ghost Counsel" when the time comes.

Link Removed

Peanuts "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" (Charlie Brown Records, 2604, 1978)

2006-10-01T14:14:00.001-07:00

Amazingly not available on CD (though throughout the '70's it was released on vinyl in a variety of formats; long playing 12", book & record 7", etc), this is the shortened-for-LP adaptation of the beloved Halloween special from 1966. Recently the subject of a "making of" book (and readily available on DVD), its return to the yearly Halloween television lineup was always welcome for me as a kid (well, aside from all of that "World War I Flying Ace" stuff which just made me impatient for the most part). Just like tons of kids I can remember liberally quoting the "I got a rock" line while Trick or Treating, and the less said about the time I tried to cut up one of my bedsheets in an attempt to emulate the ghost costumes worn by many of the characters the better.

Link Removed

...and hey, while we're at it; here's the whole damn teevee special right offa youtube:

William Conrad "Spirits and Spooks For Hallowe'en Summoned Up by William Conrad" (Caedmon, TC1344, 1973)

2006-10-01T11:29:00.001-07:00

Another fantastically spooky Caedmon Halloween LP from the early '70's, this time with the narrative duties ably handled by William Conrad, then in the thick of his popularity as the private eye "Cannon". This was another public library childhood favorite of mine, and I can recall being quite frightened by the music in "The Secret Commonwealth" for some reason. I'll just quote copiously from Paul Kresh's evocative liner notes and then get along to the downloading:

"Hallowe'en -- All Hallow's Eve -- the eve of All Saint's Day -- a night for mischief, when the goblins all are out playing pranks, when witches and warlocks cavort through autumn air, when dark clouds scud across the moon's scared white face and the wanton October wind strip the branches of trees bare leaf by leaf...

Just listen, as William Conrad, that master spieler of spooky tales, inhabits the grooves of this disc for a spine-tingling session of storm-tossed rhymes and tales. Children, especially, will love to be frightened by him: 'After all, it's only a story.' Or is it?

Bolt the doors, dim the lights, place the record warily on your turntable, lower the needle softly -- but take care! Be you big or little, old or young, huddle close and sit quite, quite still -- never a wriggle nor a murmur now. Sh-shsh! These witches, goblins and ghosts mean business. As Mr. Herrick warned three hundred years ago:

This night, and more for the wonder,
The ghost from the tomb affrighted shall
come,
Called out by the clap of the thunder.

With this record in your collection, mischief need know no season, Any night can be Hallowe'en. Spin it at your risk."

Link Removed

Server Downtime

2006-09-28T20:41:00.001-07:00

Heya folks. Well it looks like the server that's been so capably hosting the Scar Stuff files was getting hit kinda hard (or at least there was something hinky that was creating a bottleneck of sorts -- initial research points to someone hotlinking the files & everything going haywire), so for right now all of the files are temporarily inaccessible. A solution & some clarification is forthcoming I'm sure, but the main thing is that archives are totally safe. Just sit tight & we'll see what we can see (probably sometime on friday morning).

Apologies,

Jason

The Folktellers (Connie Regan & Barbara Freeman) "Chillers" (Mama T Artists, MTA-2, 1983)

2006-09-24T09:50:00.001-07:00

Recorded live on Halloween by cousins Barbara Freeman and Connie Regan (now Connie Regan-Blake), this 1983 LP (an American Library Association "Notable Record") has some genuinely creepy moments to it. Through both the live audience format and their folksy skill, both Connie & Barbara end up weaving a vividly intimate spell with these tales (which are both traditional and penned by other authors; Molly Garrett Bang, Lee Pennington, Julia Ruth Richardson, Jack Prelutsky), and there's ultimately a more mature feel here than I'd initially expected. At turns funny, gruesome and grim, the longer pieces (Connie's mostly) might be particularly well suited to fireplace or candlelight listens should you find yourself being aurally seduced.

Note: Connie Regan-Blake also has a more recent CD of frightening tales that's worth checking out, and it includes studio re-tellings of two of these stories.

Link Removed

Halloween Sound Effects - Jane Gipps and Ralph Harding "Music And Effects Of A Terrifying Nature" (Total Records, TRC931,1982)

2006-09-23T06:13:00.001-07:00

Apparently reissued in the mid '90's on a now OOP CD, this Canadian-born Halloween sound effects LP might be exaggerating things a bit when it comes to that "Music and Effects of a Terrifying Nature" subtitle. Things get started off near the right foot with tracks like "Two Headed Monster Devouring Raw Flesh" and "Growling, Snarling, Slobbering Monster In Chains, Maniacal Laughter", but after a brief torture tangent ("Sharpening The Pendulum Axe", "Tightening The Thumbscrew", etc) you'll find that side two is completely taken up with the rather dubious theme of "Hallowe'en in Space" (even their liner notes seem apologetic on this point, claiming that "Since Hallowe'en is very difficult to define, we found that we were carried away by the space and fantasy feeling that now exists as side 2..."). Now maybe it was thanks to the post-Star Wars world we were all living in, or perhaps the Halloween traditions in Vancouver are more varied than those with which I'm familiar, but whatever the genesis, the end result is that when the listener drops the needle down here in search of scares, they're treated instead to sonic concepts like "Plutonian Ice Caves", "Cosmic Lunacy", and that ol' Halloween fave "Honing the Light Sabre".

"This is an absolutely horrible record album that no collection should be without"... "equally useful for professionals and sound and home movie buffs alike". Well hey, fair enough!

Link Removed

Ghost Stories "2 Complete Halloween Ghost Stories" (Ball Records, CAM1313, 1963)

2006-09-21T06:19:00.000-07:00

Representing a real throwback to glorious hucksterism, there are at least two records in this cut-rate series from Ball which combined inept storytelling on the vinyl and cheap novelty toy giveaways on the packaging. This volume featured a Free! Magic WITCHES WAND that GLOWS in the DARK attached to the front, and a slew of liner notes on the back which the content of the grooves could never live up to:

"A HALLOWE'EN HIT that puts life into your party. This 12 inch, long playing, 'SPOOKTACULAR' album gives you a 'haunting' 44 minutes of scary, spooky, Hallowe'en Stories. Mysterious things happen when a Hallowe'en party scavenger hunt ends up inside 'THE EMPTY HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL'. Even more spine tingling is the dramatization of the most famous monster story of them all 'FRANKENSTEIN'. In addition to these two exciting stories, you get a sensational series of frightening, spine-chilling sounds: weird groans, moaning winds, clanking chains, creaking stairs, were-wolf howl. . . all kinds of spooky sounds for special effects and party fun. This high fidelity album provides fun and entertainment for all ages the whole year 'round. At Hallowe'en time or at any time of the year, guests can, for example, participate in ghost-story telling using pre-selected ghostly sounds to make their story more effective. Party contests can be built around the telling of the best spooky story based on the two stories dramatized in this album. Variations of party fun from this album are endless and entertaining. Buy it now, and enjoy it all year around."

Naturally then, what you actually get is one of the most hilariously inept intros I've ever heard (they manage to tie in the "magic witches wand" though, which I thought was impressive), a poorly acted "Scooby Doo" type haunted house story with the voice actors regularly stumbling over their lines, and a barely audible transcription of a "Frankenstein" radio dramatization that must date back at least 20 years before this record was pressed.

So: cheapo crap designed to quickly rake in as much money from the kiddie market as possible? Yes! With a little dime-store "home-made feel" sprinkled on top to boot! Personally speaking, I could probably spend an hour or two just listening to "intro guy" as he tries to be menacing (as long as he has his pal make a "were-wolf howl" in the background now and then that is). Just great.

Ghost Stories "2 Complete Halloween Ghost Stories" (192 kbps)

Kraft "A Spooky Sounding Halloween Story" (Kraft Flexi, 1978)

2006-09-20T07:10:00.000-07:00

A three and a half minute Kraft promotional flexidisc from the late 1970's which throws together a round of safety tips ("Don't go into a stranger's home, wear a bright reflective costume so that you can be seen at night", all also printed on the back of the flexi and included in the zip file) under the guise of a short and somewhat non-linear haunted house story (the "secret of Halloween" is revealed in an old trunk? Huh?). Waiting until the very end to sneak their commercial message in, a vampire's voice finally reminds all the kids listening to "wait 'til you get home to try Halloween treats, and eat Kraft wrapped candies". Interestingly enough, it was around the time of this flexi's release that I stopped getting homemade popcorn balls, cookies & cupcakes on my neighborhood Halloween rounds as a kid (still thankfully "pre-Tylenol Scare" on the Grand Halloween Timeline though, now there was a bleak year for Trick-or-Treaters.)

Kraft "A Spooky Sounding Halloween Story" (192 kbps)

Vincent Price "Tales Of Witches, Ghosts, And Goblins" (Caedmon, TC1393, 1972)

2006-09-16T12:58:00.001-07:00

I've saved my favorite Caedmon/ Price LP for last. I honestly couldn't tell you how many times I checked this out from the Lawrence, KS public library as a kid (for the record, I checked out a great many of the Halloween albums on this blog from that library in the 1970's, and can place a good deal of my infatuation with this medium of spooky entertainment squarely upon the shoulders of whoever did the buying for the children's "holiday" vinyl section there). Side one of this album in particular was fascinating to me, as it contained recipes and incantations instructing the listener on how both "To Become A Werewolf" and how "To Raise The Dead"; rather highly desirable abilities to my nascent brain. "The Smoker" also caught my fancy, and I've never forgotten the advice about touching every tree in a forest so as to throw hunting dogs off one's scent -- you know, should the need ever arise. Give this fine album a download and perhaps you'll pick up a tip or two here as well.

Link Removed

Vincent Price "A Coven Of Witches' Tales" (Caedmon, TC1338, 1973)

2006-09-16T12:47:00.001-07:00

Another fine Caedmon/ Price collaboration, this one focuses solely on stories (and incantations!) dealing with witches. To briefly quote the liners: "On this dangerous record, best listened to on a moonless night in a dark room with the hand of someone you trust close by to hold, you'll encounter witches of several sorts from several lands." Great stuff.

Oh, and a word about the sound quality here: my copy of this record is a fairly static-laden affair, so for side one I've opted to use an earlier rip in my collection that was encoded (by someone else) at a lower bit rate than what I usually try to share. In an effort to somewhat improve upon that rip however, I've separated the tracks out with the proper titles and included the album art in the tag files. For side two I used my LP copy as the source, as the files in the other rip were incorrectly labeled (they were actually from side two of the Caedmon/ Price "Graveyard of Ghost Tales" record shared earlier here), so please consider this fair warning for some of the pops & clicks which you'll surely encounter.

...to quote the liners once more: "Caution: the stories and recipes in this package may be hazardous to the weak-minded! Use only as directed, and keep away from fire, an element fatal to witches."

Link Removed

Vincent Price "Ligeia" (Caedmon, TC1483, 1977) "The Imp Of The Perverse" (Caedmon, TC1450, 1974)

2006-09-15T06:31:00.001-07:00

..more sonorous storytelling from the Vincent Price/ Caedmon alliance, this time focusing on Edgar Allan Poe (with several of the tracks having recently been reissued on a comprehensive Poe CD, along with a great number of other excellent tales hypnotically recited by Mr. Basil Rathbone).

Link Removed

Link Removed

Vincent Price "A Hornbook For Witches" (Caedmon, TC1497, 1976)

2006-09-12T10:35:00.001-07:00

...and almost as if to magically reply to Bubblegumfink's request, here's the next volume in my Vincent Price Caedmon postings.

Link Removed

Vincent Price "A Graveyard of Ghost Tales" (Caedmon, TC1429, 1973)

2006-09-11T20:11:00.001-07:00

A number of requests for the classic Vincent Price Caedmon recordings have convinced me to begin posting them in dribs & drabs (I'd been kinda casually waiting out of respect for a few other folks who strike me as the real obsessives here). Anyway, the breakdown of this excellent series (and this excellent volume in particular) is well covered by the great site TheSoundOfVincentPrice, and a smattering of the stories (as well as many other fantastic readings from Caedmon's library) can be found scattered around on a few more modern CD collections; all of which I recommend for your late-night creepy-tale enjoyment.

And now on with the show...

Link Removed

Milton DeLugg (The Vampires) "At The Monster Ball" (United Artists, UAL-3378, 1964)

2006-09-07T05:04:00.001-07:00

This is some great 60's novelty R'n'B/ Surf Instro style music (the guitar tone on "The Four Monsters" sounds like Nokie Edwards!) with vocal snippets throughout each song centered around various classic monster themes (lots of Bela Lugosi & Peter Lorrie impersonations, natch). Every tune was composed by pop heavyweight Milton DeLugg (w/ aid from orchestrator George Brackman), and while they're technically more "advanced" compositions, are totally recommended for fans of the Frankie Stein & His Ghouls series. I'm also pretty sure this fellow has made the rounds on the ol' internet before so hopefully I'm not stepping on any toes here, this rip is from a cd-r so my sourcing info is limited.

Link Removed

Richard Taylor: Terror (Major Records M-38, 1962)

2006-08-31T08:07:00.000-07:00

Between this ad:

...and this post of "Richard Taylor: Nightmare" (Major Records M-36, 1962), you ought to be able to figure out the scoop here; yes it's more of the fantastic world of low-budget monster magazine-ad records from the early 1960's! There are two more in this series ("Horror" & "Fright") that I'll get up before long, both so that the complete set is once again in circulation and so that everyone has more than enough time to plan their "eerie midnight ghoul parties" (for which ads of the day assured the public these LPs were "perfect" for). As always if anyone has alternate rips I'd love to hear them -- I'm sure there are a few more floating around & I'd be more than happy to swap mine out if better versions exist.

...and hey, just for the hell of it, here's one of the original ads for the series again again (again):

(click to expand)

Richard Taylor: Terror! (192 kbps).

Bob McFadden And Dor "Songs Our Mummy Taught Us" (BL 754056, 1959)

2006-08-28T06:38:00.001-07:00

An album of spooky-themed Novelty Pop from 1959 (with a hit single that even mentions "Kookie Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb"!), this was a studio collaboration between the late Bob McFadden (a gifted voiceover actor whose list of accomplishments is impressive indeed) & pop-poet phenom Rod McKuen. Many of you have probably heard one or two of the songs here, or are at least familiar with their descendants ("The Mummy" was most excellently covered by The Fall on 1997's "Levitate", and "The Beat Generation" served as partial muse for Richard Hell's "Blank Generation" circa 1974), but for some reason, superfine as it may be, the whole album has never received the full-on deluxe reissue treatment. Well, guess what? This post isn't gonna completely get the job done either -- my rip is missing their version of "Hound Dog" & sadly it was only encoded at 128 kbps. However in the service of archiving that glorious moment in time when it was possible to score a hit single through the simultaneous mocking of monsters and beatniks, it's a damn good start. Like, "help".

Link Removed

Mike Warnke "A Christian Perspective On Halloween" (1979)

2006-08-23T06:30:00.001-07:00

Here's a weird LP from the late 70's; a vinyl pressing of a syndicated Christian radio show loaded with complete & utter misinformation about the history of Halloween, as told by comedian & discredited "Ex-Satanist" Mike Warnke. If you can make it through the whole thing (there's a lengthy stretch of lame comedy thrown into the middle section) you'll find some prime material for sound bites, and a bizarre almost alternate-universe vision of American culture as seen through the eyes of the (still-active) Warnke.

If you're actually looking for a more historically accurate history of Halloween (in particular the tracing of its development as a socialized ritual in America), an unlikely source provides some of the better info I've found: Ben Truwe's "Halloween Catalog Collection" from Talky Tina Press. As you might guess it's primarily a compendium of vintage catalog pages from Halloween novelty sellers, but as Mark B. Ledenback notes on the back cover, it also "includes some ground-breaking research on the history of Halloween as observed in the United States", complete with vintage newspaper accounts of mischief & merrymaking from the first half of the 20th century. If you're looking for more detail (the history section in Truwe's book is all within the under 20 page intro), David J. Skal's "Death Makes A Holiday" or Lesley Pratt Bannatyne's "Halloween: An American Holiday, an American History" probably aren't bad places to start.

Link Removed

...Previously on Scar Stuff

2006-08-21T14:29:00.000-07:00

Using an idea shamelessly stolen from Endless Mike, here's a quick 'n' dirty overview of what's gone down in Scar Stuff so far, broken up by some general categories/ themes:

Scary Spooky Sounds:
• Sounds of Terror! (Pickwick SPC-5104, 1974)
• Richard Taylor: Nightmare (Major Records M-36, 1962)
• Johnson Smith Novelty Company "Horror Record" (Johnson Smith Co, 32071, 1973)
• Wade Denning "Famous Ghost Stories With Scary Sounds" (Pickwick, SPC-5146, 1975)
• Carol Darr and Mark Masuoka - Spearhead Marketing "Halloween Party Instructions & Story" (Spearhead, SM-8267510, 1975)
• The Munsters "The Munsters" (Decca DL 4588, 1964)
• Sounds To Make You Shiver! "Sounds To Make You Shiver! Bloodcurdling! Terror! Horror!" (Pickwick, SPC-5101, 1974)
• Frankie Stein And His Ghouls (Complete LP Discography)
• Haunted House Music Company "Haunted House", "Night In a Graveyard", "The Ride of the Headless Horseman" (1985)
• Boris Karloff "Tales of the Frightened Volume 1" (Mercury, MG 20815, 1963), "Tales of the Frightened Volume 2" (Mercury, MG 20816, 1963)
• Alfred Hitchcock "Music To Be Murdered By" (Imperial, LP-9052, 1958), "Ghost Stories For Young People" (Golden, LP-89, 1960)
• Troll Records "Scary Spooky Stories" (Troll, 50-001, 1973) "Great Ghost Stories (Troll, 50-002, 1973)
• Scholastic Records "The Haunted House..." (1970), "The Teeny Tiny Woman" (1968), "Georgie" (1968), "Georgie And The Noisy Ghost" (1980)
• Troll Records "Thrillers And Chillers" (Troll, 50-003, 1973), "Weird Tales Of The Unknown" (Troll, 50-004, 1973)
• HRB Music "Horror Sounds of Terror - Terror 61 Sounds of Horror" (HRB Music, HRB5000HS, 1979)
• Ghostly Sounds (Gershon Kingsley & Peter Waldron) "Ghostly Sounds" (Peter Pan, 8125, 1975)
• Power Records "Ghostly Sounds: A Haunting Experience" (Power Records, S343, 1974)
• Power Records "Ghostly Sounds" (Power Records, 8145, 1974)
• Power Records "The Monster Series" (1974)
• William Castle "Ghost Story: Thrilling, Chilling Sounds of Fright & the Supernatural" (Peter Pan, 8114, 1972)
• Children Of The Night "Dinner With Drac!" (Pickwick, PIP-6822, 1976)
• Columbia Playtime Records "Spooky Music For Spooky Occasions" (Playtime, 412, 1950)
• Casper The Friendly Ghost "Haunted House Tales" (Peter Pan, 8131, 1975), "Casper And The Demon Of Darkness - Book & Recording" (Peter Pan, 1976)
• Power Records "A Story Of Dracula, The Wolfman And Frankenstein" (BR-508, 1975)
• Famous Monsters "Famous Monsters Speak!" (Wonderland/ AA Records, AR-3, 1963)
• BBC Records - Mike Harding "Sound Effects Vol 13: Death And Horror" (1977), "Sound Effects Vol 21: More Death And Horror" (1978)
• Wade Denning & Kay Lande "Halloween: Games, Songs and Stories" (Golden Records, LP-242, 1969)
• Boris Karloff "An Evening With Boris Karloff And His Friends" (Decca, DL74833, 1967)
• Don Hinson And The Rigamorticians "Monster Dance Party" (Capitol, 5314,1964)
• D. Records "Halloween Sounds & Music for Your Parties, Trick or Treaters & School Festivals" (D. Records, SR8001, 1960's)
• Bowmar/ Lucille Wood, Marni Nixon & William Schallert "Halloween: A Book-Recording Set" (Bowmar, B587, 1960's)
• Martha Wentworth "Terror Tales by the Old Sea Hag" (Liberty, LST 7025, 1959)
• Various Ghouls "Spook Party" (Scar Stuff, 2000), Various Spooks "Ghoul-Arama" (Scar Stuff, 2001)
• Dean Gitter "Ghost Ballads" (Riverside, RLP 12-636, 1957)
• Peter Pan Records "Fangface - 4 Exciting New Complete Stories" (Peter Pan, 1107, 1979)
• The Wonderland Singers And Accompaniment "Spooky Halloween" (Wonderland Records, LP-293, 1974)
• Lionel Barrymore "Hallowe'en: A Musical Fantasy" (MGM, 10-A, 78 RPM, 1947)
• Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids "Halloween" (Kid Stuff, 1980)
• Count Chocula, Frankenberry & Boo Berry "Cereal Flexis" (General Mills, 1979)
• Al Zanino "The Vampire Speaks/ In The Vampire's Lair" (Al-Stan, Al-Stan 666, 1957/1997)
• Kid Stuff Repertory Company "Mostly Ghostly" (Kid Stuff, KS032, 1977)

Audio Esoterica/ Novelty:
• Pink Panther Punk (Kid Stuff, KSS-117, 1981)
• Kellog's "Snap Crackle Pop Tunes" (Kellog's, SCP-83, 1983)
• MAD Magazine "Fink Along With Mad" (Big Top, 12-1306, 1962)
• Wynken, Blinken and Nod and The Golden Rock-A-Twisters "Dance And Sing Mother Goose With A Beatle Beat" (Golden, LP-127, 1964)
• The Liverpool Kids "Beattle Mash" (Palance, PST-777, 1964)
• The Buggs "The Beetle Beat" (Coronet, CX-212, 1964)
• The Surfsiders "Sing The Beach Boys Songbook" (Design/ Pickwick, DLP-208, 1965)
• Harvey Records/ The Comix "Harvey Singles" (HR-1001, HR-1002, HR-1003, HR-1004, 1972)
• MAD Magazine "It's A Super-Spectacular Day/ Mad Super Special Summer 1980" (MAD, 1979)
• Steno-Disc "Actual Business Letters Dictated at Various Speeds" (Steno-Disc, No.514, 195?)
• US Air Force "Promotional Radio Spots" (Century Records, 1979)
• The Tinkertones with Full Cast and Orchestra Conducted by Warren Vincent "Cricket Toy Tunes Series: Robert The Robot"

Smut:
• Wife Swapping Swinger's Orgy Porgy Party (Audio Stag, AS1004, 1971)
• Eric Weber "Picking Up Girls Made Easy" (Symphony Press, 1975)

Punk Rockery:
• RKL "Live At The Foolkiller in KC, MO May 5, 1985"
• Naked Raygun "Live At The VFW#18 in KC, MO Aug 11, 1984"
• Butthole Surfers, Otto's Chemical Lounge, Frightwig "Live At The VFW#18 in KC, MO Oct 31, 1984"

Lost Music:
• Bill Watkins "Space Love" b/w "Sandman of Love" (Allied, 195?)

Hero Types:
• Batman (Power Records PR-8167, 1975)
• The Amazing Spider-Man "A Rockomic: From Beyond the Grave" (Buddah, KSS-117, 1972)
• Power Records "The Amazing Spider-Man and Friends" (PR-8146, 1974)
• Power Records "The Amazing Spider-Man Vol II" (PR-8144, 1974)
• The Amazing Spider-Man & The Electric Company "Spidey Super Stories" (Peter Pan 8189, 1977)
• Six Million Dollar Man "4 Exciting Christmas Adventures" (PR-8208, 1978)

Kid Stuff Repertory Company "Mostly Ghostly" (Kid Stuff, KS032, 1977)

2006-08-20T15:12:00.001-07:00

A really unique Halloween sound effects LP, there's enough non-linear weirdness on here that if you wanted to start a collector scum stampede you could probably make the case for some of it being the work of a moonlighting Chrome ("pre-Visitation! In the tradition of Ultra Soundtrack!"), or a collection of Sun City Girls throw-aways (a comparison I'm stealing from my pal Pee Cat over at Disco: Very). Wherever this stuff actually sprung from, the dada/ proto-industrial noises on here are some of the oddest & crudest you're likely to run across from the 1970's "golden era" (or perhaps that's "sunset years") of supercheapo Halloween records. Hell, if nothing else you can at least rest easy knowing that you'll find no familiar library sound effects here (and once again I'd like to extend my thanks to Cake & Polka Parade for turning me on to this bizarro gem). Enjoy!

Link Removed

Al Zanino "The Vampire Speaks/ In The Vampire's Lair" (Al-Stan, Al-Stan 666, 1957/1997)

2006-08-20T09:46:00.001-07:00

An amazing 7" originally released in 1957 & reissued in a limited edition of 500 back in 1997, these tracks are also available on the OOP CD "The Al-Stan Masters: The Best Of Reading's Oldies". Here's an excellent overview I nicked from an ebay description, which looks to be the only source out there for the remaining vinyl singles (and trust me, if you can find a copy it's well worth the money; just a totally cool artifact).

"The original was recorded back in 1957 by Al Zanino and Cliff Juranis of Reading, PA. Only a few copies of the original pressing survive. They have gone for more than $200 at record shows all over the world. This one features a new pic sleeve designed by John Fundyga along with artist Rick Ulrich. The back features a copy of a rejection letter written by Roland/Zacherle on his original 1957 letterhead. Al Zanino sent a copy of the 45 to Roland when he hosted his Chiller Theater show back in 1957 in Philly. His letter was recreated from the original copy on the back of the sleeve. The letter has some funny comments written by Roland himself! The record label was painstakingly made to look like the original. It is a very interesting piece of horror history.

The record is very cool. Al Zanino does a dead on (pun intended) impression of Bela Lugosi complete with scary sound effects and weird piano music. There is a point on the record where the vampire remembers a time when a stake was thrust into his heart. The sound effects on that are chilling to say the least. The A side is called The Vampire Speaks and the B side is called In The Vampires Lair. Al does all the voices, Cliff did the piano work and effects. What a super cool piece of horror memorabelia."

Link Removed

Count Chocula, Frankenberry & Boo Berry "Cereal Flexis" (General Mills, 1979)

2006-08-19T14:13:00.000-07:00

I was a 70's sugar cereal kid, and while my taste buds have progressed somewhat, I continue to unabashedly enjoy the Monster Cereals. Every October when they get stocked in previously un-Monster Cereal friendly outlets I end up picking up a complete set or two, and trust me when I say that those boxes contain nothing but marshmallow dust within a day at most. The whole classic monster angle is a killer hook of course, but I also love super-crazy sweetness, the over the top celebrity impersonations given to the characters, and all the cool product tie-ins over the years (that glow in the dark Fruit Brute light switch sticker I put up at age 7 seemed to stay affixed in my bedroom forever).

All of which brings us to these flexis. Freed from the constraints of their 30 second TV spots (often a high point of 1970's Saturday morning commercial viewing), they coulda been pretty great really. Hey even the titles, while obviously not playing up the whole "scary" angle, seem somewhat promising, right? Right? Well while I still think that in spots these (nearly 5 minute!) stories feel horribly endless, I guess for cheapjack flexi cereal giveaways they're not ALL bad. Still (and this is breaking my heart to type), imagine if instead of going "Disco" they'd managed to go "Punk" instead? So many oportunities! So much potential greatness squandered! Ah well, there's still that catchy "Monster Mania" tune to be thankful for, years down the road I STILL find myself (apropos of nothing at all) singing it in my head.

~~Oh and hey, if anyone has Count Chocula Goes Hollywood, feel free to pony it on up!~~ UPDATE: Complete the set! The delightful Way Out Junk blog has posted a nicely cleaned up version of the elusive "Count Chocula Goes Hollywood" right here!

Count Chocula, Frankenberry & Boo Berry "Cereal Flexis" (192 kbps)

While I'm knee-deep in all things Monster Cereal, here's the ad introducing Count Chocula & Frankenberry -- still the most popular flavors! Pity the poor Fruity Yummy Mummy, cursed to spend eternity in his pyramid of solitude & fruity loneliness.

Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids "Halloween" (Kid Stuff, 1980)

2006-08-19T14:00:00.001-07:00

Ahh, the respected Kid Stuff label! Home to previous Scar Stuff fave Pink Panther Punk (not to mention the These Records Are Bent champ "Pinball Wizard and other Elton John Hits", and the amazing "Mostly Ghostly" LP of sound effects, some of which is being shared by Cake & Polka Parade -- I'll post the rest eventually if no one else jumps on it first), the label simply exudes cheapness with its expediently produced cash-in product.

To wit: this 22 minute Fat Albert album that would seem to merely be a vinyl pressing of the soundtrack to a TV show. No extra narration, no real attempts to place the story in a non-visual context (you could argue that the LPs that correspond to the Peanuts TV specials at least gave it a shot for example), just a steady stream of "hair-raising sound effects" for that ol' theatre of the mind.

And hey, you just might learn something too!

Link Removed

Back from the grave!

2006-08-19T13:54:00.000-07:00

Heya folks! Well with Halloween creeping up, I figured it was really time to get back into action. I enjoyed my break & got a lot of other things done, so now let's see if I can manage to get back in the swing of squeezing out a steady stream of audio goodies to share. Looks like a lot was going on in my absence (& sadly it looks like a number of great blogs have vanished), but I'll do my best to address the comments I missed as well as toss out the new gems I've picked up and/ or encoded!

Lionel Barrymore "Hallowe'en: A Musical Fantasy" (MGM, 10-A, 78 RPM, 1947)

2006-06-03T17:25:00.000-07:00

Released by MGM in 1947, this 3 disc 78 rpm set is one of the earliest Halloween records I have. Narrated by Lionel Barrymore and based on a performance he produced at the Hollywood Bowl in 1945, it's a real departure from the more frightening manifestations of the supernatural that we tend to associate with the holiday. As Barrymore explains it in his liner notes:

"This is the story of a little girl named Myrtle, and Myrtle's dreams of wonderful things. It's the story of Boo Boo the big bear in the woods who stole little children, and of six delightful little elves who popped out of eggs and rescued Myrtle from the bear. [...] For the benefit of grown-ups, (although you children may be interested, too) I originally wrote the composition for piano and narrator, but since then prepared it for a symphony orchestra. I felt the story had great musical possibilities, especially the scene where the little elves become hypnotized by a flame of light."

Mr Barrymore is helped here by conductor Miklos Rozsa, soprano Marion Bell (Myrtle), tenor Edward Lear (Bertle the shoemaker),and "deep, deep bass singer" John Ford (the fearless woodman). While this certainly isn't going to frighten anyone (nor was that the intent), as a window into the 60-years-past world of "Hallowe'en" (and kid-culture), I found it pretty interesting. For an opposing viewpoint though, let me quote my friend Scott (who originally made me a cassette transfer of the 78's years ago): "You know how that thing is subtitled 'a musical fantasy'? That's because it's a complete fantasy that anyone would ever want to hear it more than once". But hey, he's a cynic.

Lionel Barrymore "Hallowe'en: A Musical Fantasy" (192 kbps)

The Wonderland Singers And Accompaniment "Spooky Halloween" (Wonderland Records, LP-293, 1974)

2006-05-17T18:06:00.001-07:00

In 1974 this collection was issued as "Halloween Songs That Tickle Your Funny Bone" through Michael Brent Productions (part of their children's educational aid series), and apparently it was commercially viable enough that Wonderland records decided to license it for general release that same year. The material was written by professional songwriters Ruth Roberts & Bill Katz ("Meet the Mets", the official tune of the New York Mets since 1963, numbers among their many accomplishments) along with Gene Piller, but the reissue's new cover design found the credits changed to highlight the "Wonderland Singers and Accompaniment". In the transition process Wonderland also dropped the "how-to" insert explaining the potential use of the songs in a classroom setting, then gave the album a somewhat altered running order which (due to the intro sound effect sequence being moved from "A Halloween Song" to "There Is A Haunted House In Town") created a few slightly different edits.

Clearly aimed at a very young audience, you'll find no real sense of menace or fright here at all -- but there's still a weird kind of sideways appeal. Personally I can remember that when I got my copy as a kid I was initially excited by the scary sounding intro, only to find myself wincing almost immediately once the friendly and well trained chorus of voices began to sing about the simple joys of Halloween. "I won't be playing this very often", I smirked. But for whatever reason -- The comforting nature of the singers? The CleverSimplicity of the lyrics? The bizarre alternate universe the settings of the songs seemed to inhabit? -- I did end up playing it often, and snippets from puh-LENTY of these numbers still get stuck in my head to this very day.

Well played, Roberts, Katz & Piller. Well played.

By the way, Michael Brent Productions is still going strong today and you can get the original sequencing of these songs on a CD (complete with a lyric book) here, along with lots of other great kids collections. Check it on out!

Link Removed

Peter Pan Records "Fangface - 4 Exciting New Complete Stories" (Peter Pan, 1107, 1979)

2006-05-09T19:37:00.001-07:00

Probably the last gasp of the true Scooby Doo clones, ABC's Fangface at least has the distinction of being created by the same Scooby team of Joe Ruby and Ken Spears. Featuring an actual werewolf as the title character and a roving assortment of ghouls & ghosts in the plotlines, the supernatural Fangface (if the cover is to be believed) apparently became "America's #1 TV Show!" somewhere along the way. Here's the introductory synopsis of the series that won the collective hearts and minds of the US citizenship:

"Every four hundred years a baby werewolf is born into the Fangsworth Family, and so when the moon shined on little Sherman Fangsworth, he changed into Fangface, a werewolf. Only the sun can change him back to normal, and so little Fangsworth grew up and teamed up with three daring teenagers -- Kim, Biff and Puggsy, and together they find danger, excitement and adventure. Who can save the day, who can wrong the rights and right the wrongs... none other than FANGFACE!"

Now I admit that the four original stories here (credited to Arthur Kolb & Peter Bryant) aren't likely to scare you very much, but hey -- any show with a character riffing on Joe R. Ross probably still deserves a place in your heart, right? C'mon America, you loved it in 1979!

Link Removed

The Tinkertones with Full Cast and Orchestra Conducted by Warren Vincent "Cricket Toy Tunes Series: Robert The Robot"

2006-05-09T13:30:00.001-07:00

A hot robot toy product tie-in & mid 1950's kiddie record rolled into one, this was part of the early wave of boomer cross-marketing that has come to dominate pretty much all forms of consumer media. To shamelessly quote ChaosKids.com, starting in 1954 Robert the Robot "was manufactured by the Ideal Toy Corporation, of Hollis, New York[...] Robert had good distribution, and was a common fixture in many suburban households during the early days of television. Robert's movement is controlled by a gun-like remote controller, that attaches to his back via a wire. Turning the crank on the controller makes him walk or back up, while squeezing the controller's trigger makes him turn right or left. While moving, his arms swing back and forth and his eyes light up. Robert also features a talking device, controlled by a crank on his back."

Though the "talking device" turned out to be something of a simple miniature record player, this was all pretty futuristic in 1954. Maybe to counter that the record here turns out to be pretty standard kiddie-tune fare; side one is a bit of ad copy regurgitation ("there's a boy I've known for quite a while/ with electric eyes and a neon smile/ personality that warms your soul/ he'll obey what you say by remote control") and side two gives us a little vignette wherein Robert "Saves the Day" by lifting up a fallen tree (thereafter named the "Robert the Robot Oak" due to his efforts). The world domination part obviously came later.

As an added bonus, I've also included an mp3 of Robert saying his little catch phrase ("I am Robert Robot, mechanical man. Ride me and steer me, wherever you can"), and you can currently buy Robert once again if you're so inclined (ebay is lousy with the guy). Might be a smart move if you think any oak trees are likely to collapse in your town square.

Link Removed

Siesta

2006-05-02T21:27:00.000-07:00

Well since I was recently visited upon by a welcome but unexpected boing boing link (my page loads shot up to about 6,500 a day as result -- hello new friends), it would seem to be as good a time as any to break from posting for a bit so I can work on a few other projects that need my attention. Don't worry much; I've got plenty of fun new stuff waiting in the wings and should be back within a week at the latest (if I can stay away that long).

If you'd like to waste some time 'til then you could always check out this exciting TELL ALL interview I just did for the fine Shuffle blog; this thing oughtta give you far more insight into my muddled brain than you'd ever actually require. Hell, as an added bonus for the folks who have written asking me about my setup, I'll even leave you with a snap of good ol' Casa de Scar Stuff complete with a sleepy blogger & an awesome cat. Hope to talk with you all soon.

Click to expand.

Dean Gitter "Ghost Ballads" (Riverside, RLP 12-636, 1957)

2006-04-30T14:11:00.001-07:00

Perhaps most famous for his production work on Odetta's debut album "Sings Ballads And Blues" (a primary influence on a young Bob Dylan), Dean Gitter involved himself in the 1950's folk scene under a variety of guises. Producing records mostly for Riverside (though the jacket claims "various record companies" as his clients) and working his hand in folk publishing to boot, this looks to be his lone solo album. Luckily for us it's a cool collection of mostly traditional (and sometimes just trad sounding) folk numbers with supernatural themes that run the gamut from spookily evocative to playful, all housed under a perfect 1953 Charles Addams illustration. The music itself is composed of nothing more than Mr. Gitter's voice and his acoustic guitar, and along with the zipped song files I've included a large scan of the back cover liner notes, which (in the folk tradition) are extra informative about each song's history. Taken as a whole the package does a nice job of providing the backdrop not only for the tunes being sung & played, but also for the time (a half century ago!) that this LP was produced.

Link Removed

MAD Magazine "It's A Super-Spectacular Day/ Mad Super Special Summer 1980" (MAD, 1979)

2006-04-29T12:59:00.001-07:00

Yanked from the comments section, a totally cool anonymous reader has uploaded ALL EIGHT ENDINGS to the "MAD Mystery Sound" flexi "It's A Super-Spectacular Day"! Copywritten to 1979 but released with the 1980 Summer "Super Special", this marvel of engineering would play a random ending with every spin of your turntable thanks to the multiple grooves that it had allsmashedalongsideeachother. Like tons of other looney kids, when this came out I was obsessively driven to hear (and in my case, record) all eight endings, resulting in the song being lodged v-e-r-y d-i-s-t-i-n-c-t-l-y in my head, no doubt for life. Playing all 8 MP3s in a row can really only minimally replicate that experience (maybe if you do it about 70 times at random before you allow the final version to complete you'll get close), but I guess since time is so much more valuable these days than it was 26 years ago it's all for the best.

Thanks again to the reader who added the files!

Link Removed

Various Ghouls "Spook Party" (Scar Stuff, 2000), Various Spooks "Ghoul-Arama" (Scar Stuff, 2001)

2006-04-21T10:26:00.000-07:00

What we have here are rips of some discs that I made about 5-6 years ago and gave away as free Halloween presents. As I've mentioned in the comments section before, both were heavily based on an annual Halloween radio show I used to do, and though I'd kinda intended on making them a yearly event I've never fully fleshed out any real followups.

So why am I sharing a pair of homemade music comps? Well even though song-wise there's a bit of crossover with some of the other fine collections that have come along since then (& before), the main difference here is that in addition to programming a bunch of, you know, bitchin' Halloween tunes, I was also trying to create a spooky "seamless whole". What this means is that in addition to the music (for better or worse), I also stitched together a non-stop stream of effects, sound bites and audio samples that run over/ under/ alongside the songs, to kinda create my twisted ideal of an evocative "Halloween vibe" (vinyl pops & crackles included). Whether or not I succeeded is debatable, but I certainly did throw a lot of crap into the blender (and since sometimes there are at least 8 audio tracks playing at once it's probably safe to say that my audio sensibilities are as cluttered as my visual ones). Prior to this post it had actually been a while since I'd last listened to these, but in checking them out again I think that despite the occasional clunker, I managed a few really cool segues here and there. There's also some, *koff koff*, truly horrible audio quality on a few of the samples (plenty of this was sourced from crummy old VHS tapes & worse), but that just contributes to the intended low-budget feel, right? Oh and there's a LOT of wind & rain. A LOT.

Now believe it or not, over the years at least 3 or 4 other folks have actually duped these off themselves (heh, after changing the credits on my covers to make it look like they'd personally cooked 'em up) to sell on ebay and at horror cons. I guess they were successful (you don't want to know how much I saw some copies going for) but hopefully this post will get 'em back out there for free like they oughtta be. Hey, I've even included CD sized jpegs in the zip files so you can print out your own covers if you're so inclined. Happy Halloween, pal!

Various Ghouls "Spook Party" (192 kbps)

Various Spooks "Ghoul-Arama" (192 kbps)

Martha Wentworth "Terror Tales by the Old Sea Hag" (Liberty, LST 7025, 1959)

2006-04-14T07:43:00.001-07:00

Martha Wentworth had a long and varied acting career 'til her death in 1974, and she created the character of the Old Sea Hag specifically for this album (along with writer Robert P. Hamilton). The liner notes tell the story like this:

"...the Old Sea Hag, Mariah Halkins, [comes] from a combination of two unrelated and different personalities. One, a person of unknown age and origin, was encountered by Miss Wentworth on the Island of Nantucket in Massachusetts many years ago, the other was drawn from a study of William Shakespeare's immortal comedies. Her dedication to the plays and poetry of the incomparable bard prompted her to transpose many of his characters into the simpler terms of modern drama. The Old Sea Hag has now become a composite of all the electrifying eccentrics the world over... an ancient woman of the sea whose beginnings are relegated to the frothy oceans of conjecture."

Falling somewhere between an old radio drama and a one-woman show, the six stories here are heavily loaded with sound effects and are pretty evocative if not always overly terrifying. From "Mariah Halkins's" dedication on the cover:

" 'TERROR TALES!' is dedicated to all who seek a new thrill in entertainment... (And a new thrill in stereo sound). It is for all hosts and hostesses who seek a different pleasure for their guests... (And for themselves). It is dedicated to all persons whose bedrooms are inhabited by friendly ghosts... (And who can't sleep at night anyway). It is dedicated to the entertainment of people -- (To all who savor a frightening story uniquely told). 'TERROR TALES!', friend, is dedicated to you!!!"

Link Removed

Bowmar/ Lucille Wood, Marni Nixon & William Schallert "Halloween: A Book-Recording Set" (Bowmar, B587, 1960's)

2006-04-11T08:35:00.000-07:00

Bowmar educational records stretch at least from the 1950's into the 1970's, and covered a variety of subjects. They seem to have released a few Halloween albums over their lifespan, and this particular one is from a series dedicated to each month of the year that was clearly geared towards fairly young kids. Behind the scenes composer & Bowmar alumni (perhaps you enjoyed her work on "Rhythm Time #2"?) Lucille Wood wrote the music & lyrics, and well-accomplished singer Marni Nixon provides the narration (supposedly William Schallert is in there too).

So that you can get a sense of the original intent for the album, I've included scans of some of the interior booklet in with the zip file. Here are some excerpts:

"The narration and the easy-to-sing melodies on the recording make immediate and independent participation possible. Create a warm friendly atmosphere of acceptance where each child knows that his ideas and interpretations will be respected. Encourage children to 'feel like' rather than 'look like' whatever they may be imitating or interpreting. Before the recording begins invite the children to sit in a 'Halloween circle'.

TIPTOE: How would you tiptoe into a scary, haunted house? Suggest that the children tiptoe out of the circle to any place in room.
GOBLINS SONG: Will you be a funny goblin or a scary goblin? If the children dance in a circle, indicate the direction of movement to avoid collisions.
HALLOWEEN GHOSTS SONG: Dance as lightly as ghosts float through the air."

...as you can see the whole thing is mainly geared towards fostering a sense of interaction and activity (rather than spooks and scares), but for obsessives like myself it still oughtta do a good job of "setting the mood". Okay, see you all in the "Halloween circle"!

Bowmar/ Lucille Wood, Marni Nixon & William Schallert "Halloween: A Book-Recording Set" (192 kbps)

D. Records "Halloween Sounds & Music for Your Parties, Trick or Treaters & School Festivals" (D. Records, SR8001, 1960's)

2006-04-07T07:14:00.002-07:00

Here's a 1960's Halloween sound effects album that came out of Texas on D Records, one of the many great labels spun from "Pappy" Daily's Glad Music publishing company (though this particular record was produced by his son Don, or "Dlanod Yliad" as he's credited on the back cover). While it's a cool little time capsule on its own, Spook Show fans should take extra note here since it's the opening track, "Haunting Melody: Screams, Creaky Ghost Voices, Spooky Sounds", that's memorably being played behind the Kara-Kum ad spiel ("You'll see blood curdling sadistic surgery! Someone's head will be cut off with a butcher knife and thrown to the audience! Don't loose YOUR head! Do you believe that the out-of-space monster who died -- yet alive, will come to seek the warm blood that he needs to keep himself alive? Don't treat this lightly! How are YOU fixed for blood? The dead will return from graves! Ghosts and skeletons will fly above you, and some may sit by your side and plant cold damp kisses upon your cheek!") found on Something Weird Video's Monsters Crash the Pajama Party (Spook Show Spectacular) DVD. (and hey, while I'm plugging SWV, you wanna see some design work I did for them? Click here).

Lots of these stock spooky sounds will at least be somewhat familiar to you if you've done time with Halloween records (sometimes you can even hear the tape spool power up/ off as the reel is queued up or stopped), though the bonus here is that there's generally a lot less cross fading and layering which allows you to, you know, really focus on those goblins laughing. The album definitely has a lot of original touches too, mostly in the music. The closer "Ghost Parade March" is actually a creepy version of "Mac the Knife" (or something with almost the same chord changes -- help my poor brain out here while I make a pot of coffee), and though I'm guessing that the carnival melody heard at the end of "Ghost From Outer Space" is probably library, the haunting out of tune "Ghost Combo play Spook Music" must be an original number. So check it all out, and hey -- then feel free to pick up the The Complete 'D' Singles Collection from Bear Family to send my way.

Link Removed

Eric Weber "Picking Up Girls Made Easy" (Symphony Press, 1975)

2006-04-06T07:23:00.001-07:00

Records advertised in the pages of comics and magazines really seemed to be endowed with magical powers to me when I was young; order these things and you could learn hypnosis, master kung-fu, or conjure up a haunted house simply by dropping the needle down. Why the hell weren't these records sold in stores? Well for me one of the most provocative mail-order record ads ads ran regularly in the National Lampoons I had scored from my older brother, and it promised a lot:

Click to Expand.

Narrated by 1970's Pick-Up guru Eric Weber and based on his "best selling" books, I suppose I assumed that this record was going to be my secret weapon when it came to approaching my 5th grade classmates on the playground at recess. Just wait 'til I threw down one of those "attention-getting opening lines" -- how could I fail? I just had to figure out how to get the record into my hands without anyone else knowing. Well it took a few more years to accomplish that goal than I'd counted on, but hopefully my patience can translate to your gain. A mere 31 years after it was pressed I'm giving you the complete 40 minute album broken down into 8 handy scenes; from the library to the ballet you're really going to score now. Hey, I even included a copy of the full page ad as well as the front and back LP cover scans in the zip file. That's how badly I want you to succeed.

From the liners:

PICKING UP GIRLS MADE EASY will teach you a whole new system for picking up girls -- a system that is so complete and so absolutely foolproof you'll soon be picking up girls automaticallly!!! Absolutely everything is spelled out for you... Picking up girls can be as easy as opening a beer! And the more you listen to the album, the better you'll get. It's INCREDIBLE!"

And by the way, Mr Weber is still in print.

Link Removed

Don Hinson And The Rigamorticians "Monster Dance Party" (Capitol, 5314,1964)

2006-04-04T08:04:00.001-07:00

In the post Bobby Pickett "Monster Mash" sweepstakes there were more entries than most people remember (many of them surprisingly cool), and one of the more briefly successful was Vegas radio deejay Don Hinson's "Monster Dance Party" album. Like the Mash it was produced by Gary Paxton, and while the album's don't-fuck-with-the-formula goal is mostly to be a collection of dance numbers (titles include "Monster Jerk", "Do the Rigormortis", "Werewolf Watusi", etc), it's probably best remembered these days for the single "Riboflavin Flavored, Non Carbonated, Poly-Unsaturated Blood" which was aptly covered by ghoulish punkers (and ex-Consumers) 45 Grave in the early '80's. While "Riboflavin..." is a standout, there's still no shortage of other tasty songs on here (in fact though he's referenced by name in the lyrics on Hinson's version, Bobby Pickett even covered the Paxton penned "Monster Swim" himself and released it a little later in '64), and like many other novelty sessions in the Capitol vaults the whole record is probably long overdue for a reissue. That's right Sundazed records, I'm looking at you.

And where is Mr Hinson now? Well according to retired actor and musician Tom Nerdy, "Don is now in Branson, Missouri and he works occasionally as a stand up comic. He was a deejay in Los Angeles for more than 20 years". And so it would seem to be.

Link Removed

Boris Karloff "An Evening With Boris Karloff And His Friends" (Decca, DL74833, 1967)

2006-04-04T07:22:00.001-07:00

A cool merging of monster talent here; Forrest J. Ackerman writes a script that Boris Karloff reads with Verne Langdon & Milt Larsen producing! This LP is a collection of synopses for the classic Universal films that Karloff figured in so largely, and mixed in with his narration are sound bites and musical cues from Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Son of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, and The House of Frankenstein; all of which must've blown the collective minds of monster kids dwelling in the pre-video-on-demand days of 1967. Forrest J. Ackerman's script (famously written in one sitting) does a nice job of stitching together all the parts, and while the whole thing only lasts about 24 minutes it manages to give an appropriately grand sense of status to the initial Universal horror cycle that was then still setting the tone for most monster entertainment.

Now hopefully I just didn't go too overboard in designating the tracks on my rip -- I swear I was just trying to remain true to the banding on my LP!

Link Removed

Butthole Surfers, Otto's Chemical Lounge, Frightwig "Live At The VFW#18 in KC, MO Oct 31, 1984"

2006-04-01T14:23:00.000-07:00

Captured by my portable tape recorder in 1984 was one of my favorite Halloween nights to date: Frightwig out of San Francisco, Otto's Chemical Lounge from Minneapolis, and Austin Texas's own Butthole Surfers, right in the thick of their double drummer strobelight heyday (while Lawrence, KS champs the Mortal Micronotz are on one of the flyers shown below, sadly they didn't play).

There was already a weird vibe all evening with tons of cool costumes (my favorite being the guy who went as "Lou Reed in a Fishtank" -- he'd photocopied the cover of "Transformer" & built an aquarium-like apparatus around his head complete with dangling fish) and a sudden torrential rainstorm outside which effectively pinned the crowd inside all night. I didn't know Frightwig going in but they came up to me beforehand and fingered my mail-order KISS Army jacket (yeah, I was going as "a KISS fan" -- I swear this seemed a lot more novel 22 years ago) and once they started playing they easily won my 15 year old Flipper-fanatic heart. Next up Otto's Chemical Lounge pulled out a cover-heavy set full of Bluesy/ Bar-Bandish Acid Rock that went right over almost all of my (heavily Punk informed) cultural reference points at the time, and finally after some back and forth between the "Group Productions" promoters (Keith Patterson & Eric Schindling) and the local vice squad, the Butthole Surfers hit the stage. I didn't really know what to expect since only the "Brown Reason To Live" EP & the "PCPPEP" followup (which was almost all the same songs) had been released at this point, but I kinda doubt I would have been fully prepared no matter what. Gibby came out with 100 clothespins in his hair and rat-traps on his nipples while pushing a shopping cart full of paper and the megaphone he would later grab to sing the opener "Cherub" through. Teresa and King stood behind their drums with a constant strobe shooting up from below, and the rest of the band looked to me like they'd been living in a psychedelic garbage can or something. Just a crazy visual mess (by the end Gibby was nakedly twirling about as the rolls of toilet paper he'd covered himself in throughout the show had fully unraveled) that was equally matched by the music; though I'm not sure if you'll really be able to tell from this low-fi recording or not. Still these performances have never been shared (and I know how obsessive some of those Butthole Surfers fans get), so enjoy!

Boy, what a great night. I couldn't hear for the next 3 days.

Click To Enlarge

Click To Enlarge

Frightwig "Live At The VFW#18 in KC, MO Oct 31, 1984" (192 kbps)

Otto's Chemical Lounge "Live At The VFW#18 in KC, MO Oct 31, 1984" (192 kbps)

Butthole Surfers "Live At The VFW#18 in KC, MO Oct 31, 1984" (192 kbps)

Wade Denning & Kay Lande "Halloween: Games, Songs and Stories" (Golden Records, LP-242, 1969)

2006-03-29T19:27:00.003-07:00

Hands down this was my most played Halloween record as a little kid. My family can all still sing the title track (which rather brilliantly spells out "H-A-LL-O-W-EE-N" to the tune of Saint-Saëns' "Dance Macabre" (or "Danse Macabre" if you prefer). Listen to it once and you'll never forget it), and it's no real exaggeration to say that I nearly played "Guess What I Am?" 'til the grooves were bald.

Wade Denning's career in spooky records (primarily through Pickwick) has been fairly well documented on Scar Stuff before (click here, here & here for more info), and he's joined on this album by Kay Lande who had a pretty long running career with kids records herself (she and Denning had also worked together before on "ABC, 1-2-3: Counting Rhymes, Alphabet Songs, Riddles and Tongue Twisters" for MGM Records in 1966). The overall vibe here is pretty playful, upbeat and active (the original pressing was aimed at educators and came with a booklet outlining the games described in the songs), but there's also an undercurrent of creepiness that seems more tied in to childhood to me than with many Halloween records. By that I guess I mean that a lot of times the vignettes that are being told in this genre revolve around adults, and as a kid you had to visualize them more abstractly (6 year olds aren't likely to be driving around picking up hitchhikers for example), but on this record there are stories much more related to the age group they're being directed at; a child takes a shortcut through the woods on the way back from Trick-or-Treating and encounters a spook, there's an eerie telling of the James Whitcomb Riley classic Little Orphan Annie poem, and so on. Of course I don't know if that's the sole reason why this album clicked in my tiny head (I think I also just liked the '60's surf beat on a lot of the songs), but at the age of 5 it certainly all worked for me and (perhaps not so surprisingly) it really still does.

Link Removed, try going here though.

2011 Update

Direct YouTube link

****
Psst! Visit the official Golden Records Facebook Page for a free download of the "Halloween" MP3! It's a "Limited Time Only" type deal so act fast!
****

BBC Records - Mike Harding "Sound Effects Vol 13: Death And Horror" (1977), "Sound Effects Vol 21: More Death And Horror" (1978)

2006-03-24T02:17:00.001-07:00

Spurred on by the fine folks in my comments section, I'm throwing up a pair of late '70's BBC Records releases focusing on good ol' "Death and Horror". The album jackets for both of these records made me vaguely uneasy when I was a kid; the classic British fixation on torture devices is certainly front and center and the gruesome collection of track titles ("Branding Iron On Flesh!", "Red Hot Poker Into Eye!", "Neck Twisted And Broken!") more than promised to deliver the goods (turns out though that the most grueling thing for me was breaking the albums down into separate tracks -- "Sound Effects Vol 13" has 91! That task aside, I'd like to extend a special thanks to my pal Dennis for loaning me his copy). By the way, there's a third LP in this series that I've never come across, anyone out there have it laying around?

Link Removed

Link Removed

Famous Monsters "Famous Monsters Speak!" (Wonderland/ AA Records, AR-3, 1963)

2006-03-22T06:57:00.001-07:00

Issued first in 1963 & then reissued over the years through a few different labels (and possibly still available on CD, though most retailers claim it as being out of stock), this two story LP was amazingly evocative to me when I was little. Ex-Dead End kid Gabriel Dell's vocal interpretations of Frankenstein's Monster and Dracula never struck me as comical as many others (like that weird leap from Lugosi imitation to Jackie Mason sound-alike you hear a lot with Dracula), and the stories were totally creepy cool. Cherney Berg's conceits for the (non-Universal adaptation) plots -- a reporter has been ushered into Dracula's lair and runs over the events as he types/ primitive recording devices allow us to hear the thoughts of Frankenstein's Monster -- did the trick as far as I was concerned, and the sound effects were unique enough to these recordings that I never felt jolted out of the atmosphere being conjured up. Of course after 30+ years of owning it I still have no idea what the Wolf Man, Mummy & Creature from the Black Lagoon are hanging around on the cover for, but getting to gaze at the early '60's Aurora Model-esque art more than makes up for any confusion.

Link Removed

Harvey Records/ The Comix "Harvey Singles" (HR-1001, HR-1002, HR-1003, HR-1004, 1972)

2006-03-20T09:15:00.001-07:00

Amazingly only a few days after posting an ad for the 1972 Harvey Comics singles (here's a link to that ad, another ad, a label, a bag with a single in it, and an "enhanced CD" comp that the songs were re-released on in 1997), a supercool member of the Richie Rich Yahoo group has sent me 8 of the 10 tunes (the two Sad Sack songs have seen no re-release since the character is owned by Lorne-Harvey rather than Harvey Entertainment). Turns out that the singles were issued under the band name "The Comix", and they were all written by the songwriting team of (Harvey editor) Sid Jacobson & Jimmy Krondes, probably most famously responsible for penning "The End (At The End Of A Rainbow)" in the late '50's.

The songs themselves are both better and delightfully worse than I'd guessed they would be too; pretty much delicious cheapjack bubblegum in a variety of guises (kiddie style frat-rock, lite-psych, wuss-pop, etc) with off-the-top-of-our-heads lyrics sealing the sugarsweet deal ("Hiding from Spooky/ 'cause of the kooky/ booing of Spooky/ the Tuff Little Ghost/ If you are careless/ he'll boo you hairless/ he's never scareless/ the Tuff Little Ghost"), so I'm more than happy to pass along my good fortune. Now where are you at, Mr. Sad Sack?

Link Removed

Power Records "A Story Of Dracula, The Wolfman And Frankenstein" (BR-508, 1975)

2006-03-18T10:42:00.001-07:00

Kind of harkening back to the 1940's Universal "Monster Rallies", this all original story from Power Records (also released as "House of Terror" on Parade Records) seemed totally cool to me when I was a kid, and still comes off as one of the label's best efforts. Story-wise it's a fairly deft interweaving of the classic big three monsters, and the Neal Adams/ Dick Giordano artwork (some other nice examples of Adams' record cover work can be found here, and here) was a great compliment. From the liners:

"Frankenstein's monster, Count Dracula, and the Werewolf all meet under unusual and bizarre circumstances in this masterpiece of terror and suspense. Power Records is proud to present this magnificently illustrated original tale. Heightening the intense dramatic portrayal are sound effects and music that will keep you on the edge of your chair. This package is designed to be read and played -- and treasured for years to come."

Apropos of all that, I took pictures of the interior pages and included them in a folder with the audio; admittedly they're not hi-res scans so you probably won't be printing them out to be framed or anything, but it'll at least give a sense of the original Power Records "book and record" experience.

Link Removed

UPDATE: The Parade Records edition ("House of Terror", which also comes bundled with an extra LP of sound effects that I'm forgetting the original name of) seems to have been very recently available as a closeout item! While most of the stores I checked are coming up as "out of stock", a simple google search will still turn up several retailers listing the title, so maybe you can still get lucky.

Casper The Friendly Ghost "Haunted House Tales" (Peter Pan, 8131, 1975), "Casper And The Demon Of Darkness - Book & Recording" (Peter Pan, 1976)

2006-03-15T07:14:00.001-07:00

I've had a few requests for a non-rapidshare version of my rip that I circulated last October (the same file is being shared in my comments section), so here it is: Mr. Casper the Friendly Ghost as released on Peter Pan records in the mid-1970's. I had both the full LP and the book & record version of the first story as a kid (though for some reason "The Scariest Halloween Ever" off of Haunted House Tales became "Casper and the Demon of Darkness" when it was released as a stand alone single) and even given my propensity for "the scary stuff" I got a surprisingly large number of listens out of them. The Harvey world was such a strange mixup; characters based on devils, ghosts, and witches but all soaked to the core with edgeless cuteness. However much I liked this record though, I'm still kicking myself that I never ordered off for these:

(Click to expand)

Did anyone here buy them when they came out or (far better still) have them to pass around now? C'mon -- anyone?

Link Removed

Link Removed

Columbia Playtime Records "Spooky Music For Spooky Occasions" (Playtime, 412, 1950)

2006-03-14T07:21:00.000-07:00

3 minutes of spookiness off of one of the older Halloween records I have. The Columbia Playtime series of 78s date back to the 1920's; here's some info from an article on Kiddie Records putting them in context:

Little Tots' was joined by the Playtime label in the summer of 1924. Playtime discs originally carried ornate, multicolored labels and at 15¢ were obviously meant to compete with Cameo-Kid. [snip] Playtime would prove to be the longest-lived of any 78-rpm children's brand. The Columbia Broadcasting System inherited the label in 1938, with its acquisition of ARC, and continued to produce Playtime 78-rpms into the late 1950s.

Also check out Kiddie Record King who writes:

"Columbia's Playtime, a long running series of 6" and 7" records (originally 70 titles, then reissued in a series of 113 titles) began in the late 1930's and continued up to 1954".

That all having been said, I now present you with two tracks of simple organ for all your spooky occasion needs.

Columbia Playtime Records "Spooky Music For Spooky Occasions" (192 kbps)

Children Of The Night "Dinner With Drac!" (Pickwick, PIP-6822, 1976)

2006-03-13T07:12:00.001-07:00

No relation to the 1958 John Zacherle hit, this collection of 1970's "Rock & Roll" songs tells the story of a big party at Count Dracula's house and comes across a bit like the plot of Mad Monster Party as done by imitators of The Hilarious House of Frightenstein in the process. The between song skits have a pretty cut-rate vibe throughout (Dracula sounds remarkably like Dan Ackroyd doing his SNL Yortuk Festrunk "Wild & Crazy Guy" character, The Mummy introduces himself with the lyrics to the Bob McFadden & Dor single "The Mummy"), and there's a period charm lurking under the music that makes me want to hear the story behind the band that was actually playing (I couldn't dig up much, but the album cover designer -- looks like he also wrote "Dracula's Undying Love" -- later did work for the likes of David Sanborn & Peter Tosh, and one arranger went on to become "Senior Vice-President, Marketing and Branch Operations for BMG Distribution"). The whole thing feels a bit more like a licensed pickup job rather than something developed in-house, and from my own consumer experience I'd say that this record never got the distribution of previous Pickwick horror albums (made by a completely different team; links here, here & here), but hey -- maybe I was just always looking in the little kid's section. This is clearly music for pre-teens.

UPDATE: Pulled from the comment section is this info from Hamhead

"I KNEW A GUY WHO WAS THEIR ROADIE!!!! Their manager lived across the street from him, no shite!! They were based in Hollywood, Florida in the early 80's.

From what I was told......
they were sued by Zacherly for using the "Children Of The Night" name since Zacherly somehow registered the phrase, the band changed their name to "The Monsters". This roadie guy (who used to come to my old job at a record store I managed and hang out insessivly) used to tell me about what a asshole the Dracula guy is and how he wanted to beat him up all the time, he used to burn reefer with the Wolfman. The Monsters were the house band at the Gold Coast roller rink in Pembroke Pines for years (which is now a furniture store), they also did kids birthday parties and Bar Mitzvahs. I used to joke about them playing Circus Playhouse, the kiddie pizzaria if the Gold Coast closed. I heard them once and that was enough. They broke up sometime in 1986 when the Gold Coast closed down. - M.A."

Link Removed

William Castle "Ghost Story: Thrilling, Chilling Sounds of Fright & the Supernatural" (Peter Pan, 8114, 1972)

2006-03-10T07:00:00.001-07:00

This LP was something of a tie-in to the NBC anthology show that William Castle produced from '72-'73 ("Peter Pan Records is delighted to have the opportunity to bring to the public its original recording production based on William Castle's Ghost Story"), but aside from the tracks on Side One being dubbed "The Horrors of Mansfield House" there's no real connection. There's certainly Castle-esque hype slathered all over the cover though; "This record should not be listened to by the very young or tender-hearted", it shouts. "This recording is definitely not recommended for children under eight years of age". Personally though, I can tell you that as children, my friends and I would roundly mock the first side of the LP across the board. Composed of an unscary narrator walking his way through vignettes featuring killer dogs, vampire waiters and murderous orchids (no, really), a lot of the "snap" endings sound almost as though they were made up on the spot. To this day only the oddness of the (Proto-Punk! Pre-Industrial!) "Lobotomy And The Shock Treatment" track from the Mansfield "Psychedelic Sounds Nightclub" stands out for me (as kids we'd play it and bounce around as though we were "insane"), but I guess I don't know how chilling I'd call it. In recent years though I've run in to several folks who have fond memories of the whole album, so maybe seven-year-old-me was being too harsh? You decide!

By the way, Side Two is largely a return to the same well of sounds that were heard on the two Power Records "Ghostly Sounds" albums (previously posted here, and here), so I hope you're not too sick of them yet.

Link Removed

Power Records "The Monster Series" (1974)

2006-03-08T06:57:00.001-07:00

The complete 4 record set from Power Records encompassing the "Monster Series" based on their Marvel Comics counterparts. These were mostly simplified stories that came from the early 1970's Marvel "Horror" line, and the Frankenstein, Dracula & Werewolf recordings were all re-released as 45s few times without the Marvel branding or comic book over the years (in fact I decided to included a Frankenstein rip from one of these records, so that's why it doesn't have the "turn the page" sound). As a kid I always preferred the full LP collections of all the stories that were parted out for 7" book & record sets, but sadly these recordings never came out in one fully compiled set (though the great "A Story of Dracula, The Wolfman and Frankenstein" kinda came close I guess). Check these out and tell me it's not a crying shame that they never made any Ghost Rider, Son of Satan, Simon Garth or Brother Voodoo records.

Click to Enlarge

Link Removed

Link Removed

Link Removed

Link Removed

Power Records "Ghostly Sounds" (Power Records, 8145, 1974)

2006-03-06T22:55:00.001-07:00

Here we have the second and more common issue of the Power Records "Ghostly Sounds" LP. Though the titles and back cover descriptions remain the same as the first pressing, the sequence of the tracks has been jumbled around from the original and the cuts themselves have been re-edited to varying degrees. In all cases the narration has been completely stripped out, and while some tracks have found their structure completely altered, there was probably some extra confusion thanks to the label for Side One showing the tracks in a different sequence from how they actually appear (I've fixed the errors in the MP3 tags). Oh, and the back cover, label art and catalog number are also different. Personally I liked the I'm-trying-to-be-spooky narrator guy from the first pressing, and I miss a lot of the cheesy drive-in movie sound elements too (like the "Blood Feast" drums that were dropped from "Walking Monster With Chains" and "The Vampire's Castle"), but I can see preferring either version really.

Okay! Now that you know the score, you can handily complete your collection of records named "Ghostly Sounds" by simply clicking on the (ahem) inaccurate label art here...

Link Removed

Power Records "Ghostly Sounds: A Haunting Experience" (Power Records, S343, 1974)

2006-03-06T07:42:00.001-07:00

A completely different "Ghostly Sounds" lp than my last post, this one comes from Power Records & was released in at least two versions with the tracks jumbled into somewhat altered sequences (this rip is off the first pressing w/ the less familiar "Raised Fist" Power Records logo).

Since the contents here are loose stories-in-sound, to get yourself in the proper mood please feel free to click the image below for the enlarged back cover descriptions as penned by one "A. Ghost".

Link Removed

Ghostly Sounds (Gershon Kingsley & Peter Waldron) "Ghostly Sounds" (Peter Pan, 8125, 1975)

2006-03-05T17:21:00.001-07:00

An all-time fave of many 1970's kids, this has gotten some extra attention in recent years now that folks have figured out that the Moogtastic Mr. Gershon Kingsley ("Popcorn", "The In Sound From Way Out", etc) was involved. It's justified though, and Side One will probably give you more than ample reason to be interested; Peter Waldron's simple but evocative narration conjures up a spooky Halloween vibe and the (largely non-library) sound effects merge perfectly with the electronic underscore. I know that the "Goblin Dance" section in particular both enthralled and creeped me out when I was little and even today if it went on for 20 solid minutes I doubt I'd grow bored. Side Two's single story ("The Ghosts from Outer Space") might seem a tad goofy to anyone past childhood, but even if you can't get into the plot the curious use of human voices for most of the sound effects (to simulate working, a guy actually says "work") nicely expose the avant garde influences that were at play on a lot of children's records in the late '60's & early '70's.

Note: This rip is different from the one I circulated last October, and is from a previously unplayed copy of the LP.

Link Removed

The Surfsiders "Sing The Beach Boys Songbook" (Design/ Pickwick, DLP-208, 1965)

2006-03-04T17:31:00.001-07:00

Easily one of the most noteworthy attempts at ripping-kids-off-by-replicating-a-popular-group's-songs, the Surfsiders 1965 LP seems to have finally gained a kind of celebrity status over the last decade. Essentially a collection of hit Beach Boys singles as performed by atonal studio hacks with maybe a day to crank this damn record out, this baby manages to turn the (you know; heartbreaking, gorgeously sculpted and layered, etc etc -- you've heard it all before) original B. Wilson arrangements into simplified off-key bar band bleats loaded with dimestore barbershop quartet harmonies, all lovingly topped off by some frighteningly enthusiastic playing. Probably besting even the lamest Beatles ripoff records for both style and substance, this gem can go toe to toe with "Pet Sounds" any day of the week for me. The more you love (or hate) the originals the better this ought to get, and this rip is from the cleanest copy of the LP (of the, *koff koff*, four) that I've owned over the years. Fun, fun, fun!

Link Removed

HRB Music "Horror Sounds of Terror - Terror 61 Sounds of Horror" (HRB Music, HRB5000HS, 1979)

2006-03-04T17:08:00.000-07:00

This 1979 cheapo collection of sound effects came bundled in the same sleeve as HRB's "Goofy Gold" novelty song LP (pretty great in its own right), and seems to have been assembled from a combination of pretty common sound libraries, other people's existing sound effects records(!) & a quick day spent in the studio just to pad things out to 61 cuts. Aside from the intro (used to good effect on the Satan's Pilgrims "Play Ghoulash for You" single) my favorite two tracks are probably the under-a-minute-and-a-half condensed versions of the Dracula & Frankenstein stories from "Famous Monsters Speak", but by saying this I certainly don't mean to take away from the charm of good ol' "Wolf Cry #2" or "Chimes with Echo". As seen on TV 27 years ago, these 61 Horror Sounds of Terror are now a mere click away!

HRB Music "Horror Sounds of Terror - Terror 61 Sounds of Horror" (192 kbps)

Also available on 8-Track!

Troll Records "Thrillers And Chillers" (Troll, 50-003, 1973), "Weird Tales Of The Unknown" (Troll, 50-004, 1973)

2006-03-01T19:01:00.001-07:00

Thanks to highly cool reader Steve, I'm posting the final two albums in the 1973 Troll Records spooky LP series. These are 128 rips & they sound a-ok to me (the only difference from what he posted in the comment section here & these files is that I fixed the MP3 tags, added LP art and merged one story which had been split into two), so I invite you all to please have at 'em. Thanks again Steve!

Link Removed

Link Removed

Six Million Dollar Man "4 Exciting Christmas Adventures" (PR-8208, 1978)

2006-03-01T06:28:00.001-07:00

No, really -- this was green lit and released ("I've got it! We'll have Steve Austin attempt to decode an alien message sent originally with the Star of Bethlehem!"). While all the stories are at least a little surreal, maybe the most noteworthy is "Elves' Revolt": unionized elves protest their working conditions under Santa Claus (they want a livable wage and better hours but he won't even talk terms 'til the Christmas rush is over), and as a result they end up falling in with a terrorist planning to melt the polar ice caps (the fact that in 2006 the Six Million Dollar Man voice actor sounds more like George W Bush than Lee Majors probably raises the weirdness factor here). Not my LP rip, but a fairly clean one with only a few slight skips.

Link Removed

Scholastic Records "The Haunted House..." (1970), "The Teeny Tiny Woman" (1968), "Georgie" (1968), "Georgie And The Noisy Ghost" (1980)

2006-02-28T07:09:00.001-07:00

A roundup of spooky singles from the venerable Scholastic Records label mentioned a post ago, these date from 1968 to 1980. They're all as tame as you might expect, but also likely to conjure up some memories if you grew up sometime within their time frame. As a kid I also had the "Haunted House" book that the selections on this 7" come from, and still think that "It isn't the cough that carries you off, it's the coffin they carry you off in." is pretty damn clever.

Note: It's not a mistake, both "The Teeny Tiny Woman" and "Georgie" really do have the same flipside (a collection of "Mother Ghost Nursery Rhymes & Other Tricks & Treats").

Link Removed

Link Removed>

Link Removed>

Link Removed

...and for more Georgie memories, be sure to check out PopCereal's Georgie ersatz filmstrip WMV.

Strange Reaction is pretty much the greatest.

2006-02-24T17:54:00.000-07:00

Let's all give a gigantic round of applause here for the mighty Strange Reaction blog (one of the finest homes of elusive Punk Rockery and likeminded sounds), which looks to be providing a new repository for the Scar Stuff audio files. I'll slowly but surely make the transition away from Rapidshare for the ones that are up, and future downloads will be speedy & supersimple to grab. To that I say "right on".

Troll Records "Scary Spooky Stories" (Troll, 50-001, 1973) "Great Ghost Stories (Troll, 50-002, 1973)

2006-02-24T17:15:00.001-07:00

Here's a pair of my rips that I've already shared via a few other folks in internetland (you might've found them over at the fine blog Old Haunts last Oct, or via links in my very own comments section). These albums were released by Troll Records and were regularly distributed in the 1970's through things like the "Bookmobile" or Scholastic Books programs (sample offerings of books & records were presented to kids who would make their selections and have their parents pony up the cash over the next week. The goods would usually arrive a month or so later, which is when you'd scratch your head & try to figure out what you were thinking).

The stories are mostly adaptations of familiar concepts that you'll find on many spooky kids records (Edgar Allen Poe, "The Golden Arm" (a folk tale that Mark Twain delighted in telling his entire life by the way), "Wait 'til Martin Comes", etc), but the cover art was great and the mood wasn't bad either, so they weigh heavily in the nostalgia portion of the brain for a lot of folks. There were two more title in this series as well; "Thrillers and Chillers" & "Weird Tales of the Unknown" but my copies are both fully shot -- I'm working on it, trust me. UPDATE: Thanks to a fellow named Steve, both of these albums are now available for download here.

Link Removed

Link Removed

Alfred Hitchcock "Music To Be Murdered By" (Imperial, LP-9052, 1958), "Ghost Stories For Young People" (Golden, LP-89, 1960)

2006-02-22T18:46:00.002-07:00

Two cool albums riding the crest of the late '50's/ early '60's Hitchcock wave, these records have both been reissued several times over the years. I know I've had the "Ghost Stories for Young People" album from age 5 on, and haven't grown tired of hearing it to this day. John Allen did an excellent job of both writing & narrating the stories, and I can't tell you how many of these lines I still quote without always consciously realizing it (so the next time I'm at your house yawning as I say "maybe I'll just spend the night here" you'll know where it comes from) -- directed at kids it manages to be playfully scary without dipping into overt cuteness. Now "Music to Be Murdered By" is a completely different animal altogether; it's aimed at adults & adeptly uses the Jeff Alexander Orchestra to interpret a variety of standards with "spooky" themes ("I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You", "Body and Soul", etc), with Alexander penned originals like the "Alfred Hitchcock Television Theme" thrown in for good measure. Today I'm sure it'd get called "Lounge Music", but I guess that still leaves the "To Be Murdered By" option open, so I won't kick.

While his name and likeness sold them, Hitchcock's involvement on both albums mostly consist of spoken cameos before each track (which I suppose is more than the simple branding he lent to his "Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine" and "Presents" style anthology books), and these intros find the droll character he had perfected by this point in full flower. As a kid it was my introduction to his persona, and I was fully smitten. And I really wanted to take Vanishing Lessons.

Link Removed

Link Removed

Naked Raygun "Live At The VFW#18 in KC, MO Aug 11, 1984"

2006-02-22T13:17:00.000-07:00

This is a live recording from the first time (of what would eventually be many times) that I ever saw Naked Raygun, and it's fair to say that they blew me away. I'd only heard the "Flammable Solid" single and a few tracks off the "Code Blue" tape at this point, and I guess I really didn't know what else to expect (though I certainly DID expect "Surf Combat" -- when it starts you can hear my friend Larry shouting "YEAAAH!" and then turning to me with a "Let's go!" right before we ran into "the pit"). I knew there was a Big Black connection, but (aside from THEIR track on "Code Blue") had mostly only heard "Steelworker" by them a few times on my local college station & that was little help.

Naked Raygun were opening here for Iron Cross (also recorded, I'll post it eventually), and were added to the show a little late -- effectively filling in for Heart Attack who had cancelled. Few people in the crowd seemed to know who they were, but they did two short sets (sadly during the second one my tape runs out before "New Dreams" is over) and everyone I talked to walked away really impressed. In retrospect this was something of a transition point for them (I'm told by my friend Randy that "everything off of Basement Screams was pretty much dropped from their live performances about a year later with the exception of the occasional inclusion of Potential Rapist"), but mostly what I can tell you is that I was sorta shocked when they pulled a sax out for a few songs (hey, I was 15 and still really just a hardcore kid for the most part). By the way, what you're not hearing here is the totally crummy interview I did with them after the show for my zine "Room 101". Even at the time I knew it was bad, and I didn't even run it. You'll live.

So here's the only flyer I have left that mentions the show:

and a detail that links to the goods themselves:

Naked Raygun "Live At The VFW#18 in KC, MO Aug 11, 1984" (192 kbps)

Boris Karloff "Tales of the Frightened Volume 1" (Mercury, MG 20815, 1963), "Tales of the Frightened Volume 2" (Mercury, MG 20816, 1963)

2006-02-17T19:58:00.001-07:00

Here are a pair of cool albums released in the early '60's that were spun out of some other projects with the same name. To quote some of the info I found around the internet:

(The) magazine was a tie-in to a syndicated radio feature. "The Frightened" was one of several proposed radio features that were packaged by Lyle Kenyon Engel. The project never really got off the ground and it is not clear how many, if any, were actually aired. The vignettes in this series were written by Michael Avallone and read by Boris Karloff. Each issue of the magazine contains one of the vignettes, neither individually titled or bylined. Several years later Karloff's readings were released as a phonograph record and the texts were published as a book by Avallone.

and:

The music that runs underneath Boris's voice slowed down and twisted about is Tom Dissvelt and Kid Baltan's masterpiece recording of "Song of The Second Moon", reissued as "The Elektrosonics-Electronic Music" (Philips)

There's more data out there (Google it on up), but that's the long & the short of it. Containing some nice creepy stories read by one of the most soothingly spooky voices ever to work in the realm of horror, these were ripped off of a pair of very clean copies that a pal of mine graciously loaned me. Enjoy!

Link Removed

Link Removed

US Air Force "Promotional Radio Spots" (Century Records, 1979)

2006-02-16T23:11:00.000-07:00

Here's a 7" that I've had since I was 10 years old. There were about 4 of these things on different colors of transparent vinyl at the local Salvation Army, and though the label was blank they seemed to have a whole bunch of tracks banded out on them. What great songs could be on those grooves? Such a mystery! Since they were only a dime apiece I bought the full set figuring on the coolest score of my life, but when I got home it turned out that each one was the same exact thing: a promotional single of radio spots for the Air Force.

Not that I was complaining really; right away I was intrigued to find the same basic jingle done up in multiple musical styles (Rock! Country! Disco!) for what I assumed to be different markets. Following the jingles were these lame little skits (a guy calls "Space Age Computer Systems" for a job interview & is laughed at, a cartoon-voiced extra terrestrial named "Kobak from the planet Zircon" laments the fact that as an alien he can't enlist), which mostly confused me -- this stuff makes people sign up for the Air Force? Then the bizarro closer: Lorne Greene appears as Commander Adama from Battlestar Galactica and compares the futuristic technical advances found on his TV show spaceship with those available to you RIGHT NOW on Earth as a member of the US Air Force. Huh? At age ten I already sorta suspected that I was too old for Battlestar Galactica -- who the hell were these ads written for?

Still I've been well served by my 40 cent purchase I guess; over the last 27 years I've used those singles as filler on comp tapes, last-minute gag gifts, decorations to hang up on my walls, and things-to-shoot-at-with-a-BB-gun. How one copy managed to survive all this I don't know, but since it did I assume that it was just waiting for a chance to jingle its way into your heart.

UPDATE: There's a great thread here about Century Records, focusing primarily on its relation to the '60's garage rock world. Check it out.

US Air Force "Promotional Radio Spots" (192 kbps)

Haunted House Music Company "Haunted House", "Night In a Graveyard", "The Ride of the Headless Horseman" (1985)

2006-02-15T04:43:00.000-07:00

Part of an almost bootleg-looking series that popped up in the mid '80's, the "Haunted House Music Co" line shared a similar format from record to record: Side One conveyed the larger concept while Side Two concerned itself with a hodgepodge of separately banded sound effects that sometimes related to what was listed on the back cover and sometimes didn't. From packaging on down they're totally budget in scope, but for me their B-Grade quality adds heavily to their effectiveness with some genuinely ghoulish atmosphere coming through the speakers. Of this trio only The Ride of the Headless Horseman contains a story with a spoken narrative; Haunted House and Night In a Graveyard seem more than content to paint their themes as sound collage alone (a later CD that would seem to pair House and Graveyard is actually a completely different animal, you can hear it here).

The (almost always blurry) back cover info is pretty cool too, claiming that the recordings were made "Live in Transylvania Studios", "Live on the Estate of Count Dracula", and (get ready) "Live in the Village of Sleepy Hollowville at the Ichabod Crane Studios". Continuing the theme, the record company info is listed as "Haunted House Music Co., 2 Crypt Way, Eerie USA" with various pressings containing much smaller type below detailing a few different addresses for "Golden Circle Inc" (most of the other releases on the label seem to have been of the budget/ early-recordings-of-now-popular-artists variety). Oh, and there's usually a REALLY blurry Dolby Digital logo tacked on somewhere just for good measure. Reeking of delicious Halloween audio cheapness, these titles must proudly number among the last of their kind before the rise of the compact disc. Not bad as death rattles go really.

Haunted House Music Company "Haunted House" (HHST 10-31AB, 1985) (192 kbps)

Haunted House Music Company "Night in a Graveyard" (HHST 10-31BB, 1985) (192 kbps)

Haunted House Music Company "The Ride of the Headless Horseman" (HHST 10-31CC, 1985) (192 kbps)

MAD Magazine "Fink Along With Mad" (Big Top, 12-1306, 1962)

2006-02-13T08:12:00.001-07:00

The second of two MAD LPs released on Big Top, this gem was written and produced by Norm Blagman & Sam Bobrick, and performed by Jeanne Hayes, Mike Russo & The Dellwoods (seems that the sax solo on "It's A Gas" was even played by Mr. King Curtis!). A few of these songs were also issued as cardboard records in the mag in '62 (a tradition that continued with Eva-Tone sheets til the 80's. I can still sing every damn version of the 1980 "It's a Super Spectacular Day" flexi thanks to a foolish decision to tape record all 8 endings in a row. Man, it took forever to get that last one.)

Back to 1962, this vinyl rip is from a friend (at 160 kbps), but since I've been playing it over & over this weekend I figured the time was right to share it all the same. There's some catchy Teen-Pop/ R+R on here, and I'm sure that the social anxiety humor (roundly eclipsed by more counter-cultural forces a little later in the decade) served an important function for weirdo youth. Oh, and it's phunny.

Link Removed

Frankie Stein And His Ghouls (Complete LP Discography)

2006-02-11T08:12:00.001-07:00

Here's the complete run of albums by Frankie Stein and His Ghouls, a fictional studio creation designed to profit off the "Monster Kid" generation of the early 1960's. The Frankie Stein formula was as simple as it was brilliant; cool low budget horror cover art, creepy sounding song names with a suggested dance listing after the title ("Hully Gully, Frug"), and spooky sound effects laid on top of the actual music (which was a potpourri of twist & beat numbers that sometimes had frightful compositional overtones & sometimes didn't). Just fucking perfect.

Ripped from the cleanest LP copies I could find, I highly recommend the whole set. Ideal for dance parties!

Link Removed

Link Removed

Link Removed

Link Removed

Frankie Stein & His Ghouls "Monster Sounds And Dance Music" (Power Records 342, 1965) (192 kbps)

The Buggs "The Beetle Beat" (Coronet, CX-212, 1964)

2006-02-10T09:30:00.000-07:00

Another Beatles rip-off record, but this one honestly isn't that bad. Yes, I'll say it: The Buggs might even be pretty good. Sure we get the obligatory "She Loves You" & "I Want To Hold Your Hand" covers (as well as stray covers of other contemporary songs retitled so that, like almost every song on here, they include British locations in the name -- "Just One Look" becomes "Soho Mash", for example), but my faves are what I take to be originals. "Mersey Mercy", "Liverpool Drag" & "London Town Swing" are truly pretty charming if you like that peppy early "Beat" sound, and on the whole LP only "East End" really sucks (well, and I guess "Swingin' Thames" isn't going on any mix tapes of mine in the foreseeable future either).

This one is pretty common in both Stereo and Mono editions, so it must've sold a lot at the time. Tracks by the Buggs also showed up on the Coronet compilation "At The Hop" (with the Four Seasons, Charlie Francis & Barbara Brown), and I've read somewhere that there was a followup album, but I've never seen it.

To wit: "In this album you will hear the original Liverpool sound recorded on location in England by the Buggs, a fast moving, well paced group that we are sure you will like."

The Buggs "The Beetle Beat" (192 kbps)