The Evil One

Roky Erickson and the Aliens - "The Evil One" (1981) -  Light in the Attic Records

Hello Friends,

Tonight we're sipping some cocktails and listening to a three-sided record featuring Two Headed Dogs and Fire Demons courtesy of one of rock's most legendary troubled souls, Roky Erickson.

The Evil One, released in 1981, contains 15 songs over 3 record sides and the 4th side is left blank, but with an etching of Two Headed Dog in place of grooves(!).  Every single song is fucking great!  Straightforward, economical rock & roll with Roky's growling, bluesy vocals and paranoid, horror-inspired lyrics.  

Its like if Little Richard was possessed by Baphomet and had the original Alice Cooper Band playing back up.

This record marks the great Roky Erickson's return to the fold since The 13th Floor Elevators disbanded and he spent much of the 70's in and out of mental institutions.

The result is an undersung and undisputed classic.  

The song title alone are worth the price of admission.  They read like a catalog of Classic B Horror flicks!

Two Headed Dog
I Walked With A Zombie
Night Of The Vampire
It's A Cold Night For Alligators
Mine Mine Mind
Sputnik
White Faces
I Think Of Demons
Creature With The Atom Brain
The Wind And More
Don't Shake Me Lucifer
Bloody Hammer
Stand For The Fire Demon
Click Your Fingers
If You Have Ghosts

Again, every single song is good.  Every single song rocks.  Great, disturbing lyrics with passionate, disturbed vocals and good ol' fashioned raucous rock roll to back it all up!

Fun Fact: Hey kids, this record was produced by Stu Cook, former bassist of Creedence Clearwater Revival.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

RATING: 5 demons up in the attic to the left out of 5

Velvet Underground - "Venus In Furs" (1967)

Happy Halloween Friends!

Here's a fan made video for the creepy Velvet's song, "Venus in Furs" set to some scenes from Jesus Franco's sexploitation classic, Vampyros Lesbos.

Enjoy!

David Bowie - "We Are The Dead" (1974)

Hello Friends,

Alice Cooper on 1973's Billion Dollar Babies declares on the album's closer, "I Love The Dead".

The following year, on his conceptual Diamond Dogs record, David Bowie would go a step further and up the ante with his song, "We Are The Dead".

This is a fan-made video for the song that we found at youtube!  Enjoy!

Teddy Durant - "The Night Stalker" (1965)

Hey Hepcats,

Here's a swinging 60's Halloween tune to help get you in the Trick or Treatin' mood! 

Enjoy!

Billion Dollar Babies

Alice Cooper - "Billion Dollar Babies" (1973) - Warner Bros.

Hello Friends,

Halloween is fast approaching and you know what that means... time to break out the Alice Cooper vinyl!

Billion Dollar Babies would be the band's sixth studio album and the fourth produced by longtime collaborator Bob Ezrin.

The band, Alice Cooper, had quite the run on their first six records introducing the world to sleazy yet well-constructed and theatrical garage rock with subject matter and themes that range from classic Horror imagery, to drug use, child abuse, insanity and Leonard Bernstein.

Billion Dollar Babies would continue with these themes and throw in some elements of glam rock, Cabaret-style theatrics, politics, necrophilia and other twisted perversions.

Undoubtedly, a great album from start to finish and like the best Alice Cooper, its also a very fun album with lots of great hooks, pitch black humor and not-so-subtle innuendo!

Kicking off with the Cabaret-inspired "Hello Hooray", the only non-original song on the record, written by the very German-sounding Rolf Kempf and originally performed by Judy Collins in 1968.  

"Raped and Freezin'" harkens back to what the band sounded like on 1971's Love It To Death.  A great road/driving song about a young male hitchhiker getting picked up (and sexually assaulted) by "some old Broad down in Santa Fe" who leaves him naked, raped and freezin' somewhere over the Mexican border!  We've been there before, friends!

The epic and theatrical sounding "Elected" points more to the direction that Alice Cooper (the solo act) would head in a few years later with Welcome To My Nightmare.  It also reminds us of something from Quadrophenia.  I would undoubtedly vote for whatever candidate uses this as their campaign song!

The great title track is up next and something we never realized until we read the liner notes to this record is that its none other than Donovan singing harmony vocals on the song!  Glen Buxton, the original guitarist for The Alice Cooper Band, is in especially fine form here as well.   

Alice Cooper's ode to his fear of dentists (anti-dentite?),"Unfinished Sweet", closes out the side and it too is great, but at 6:18 perhaps a minute too long! 

And speaking of sweets... 

I used to be such a sweet, sweet thing
Until they got a hold of me

Side Two kicks off with one of Alice Cooper's best and most revered songs, "No More Mr. Nice Guy".  

Full blown theatrics and operatics are back on "Generation Landslide", again which reminds us of something that might be found on The Who's Quadrophenia  (which, we should mention, also came out in 1973 but several months after Billion Dollar Babies was released!)

"Sick Things" is sleazy and creepy-sounding (both good things!) and sounds as if its coming from the pov of Charlie Manson or some other cult-type leader!

Sticking with the creepy theme is "Mary Ann" a soft piano ballad that being presumably being sung to a transvestite!? Or maybe a corpse?  Or a transvestite corpse?? Alice sounds a little like Wings-era McCartney or even Todd Rundgren here.

But speaking of creepy...

I love the dead before they're cold
They're bluing flesh for me to hold
Cadaver eyes upon me see nothing...

The album concludes (and climaxes) with the band's epic ode to necrophilia, "I Love The Dead". Alice Cooper might have fallen in love with "Cold Ethyl" two years later on Nightmare, but you don't need to do any Google searches on this one to interpret what this song is about!  Scatting and all!

Spooky!

RATING: 5 Sticky Sweet Suckers in the Halloween Air out of 5

Uncle Acid - "Melody Lane" (2015)

Hello Friends,

Here's some eagerly awaited new stuff from Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats.

From their 2015 release, The Night Creeper.

Another band that fails to disappoint!  It sounds like the kind of song that Charles Manson might have in his head while laying awake in his prison cell.

Sweet dreams!

Julie Driscoll - "Season Of The Witch" (1968)

Pretty f'ing groovy version of the Donovan classic!

More groovy than spooky.

Although Driscoll herself might be more spooky than groovy!

The Jury's still out on this one!

Ghost - "From The Pinnacle To The Pit" (2015)

Hello Friends,

Its Halloween week here on Vinyl in the Valley.

We're getting things kicked off in style with this ghoulish little ditty by Sweden's Ghost.

Mycket nöje!

Summer Twins - "Demons" (2015)

Hello Friends,

We know what you're thinking...

Why would post this video by these adorable twin sisters singing airy indie pop amongst all these other demonic, degenerate and downright sleazy bands?  

What the heck do the Summer Twins have to do with Halloween anyways?

Well, first off, this fuzz-laden pop nugget is called "Demons".

And secondly, what's scarier than twins?

  

Isaac Rother & The Phantoms - "Heeby Jeebies" (2015)

Hello Friends,

Enjoy this little nugget courtesy of Isaac Rother & The Phantoms.

The little brunette fortune teller in the video definitely gave me the Heeby Jeebies!

Alice Cooper - "Cold Ethyl" (1975)

Hello Friends and Happy Friday,

One Thing, No Lie,

Ethyl's frigid as an Eskimo Pie.

She's cool in bed

She ought to be,

'cause Ethyl's dead

They don't write 'em like that anymore!

Two weeks until Halloween!

The Nymphs - "Imitating Angels" (1991)

Great early 90's tune from The Nymphs, an L.A. band that released only one record and pretty much went nowhere!

There's a nice grunge-era spookiness to this song!  The opening lines to the song are:

Those venomous fumes like ghosts imitating angels /
Came and brushed death thru her hair with loving strokes...

Lead singer/songwriter Inger Lorre wasn't tough look at either!

In an alternate universe, she's Courtney Love!

No Way Jose!

José Feliciano - "Feliciano" (1968) - RCA Victor

Hola Amigos,

Great album of cover songs by everyone's favorite blind Puerto Rican guitarist, José Feliciano.

Perfect for a crisp fall afternoon when the cider is flowing, the leaves are rustling and the air smells like a bakery!

Things get kicked off with his rendition of The Mamas & Papas' "California Dreamin'" and trust us friends, you haven't lived until you heard his version of "California Dreamin'".  Its absolutely perfect!

His take on The Doors' "Light My Fire" would win Feliciano a Grammy Award in 1969 and, of course, we prefer his version over the original in every way possible!

Also on the record, there's three Beatles' tunes ("In My Life", "And I Love Her" and "Here, There and Everywhere"); a cover of Gerry & the Pacemakers' "Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying"; the Bacharach/David standard, "Always Something There To Remind Me"; Bobby Hebb's "Sunny"; Jorge Ben's "Nena Na Na"; Fred Neil's "A Little Bit of Rain"; and Tom Paxton's contemplative folksong, "The Last Thing On My Mind".

The guitar playing throughout (especially the finger-picking) is outstanding to boot!

Definitely try to pick this record up in a thrift store near you!

RATING: 4 loves become a funeral pyre out of 5

Swilson - "Polyester Shirt, Polyester Pants" (2011)

T.G.I.F. Friends,

Earlier this week we reviewed Swilson's great Demonology record.

To help us get ready for the weekend, we're enjoying the first track on the album, "Polyester Shirt, Polyester Pants".

Short & sweet... just how we like it!

I'm in the laboratory wreckin' my brain!