Plagued by silence, Lou Reed's The Bed is the second to last song on my favorite album of his, Berlin, a tragic rock opera of a couple doomed by their own love, drug use, and depression.
The Bed involves Lou reminiscing of his love. There is where she laid her head when she went to sleep. There's where their children were conceived (before they were taken away by the government, documented in another track called "The Kids"). And there? There's where she cut her wrists. That odd and faithful night.
Much like Mass Production, The Bed is steeped in eerie sadness. Backed with no other instrument but Lou's guitar, he tells his story, seemingly near-dead himself. Almost quietly singing to himself, a ghostly choir frequently echoing into the room after the chorus. A past memory, haunting him over and over as his thoughts keep coming back to his lost beautiful love. Its almost too much to bear.
The crushing isolation of being an individual can sometimes be too much. The desire to be accepted as a cookie-cutter human being can be almost sinfully enticing sometimes. Iggy Pop knows how it feels.
A favorite of artists like Siouxsie Sioux and David Bowie, Iggy's The Idiot is one of the most depressing albums of all time. It honestly makes me feel just empty whenever I listen to any track off of it. When Joy Division's Ian Curtis was found dead, this album was actually playing which just adds to the creepy/soul-crushing mystique of the whole thing.
The final track on the album, Mass Production is all about loneliness. Iggy's working in a factory (not unlike our old friend Frankie Teardrop) and he finds a girl and asks her for her number. Well, not her number, but a girl almost like her. Better than her. So he can be better, too.
As the song drones, industry moves on, instruments replicating machinery whirring, smokestacks belching, creating the freak scene of widely produced human beings. Perfectly crafted ubermensches. No matter how many times Iggy tries to kill himself, he's placed right back on his job at the factory. Constantly working on this hellish line for all eternity.
The song comes to a close as the instruments break down, malfunctioning, struggling to spit out their putrid product. Iggy's daft dreams finally are coming realized, though, as he begins repeating over the music trying to drown him out "I'm almost like him. Yes, I'm almost like him." Losing himself forever in the need to be wanted in society.
We've all had those moments. It's dark, we're alone. Maybe it's raining outside. It's all a classic slasher movie formula and even though we should know better, there's always the ever present fear that something bad will happen. It's all the imagination and there is nothing more frightening than what the human mind can devise.
The greatest song about a woman being stalked (Dead Kennedys' song The Prey comes in at second. I don't know any other songs on this subject, though), The Cure's ode to walking alone at night is all about the fear of anticipation. Never knowing what's really going to happen.
A slow bass line echoes like the footsteps following the woman as Robert Smith's voice softly tells the tale. Eight lines long, the woman knowing there's someone following her closely. Afraid, she dare not turn around.
Then it happens, depending on the version you're listening to, the song will either just fade out (or abruptly stop) leaving your imagination to run wild about what happened (presumably the worst). OR you're left with the song fading out and the real reveal of the woman's fate as Smith lets loose an ear-piercing scream that is entirely unexpected.
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), the only studio version I could find is the one that just goes away rather than giving us a scream. Also I can't embed it because it isn't allowed.
Set in Los Angeles in the 1930s, Mildred Pierce is the story of a middle-class housewife's attempt to maintain her and her family's social position during the Great Depression. Frustrated by her unemployed husband, and worried by their dwindling finances, Mildred separates from him and sets out to support herself and her children on her own.
Although it shares the name with James M. Cain's tragic novel (turned into a film starring Joan Crawford), the track off of Sonic Youth's major label debut Goo has nothing in common with it. It's an almost entirely instrumental track, save for Thruston Moore declaring the name of the song in the beginning. Oh, and the end.
Not too long, the song sort of drags through concert style echoed guitars and fuzzy bass. Then comes the last 30 seconds. I want to remind you that this was the major label debut of the indie rock godfathers. A big record company trusted the band enough to widely distribute an album with Mildred Pierce on it. Maybe he didn't know, maybe the band snuck it onto the album, but it doesn't seem possible that audiences were clamoring for the finale of Mildred Pierce.
After the repetitive bass and guitars comes a pure psycho freakout of screaming instruments and Thurston shrieking his head off. It's almost as if it's serving as a message to those who think joining a major label is selling out. Even under the umbrella of a big corporation, you can stil perform acts of extreme discomfort.
Also the video includes Sofia Coppola doing a decent Joan Crawford impression and which means the best acting Sofia Coppola has ever done is for a 2 minute Sonic Youth music video.
Ah, good old fashioned nightmare fuel. Now for kids! Walt Disney had a passion for entertaining children. He also enjoyed scaring the fuck out of them with dark forests filled with evil trees, islands where vices turn kids into donkeys for salt mines and nightmarish hallucinations and dreams.
Also, beloved cartoon character Donald Duck swinging an axe around.
In the animated classic Dumbo, an elephant learns to accept himself for what he looks like and is able to put his deformities to good use, thanks to a friendly mouse, his caring mother, and a bunch of racist-ass crows.
This was progressive at the time. PROGRESSIVE
The same movie involves the adorable elephant drinking a load of alcohol and getting ridiculously shit-faced to the point of seeing a bunch of monstrous pink elephants. The elephants proceed to scare the shit out of any child ever watching. Most kids first experience with psychedelic imagery comes from Pink Elephants.
The song is pretty weird, as well. Voices alternate, trumpets blare, drums pound, chaos erupts in the end, before finally fading into peace as the little elephant wakes up from a hangover he'll never forget (do you realize elephants).
Second in freaky Disney songs in kids films is fucking Heffalumps and Woozles. Man, they couldn't have drawn that first Woozle any more menacing. And the instrumental part with the warped instruments playing? What the fuck, man.
Une chanson brillante par Talking Heads, Psycho Killer centers around the mind of a serial killer and David Byrne's desire to understand what goes on in said mind. And apparently that involves listening to Alice Cooper a lot, since that's what Byrne used for inspiration.
Assuming the role of the killer, Byrne waxes philisophic over "psycho killer. Qu'est-ce que c'est?" (or what is it). Byrne is tense and nervous over something, his need to sleep seems to have hit an obstacle since his bed is on fire. And the chorus, other than the French part, has him telling himself (or someone) to run away (after saying "fa" a lot).
The bridge gives us an even deeper look into his psyche. But it's in French, so unless you can understand French, you're pretty shit out of luck. Basically what Byrne reveals is that something happened one evening between him and a woman that ended with him going "headlong for glory." Take what you like of that line.
Novelty songs don't scare me. Monster Mash, Dinner With Drac, Nature Trail To Hell are all goofy fun Halloweeny songs. This isn't. This is a novelty song seemingly with malice aforethought.
Backed by a looping drum beat (this seems to be a common theme in songs that freak me out), Napoleon XIV speaks rhythmically about how his love left after all the good things he does for her. His lost love drives him outright mad and, as they're coming to take him away to the funny farm, his voice slowly gets pitched higher and higher, signifying insanity.
It's still a really fun song, obviously a great novelty piece, but I can't stand listening to this song alone or in the dark. Like almost as much as Frankie Teardrop or Hamburger Lady, that's how freaked out I get when I listen to it. It's actually more relaxing to hear !aaaH-aH, yawA eM ekaT oT gnimoC er'yehT, the absurd b-side of the single, which is just the song in reverse. It's possibly crazier, but not making any sense is better than making perfect, maddening sense.
Former Sexual Pistola John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) formed post-punk mavens Public Image, Ltd. Quite the long way away from his punk past, Lydon's songs became more dour and experimental. This is especially true for their greatest (and most depressing) album, Metal Box (which was indeed a metal box with a record in it).
Poptones, off of the Box, is one dark ride. The repeating bass vibrations of Jah Wobble and the dark circus chords of Keith Levene add to the pure unsettling nature of the song. Lydon warbles of the ritualistic kidnapping, torture, and murder of a youth in the back of the woods. Told from the perspective of the victim.
Looking to take care of disposed bodies, the "bleeding heart" of the song is taken away in a Japanese car and stripped naked. Tortured for a little while before being shot in the head. The song ends with Lydon repeating "POPTOOOONNNEEESSS" before letting out a gruesome (but thankfully short) shriek.
And the name of the song? That's the refrain. While being tortured the perpetrators play the same stupid pop song on a cassette over and over again. Talk about adding insult to injury.
Scott Walker was a ladykiller-style crooner back in the 60s. Between then and this song, he seems to have lost his fucking mind.
Slow and brooding, Walker sings of things like "nose holes caked in black cocaine" and "six feet of foetus flung at sparrows in the sky" (what in the fuck) as if any of it is supposed to makes sense. Oh wait, apparently it is supposed to make sense. And apparently it's supposed to be about 9/11. As told by Elvis's stillborn brother. For those of you who don't know what stillborn is, it's when a child dies during childbirth. The song ends in darkness and silence, nothing but Walker's voice repeating "I'm the only one left alive."
The genius of Scott Walker cannot be denied, a man unafraid of experimentation and breaking musical rules who influenced David Bowie and Brian Eno. But Jesus is he fucking nuts. Or maybe we are.
Today I figured it would be a good time to share two of the best classical songs for H'ween. So let's go.
First off is Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, one of the most popular pieces of classical music ever, is the equivalent of stepping into Dracula's lair. The infamous opening and how it holds forever until you imagine bats flying around and shit.
It's all on organ, too, so you get that additional creepy Phantom thing going on. And it goes on for 8 and half minutes in its entirety, and all of this culminates into one long vampiric theme.
Maybe my favorite piece of classical music is Edvard Grieg's In The Hall Of The Mountain King from the Ibsen play Peer Gynt. It has this force and build.
Starting off at a ridiculously low volume, the song's first theme involves the lead character (Peer Gynt) sneaking through the Mountain King's castle avoiding trolls. The second theme is the first but slightly changed, these represent the trolls. As the trolls find Peer and give chase, the music slowly grows faster and louder.
Finally Peer finds himself in the hall of the Mountain King, coming face to face with the monstrous troll. The music is finally at full volume as the thundering presence of the King looks for the now hiding Peer Gynt. Finding an exit, Peer rushes out of the mountain, the trolls giving chase. Cymbals crash, timpanis roll, silencing the other instruments, the mountain collapses just as Peer has escaped and the trolls have been crushed by the falling rocks.
Now listen to the song and imagine that happening. It's crazy.
Also Grieg looks a shitload like Mark Twain and Albert Einstein had a kid.
Possibly the most perfect Halloween song since Monster Mash, Bauhaus's ode to the former Dracula is a slow, heart-shaking song. Peter Murphy's warble backed by woodblock drumming, a spine-wriggling bass line, and an effects-ridden guitar.
Notice the NS in the title up there. It may be spooky but I would never call it creepy or scary. What starts as a slow, plodding song...remains a slow, plodding song. Not that I have a problem with it. It's still an awesome song, a tribute to my favorite Martin Landau character, but it's not scary. Sorry guys!
Almost every possible spooktacular (did I just write spooktacular?) thing you can think of pops up in this song: a corpse, widowed brides, spooky capes, bats. It's all there. All to listen to in the dark. Alone. With headphones.
This is Ween. On the left is Gene Ween, on the right is his brother Dean. They are not actually brothers. What they are, however, is insane. Musical geniuses, but fucked up beyond all reason. I could easily track each album by freakiest song because holy shit are they insane. But they have 11 albums and I'm not going to go through all of them. INSTEAD, I'm gonna talk about the first two Ween songs that really scared the shit out of me.
Maybe their most popular album, Chocolate and Cheese contains a song called Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down), this was both the song that made me fear Ween and the song that got me really interested in Ween (because something is wrong with me).
Chimes and what sound like muted guitars score a story of a child worried about his spinal condition and asking his mother "is it gonna hurt again?" The song has overlapping vocals with Gene singing in a quiet deep tone and a louder, child-like voice says the same words, albeit in more a more horrified tone.
The other one, off of Quebec, is entitled Happy Colored Marbles and what the ffffffuck. Starts off slow, then turns happy, back to slow, and happy. That's disconcerting enough, but then the track turns into a complete horrorfest as the rest of the song is an instrumental festival from hell. Whirring and penetrating your mind.
This video is a slightly shortened version so consider your asses lucky.
Elvis Costello is possibly my favorite artist. He seems to switch between Talking Heads in the number 1 spot. The lanky body, giant framed glasses and gap teeth hide a musical mastermind. A lyrical monster, letting prose glide off his fingertips, Costello seems most at home writing and singing of two things: political injustice and heartbreak. This one falls under the latter category.
Ignoring the lyrics is a bad idea with Costello's songs and this is no exception. What seemingly starts out as a sad Elvis lamenting the loss of a former flame slowly transforms into something worse. It soon becomes apparent that this woman is being obsessively followed by him. Hell, they may not even have ever dated.
It's like masochism incarnate, Elvis tortures himself over this woman who may or may not have cheated on him. By the end of the song, he's almost dead. He sounds hopeless, drained of life, close to killing...someone. Himself, her, anyone, but someone.
Enjoy the video, but probably just listen to the music because this is a fan video for "William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet" (which is a stupid name) and the person who made completely misses the point of the song.
Cover songs aren't usually freaky. They tend to be more straight-forward, for better or for worse (see my list of best and worst cover songs). Tori Amos, however, is not straight-forward. By which I mean she's fucking crazy.
Case in point, the album Strange Little Girls. It's a concept album revolving around covers of songs about women written by men. Covering artists like The Boomtown Rats, Depeche Mode, and Neil Young (even interpreting Slayer's Raining Blood to be about the menstrual cycle. Seriously), it's entirely a big bag of insanity. But the cake-topper of this whole fucking thing is the god damn cover of Eminem's '97 Bonnie & Clyde.
What was originally a violent diatribe against his ex-wife Kim, Eminem's song transforms into a cooing slow piano song. Hushing his daughter (since she's playing Eminem) as he drives the corpse of his wife to the dock to throw it away and then flee with daughter in tow, Tori moves through the tune almost dreamily.
Don't get me wrong when I talk about this, by the way. I love Tori Amos and I knew about this song before I did research for this month. But still...jesus fuck.
Why is Paul McCartney able to write a happy ditty about a man who murders with a hammer and get away with it? Content. Murder is pretty harmless in a joyous context, I suppose. It all depends on the content. Write a song about pedophilia, and BOOM. Creep central.
Oingo Boingo, the band by future composer Danny Elfman, wrote a song called Little Girls about...little girls. Little girls make Danny feel good, little girls make Danny feel bad. He loves little girls so much because they never ask questions or scold him. They just want to be held by our old friend Danny.
Danny might not care what other people think or what they say when he and his friend are walking down the street. Whoops! Back up, Danny, you're in trouble. One of those girls was too little.
It may be a double standard to call this song creepy while Maxwell gets away with murder, but honestly, listen to how joyful this song is and challenge me that it isn't creepier than Maxwell's Silver Hammer.
Backed by screaming guitars and monstrous lyrics, Stigmata is not like most of this list. It isn't freaky in any sense of the word, it's just downright brutally scary. There's no underlying creepiness to it, it's out in the fucking open. Just screeching at you. With only the intensity of a goth industrial metal band like Ministry.
Barreling down the drumline, singer Al Jourgensen starts silently singing with this weird accent (Jourgensen was born in Cuba and raised in America) about truth. It's "stronger than reason, stronger than lies," too bad the only truth he knows is "the look in your eyes." At that look Jourgensen's voice just begin to blasts into the stratosphere. Screaming about how you've run out of lies. This isn't normal metal screaming, either. This is gothic pain from fucking hell.
Then it gets weird. He starts screaming about how he's "chewing on glass" and that it's "in his fingers" (in his fingers? eating his fingers? shrug). Then back to screaming about your lack of lies.
This whole thing goes on for six minutes, constantly screaming about your eyes. They're truthful. They're empty. They're dead.
Okay, so this isn't actually about Grim, Grinning Ghosts (for the most part), I actually just wanted a space to write about the Haunted Mansion without messing up the theme of this month's posts. It fits the Halloween feel and it's my favorite ride in all Disney World. Also it's my blog and shut up.
History
Inspired by another Disney Legend Harper Geoff's drawing of a lonely dark manor sitting atop a hill, Imagineer Ken Anderson designed a whole background for the house, giving it a number of ghost stories. When Walt Disney wanted a replica of New Orleans built between Frontierland and Adventureland that featured a haunted house, Anderson studied the old Antebellum mansions of Louisiana and designed a revamped version of Geoff's original sketch. Walt, not thrilled with the design or the way the walkthrough ride was going, put the project on hold for a while.
Soon after Disney's death, Imagineers began reworking the "Museum of the Weird" from a walkthrough ride to one utilizing the brand new Omnimover system. Finally, the Haunted Mansion opened in Disneyland on August 9, 1969.
The Ride
Entering through a pair of ornate gates, you walk past the front yard cemetery (complete with death black hearse, almost as if it was waiting for someone). Your guide leads you to a mysterious Octagonal Room and suggest you stand "dead center." Soon, the door to the room closes, transforming into a wall, and a disembodied voice fills the room. Your "ghost host" (as he calls himself) welcomes you to the Haunted Mansion and, not even a god damn minute after, begins taunting you by having the room stretch. The portraits stretch, as well. What was once an innocent painting of a young woman with a parasol soon reveals she is braving walking over an unraveling tightrope, trying to avoid the jaws of a hungry crocodile below.
The host finally points out that the room you are in no longer has any doors or windows, leaving you with a challenge: to find a way out. The lights begin to flicker as he gives an evil laugh, then suggests there's always "his way." The lights go out as lightning flashes in the chamber, a scream and a crash are heard, and, looking above, you see how our host got out as his body hangs from a noose high above. He apologizes for "scaring us too early" and tells us to look alive as the doors open again.
After boarding our dark "Doom Buggies" that will move us through the manor, we come across a seemingly never ending hallway with a candelabra floating in the middle of it, to the side is a clock with 13 numbers on it, spinning wildly. Entering the Conservatory, we see a long-forgetten funeral taking place, and the corpse trying to pry his own coffin open (it's apparently been nailed down, like this has happened before).
Passing a series of ominous doors (pulsing, moans being heard behind them), we come to the Séance Room, where Madame Leota (with her head in a crystal ball) performs every day, summoning ghosts and demons of all sorts for a fee (although in this case, it's on the house). Moving on to the ballroom, the floor comes alive as the first ghosts that we see dance and be merry. An organ is playing, a birthday cake is having it's candles blown out. We can't stay for too long, though. We have a...prior engagment.
Climbing a staircase surrounded by a number of winding stairs going every which way, we see a bunch of eyes glowing in the dark, staring at us. The eyes fade away, revealed to be wallpaper. In the attic, amongst a number of gifts and mementos, a ghostly version of "Here Comes The Bride" plays as a series of wedding photos change and each groom mysteriously loses his head. Coming upon the ghostly bride of the portraits, still chanting bits and pieces of wedding vows, she raises her arms and a hatchet appears in her hands.
Whoops! Our Doom Buggy seems to have fallen out of the attic window. Boy, this seems like a long fall, doesn't it? When we finally reach the bottom, we see the groundskeeper and his pet dog, the only two living members of the Mansion. They seem to be looking at us in a terrified manner, as if he just saw...a ghost. Yeah, the fall actually killed us. On the bright side, we're with our own right now in the graveyard and they seem delighted to see us. It's a garden party and they're even singing (the song being "Grim, Grinning Ghosts").
When the party is over, our Buggies round a corner and our ghost host finally finds us, having forgotten to remind us to beware of hitchhiking ghosts...right as ghosts appear in a mirror next to us (or on top of us depending where you're seated). A changed version of "Grim, Grinning Ghosts" plays as a tiny apparition wishes us to "hurry back" and to bring our "death certificates" if we wish to join them.
OH HEY WHAT'S THIS ITS THE ENTIRE HAUNTED MANSION RIDE WOW It's from Disneyland so it doesn't completely follow my walkthrough (there are differences between the two parks) BUT STILL WOW GUYS WOW
Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages! Come one, come all to the circus of nightmares. In the center ring we have our freaky ringmaster, Fad Gadget! Listen as he extols the glory of his beloved weaponry.
Based on an actual American revolver named the Saturday Night Special, the song describes this perfect family. Man, wife, son. And the man's gun. All played at a freakishly slow, baroque-esque pace, perfectly warping this image of a happy American family (I stress the American part because Fad Gadget is actually English). In all honestly, it sounds like a fear carousel.
The man's belief to have the right to own a gun (and subsequently shoot a person) keeps him the dominant in the family. His wife is a perfect angel when the neighbors are looking, but a minx in the bedroom. His son is a credit to the family name. His daughter? What, there is no daughter. Don't be ridiculous. It's not like he killed her because he didn't have a son.
He will have order in his family. And if not? Well, there's always brute force.
Amidst the fabulous performances of The Beatles' 1968 self-titled release (commonly known as the White Album), among them "Dear Prudence," "Blackbird," and the actual "Revolution," comes Revolution 9, a collaborative effort between two Beatles (George and John) and one Japanese woman who is wrongly blamed at every possible turn for the breakup of The Beatles.
As the song begins we are treated to a lovely piano introduction and,a few seconds in, a looping track of a man saying "Number 9" passes through the speakers, crossing over from left to right and right to left.
Soon, chaos erupts. Feedback plagues the air, unused rehearsal tracks, more tape loops, people and babies laughing, people screaming. Chants for American football games (jumping between left and right speakers) and people simply talking about things makes things even uneasier. Backmasking appears throughout the song, and other songs play almost as if through a radio.
If I had to compare this song to something, I would gauge it as like a visit to a haunted madhouse. Appearing first on the asylum grounds, nothing seems too out of the ordinary but you get this eerie feeling. Then you enter and it's pure unadulterated madness at every turn. By the time you leave, you are only left with freakish chants echoing in your mind. That is the effect of Revolution Number 9.
This is the first installment of my second project for this month, The Not So Scary Songs n Stuff Fanblog. Matching the Halloweeny feel of October and the TSSnSF, these songs are somewhat related to the dark nature of this month or involve monsters or something. I don't know, I haven't fully thought this out.
Anyways, I figured because I've already done 6 songs that are freaky, one slightly less creepy should be in order today (but I am doing another freaky one after this).
I'm not right in the head. Aside from a handful of George Harrison songs, my favorite Beatles songs are mostly weirder than their usual set. Songs like I Am The Walrus, Happiness Is A Warm Gun, and Helter Skelter rank high among the Beatles discography for me.
So this is a fairly upbeat song concering a man named Maxwell Edison, who is majoring in medicine (RHYMING). Maxwell asks a fellow student, Joan (studied pataphysical science), on a date to the pictures. While Joan's getting ready, there's a knock on her door. It's Max! And he's...carrying a...hammer.
Well, "bang bang," goes Maxwell's silver hammer as it smashes against her skull. He does it a second time for good measure. Later on, he kills his teacher and presumably other people until the cops catch him. Despite a testimony from Max and protests, the judge still finds him guilty, causing him to go on one last rampage.
Despite being credited to Lennon/McCartney, this was all Paul. Strongly believing that it had the goods to be a future single, the Maxwell session lasted over a course of three weeks. John derided it as a prime example of McCartney's "granny-style" writing, Ringo has called it "the worst song we ever had to record," and George, who at one point complimented it as "fun," dubbed it as "fruity."
And, well, all of that could be true. It's pretty dumb but that's what I like about it.
Also this was covered by Steve Martin in the film "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," which might be tied with "Across The Universe" as the single worst Beatles-related film ever. Seriously, check this out.
Out of any band that will appear this month, one of the most beloved in my eyes is Butthole Surfers. Born from the twisted minds of lead singer Gibby Haynes and guitarist Jeff Leary, the band rose during the underground alternative movement of the mid 80s, where bands like Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, and The Replacements thrived.
They were best seen live (and probably on psychedelics) where they employed a naked dancing woman, smoke, and (for a full epileptic fit) strobe lights. Combine all of it with a series of videos behind them including a negative copy of an episode of Charlie's Angels, images of accidents, gory driver's ed films and a film of penis reconstruction surgery. That would make one hell of a show.
Amidst albums entitled "Rembrandt Pussyhorse" and "Hairway To Steven," (which doesn't have an actual track list but rather crude drawings in place) live a series of freakish alt-rock tunes. Ranging from a man afraid someone is stalking him(Who Was In My Room Last Night?) to one of our deranged elders rambling on about his retirement plan down south (Moving To Florida). But my two personal favorites in the history of the Surfers are tracks from 1987's "Locust Abortion Technician."
The first one, Sweat Loaf, awashes us in a beautiful dreamlike sound (after a minute of silence) as an echo-y child asks his father what regret means. The sitcom-style father tells him that "it's better to regret something you have done, than to regret something you haven't done."
"Oh, and if you see your mother this weekend," he adds, "tell her I said SATAN." The word repeats for a few seconds as the dreamy sitcom world falls apart, leaving only a warped rendition of the riff of Black Sabbath's Sweet Leaf (hence the song's name). This goes on for the rest of the song, occasionally punctuated by Haynes' howls.
Yes, that is the back cover of the album.
The other song is a jaunty tune entitled 22 Going On 23. The song is a recorded radio conversation where a woman calls a late night on-air therapist explaining how she was sexually assaulted. The song is completely taken to a crazy zone as it is warped with crunching guitars, parts of the conversation repeated, and animal sounds turn a jarring discussion into something that can drive you insane.
But don't feel bad for the woman in the song. It turns out she was a pathological liar who called into the show every night.
Fun fact: Butthole Surfers were one of Kurt Cobain's favorite bands. That should tell you plenty about Kurt Cobain.
Pearl Jam has two songs that could easily be described as "effed up."
Jeremy, from their first album "Ten," concerns a young boy by the name of, well, Jeremy. From the opening lyric we know something's wrong, since he's drawing pictures of mountaintops with him on top, arms raised in "V" formation in front of a lemon yellow sun. And the dead are laying in a pool of maroon below him.
Well as it turns out, Jeremy is from a broken home. Daddy doesn't give him any love and Mommy doesn't even want him. Meanwhile at school, he's the frequent target of bullying. All of this culminates as Eddie Vedder starts screaming of how to "try to forget this, try to erase this, from the blackboard," before repeating the song's chorus that "Jeremy spoke in class today," a dark refrain reflecting a hidden event.
While the song is more than clear that Jeremy did something as a form of revenge, it's never made clear. Unless you watch the video or know Jeremy's backstory. Jeremy Wade Delle, a 15 year-old boy from Texas shot himself in front of his class. Relegated to a small newspaper paragraph to eventually be forgotten who wasn't friends, family or classmates, Eddie wanted a story like Jeremy's to have importance and eventually made one of the band's few music videos (which faced controversy since it shows the boy playing Jeremy pulling the gun out of his pocket and putting it in his mouth).
The other song, with a decidely more gruesome (if fake) tale, tells of a cannibalistic tour bus driver for Pearl Jam who goes by the name of Dirty Frank. While Jeremy has a much more grim message, Dirty Frank is more or less a dark comedy.
Frank Dahmer (named after famed serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer) kills and eats everything. Groupies, children, eventualy moving on to lead guitarist Mike McCready, leaving Eddie and the band to fear who's next on the menu. The answer to that is revealed near the end as Eddie lets out death screams as the sound of a dirty chainsaw (Dirty Frank's dirty chainsaw) squeal in the foreground.
Oh, also if you had doubts this was for comedic purposes Eddie drops a Shaft reference.
Yep, Throbbing Gristle is the actual name of the band. And yes they make the exact kind of music you would expect from a band called Throbbing Gristle.
To listen to industrial forefathers TG is not exactly what I would call a "pleasant experience." It repeatedly leaves me confused and shaken, as if someone snuck up behind me and scared me in a bad way. But it's...oddly appealing.
Backed by a freakish whirring, mechanical sound (which I can only equate to the world's scariest car revving up), the Hamburger Lady is a woman who was horrifically burned but is somehow still alive. Oh, and unlike the Frankie Teardrop levels of horror, this is real. Lead singer Genesis P-Orridge reads from an actual medical report, while an ambulance siren goes off silently in the distance. Ocassionally, there will be P-Orridge's voice in the background singing a haunting "hamburger laaaadyyyy," as if he were taunting the victim of this song.
Hamburger Lady utilizes as many tools as it can to turn your brain into a quivering mess. Machines sounding like sirens, vacuum cleaners, a slow heartbeat. All playing almost inaudibly in the background while P-Orridge goes on in his vocally distorted manner about the sad fate of this woman: How she can't hold things up and how she's being kept alive by tubes.
Any band can complain about the pain they face inside, none of them know what pain really is. Just ask the Hamburger Lady. If she can find a way to talk.
Poor, poor Frankie Teardrop. He's married, he's got a kid, working in a factory. Poor, poor Frankie Teardrop. He can't make it! Frankie's been fired! Oh pooooooorFrankie. He doesn't know what else to do, so Frankie gets his shotgun.
If you guys can't get what's going to happen next in a scary song like this. You might need some real help.
Punctuated by "singer" Alan Vega's ear-shattering shrieks, Frankie kills his wife and kid and then himself in what is easily one of the most fucked-up songs I have ever heard in my life. By the time we reach the middle of the song (which lasts ten fucking minutes), all we're left with is Vega's screaming and the looping drum machine track that has been the only accompaniment in the entire song.
We're treated to one last verse. Frankie's dead. Lying in hell. Vega states that "we're all Frankies[...]all lying in hell," a signification that we all can easily be one step away from complete madness. Vega finalizes the song with one final scream.
Welcome to October! Marvelous, marvelous October. A time for spooky stuff. And as a fan of spooky stuff, I can share my love with all of you.
Kiddies, it's time to dig deep. Really fucking deep into the unknown of music. The dark, experimental and gothic. The monstrous whirring sounds from the Death Factory's Throbbing Gristle and the piercing screams of Suicide. The bright and happy evil from Oingo Boingo and the freakish madness of Butthole Surfers. Not even Elvis Costello and Pearl Jam are safe from their own darkness.
It's time to get awful, friends. Join me.
(Oh, and don't worry. Sometimes I'll give you kids an happier alternative that I also enjoy. Hopefully it'll ease your worried mind.)
