Hello Friends,
Another Halloween has come and gone and we're left with the damp, drizzly Novembers of the soul.
Good thing we still have Roky Erickson to help us through our Halloween hangovers!
Enjoy!
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Saturday, October 31, 2015
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!
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!
Friday, October 30, 2015
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!
Thursday, October 29, 2015
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!
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
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
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
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
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!
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!
Monday, October 26, 2015
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!
More groovy than spooky.
Although Driscoll herself might be more spooky than groovy!
The Jury's still out on this one!
Sunday, October 25, 2015
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!
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