Rocktober – Satan’s Barbershop
Heads are hanging from the garbageman trees as Beck spends Devil’s Night trying to keep his –
Rocktober – The Dark And Stormy Night Rises
“Everything comes back down to Batman, in the end.” – Donal Graeme
It’s dark and will likely be raining tonight, apropos for the night before Halloween.
A sequel was attempted…
..but ultimately not produced.
The phrase “It was a dark and stormy night” comes from the 1830 novel Paul Clifford, written by Sir Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton, and was picked up years later by Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz, who gave the line to aspiring author Snoopy as part of that decorated WWI Flying Ace’s ongoing efforts to be published.
The novel began thusly –
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents – except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”
Sounds like the setting for Gotham. Or a metal video game.
Schulz had Snoopy write out his novel, starting with the famous line and building from there, and can be read it its (short) entirety here.
In 1981, writer Len Wein and artist Walt Simonson did something fun for the 500th issue of Detective Comics, where Batman originated, by doing a remix of sorts of Snoopy’s novel, presented in its (also short) entirety above.
Somewhere along the line, Charles Schulz did a drawing for DC Comics artist Carmine Infantino, who drew Batman in the 60s –
Rocktober – Fatitude
I can make no sense of this –
The word is out, better treat me right!
Now I get it … he’s dressed up for Halloween as Weird Al. Ding dong, yo.
There’s more needing feminism here, but my favorite is this one –
“I need feminism because I need contradiction”
I can’t tell if that’s for real or a truth bomb costumed as Progressivist BuzzwordThink. Or maybe just a troll.
H/T to Goodbye America
Rocktober – Don’t Pay The Ferryman (And A Very! Important! Sponsor Message!)
Going back to the early 80s to unearth an MTV staple of the day – Chris DeBurgh’s “Don’t Pay The Ferryman,” a vaguely spookish song with allusions to Charon about a man crossing the water who is warned by mysterious voices not to pay that vulgar boatman.
And now a brief word from our sponsor –
Full demented episode here.
Rocktober – Rock, Peanuts, Travers
Sorry, no Lizard or Spock.
As Charlie Brown says every Halloween, “I’ve got to rock!” So here’s the “Peanuts” theme as interpreted in rock style by Pat Travers.
Rock, Paper, Scissors, Linus, Smiths
Peanuts and music have a long history together, as this station has show in in the past, primarily with 80s British bands. Now someone has gone and created a Tumblr called This Charming Charlie, combining the subtextual angst Peanuts comics with the hyperdepressive lyrics of The Smiths, creating a singularity of suicidal bleakness, speaking to all of us through it’s universal symbolism of nihilsm.
Hilarious, is it not? In a bleak, anti-depressant sort of way.
Yes, well. But at least it’s borrowing from one of the finest bands to ever stride across the Earth, and this station is proud to bring it to you. We hope you appreciate it.
Saturday Night Studio – Postmodern Jukebox
So where do you go to find pop hits from the last several decades covered in the style of swing and jazz standards from a bygone era? Postmodern Jukebox has that niche, uh, covered.
For example, check out this vintage jazz cover of “Lovefool” by the Cardigans –
I don’t know about you, but I’ve waited 25 years for an “Old Jack Swing” cover of New Jack Swing stylists Bell Biv Devoe –
Electronic Dance Music song “Lean On” done in the style of 70s Stevie Wonder? They got that –
…and it’s good. Far better than the original.
It might seem a bit naive to attempt covering a Talking Heads melody in vintage 40s swing style, but I guess they must be having fun. I liked it.
I have to wonder what urban, cosmopolitan feminist-y types think of PMJ’s cover of “Blurred Lines” – all the alleged rapiness with that bluegrass sound that makes the Tumblrinas teeth grind. Bonus points for a woman singing it. [Extra double bonus: listen to it at 1.25 x normal speed]
There’s also an instrumental keyboard mashup deep in the archives titled “Call Me Al, Maybe.”
This is how they remind me of how they polished an unpolishable turd with some Motown sound –
Lastly, one that sort of fits their bailiwick even before they covered it… I always liked this Fiona Apple song, but this cover suits it perfectly. Fiona should have done an alternate version in this style, because she was born sing in this style –
Thanks to my wife for discovering this.
October 21 2015 Day
Amazon Prime is promoting Back To The Future Day all over their site, with a huge banner video on top of the pages, and streaming all 3 movies for free. I decided to watch Back To The Future II, partly because I have only seen it a couple times (less than the third, and far less than the first), and because it’s the movie which centers around today’s date.
A few random thoughts…
Alternate 1985 Biff looks strikingly like Donald Trump.
I forgot how good some of the special effects were. Absolutely outstanding for the, uh, time.
Doc’s shades. Metal awesomeness.
I want to hang out at the 80s Cafe.
Rocktober – Tubular Chocolate
The song “Tubular Bells” was quite popular when I was a kid. I remember it popping up all over the place, including TV commercials. It had a strange, vaguely nightmare-like vibe to it that made even mundane boring stuff seem a little creepy. I’m not sure, but I think even science fiction magazine Omni used the song in a TV ad, which definitely added to its mystique.
It was released in May 1973, and later that year was used in the movie The Exorcist. Fitting, given the eerie feel of the song. It seemed like a perfect song for a horror film. Or perhaps for Halloween time.
In 1978, the movie Halloween came out, with a sort-of-but-not-quite similar soundtrack –
Not the same song, but there’s some definite overlap.
However, a more recent (and some would say scary) song has commonalities with “Tubular Bells,” If you listen closely –
The connection occurred to me several days ago, and I thought someone should make a mashup of the two and post it on YouTube.
Apparently I am not the first to notice this, since I found this about 5 minutes ago –
And If That Wasn’t The Truth, It Would Be A Lie
Spotted by my wife…
“My most important professional accomplishment to date is the ability to keep working with absolutely no skills whatsoever.”
Double Bonus Sakamoto Night Studio – Akiko Yano
J-Pop night’s unexpected (even by me) surprise encore does science! and research.
So this post about Vanilla Mood earlier tonight included the song “Harusaki Kobeni,” which is a rather poppy song. At the time, I did a quick youtube search to find the original by Akiko Yano but had no idea what I was reading since all results came back in Japanese, and I’m too lazy an internationally famous nighttime DJ like myself doesn’t have time to mess with that sort of thing.
Enter wdydfae, who commented –
The song apparently goes back to the early 80s and was sung by Akiko Yano, backed by none other than Yellow Magic Orchestra, the milestone techno fusion band. It was quite a thing at the time.
During his research he discovered a post about the song on a site called Kayo Kyoku Plus, which explains that the song is about “enthusiastically admiring the cherry blossoms.” Enthusiastic is an understatement.. the song is so ferociously upbeat it makes last week’s relentlessly cheery songs seem like dirges –
The song was such a hit that it was used in a commercial for Kanebo Cosmetics –
So very 1981.
The writer of the KKP site relates an apocryphal story…
I found out a rather interesting piece of trivia that I’m still not totally convinced about. Yano has had professional relationships with a wide variety of Western artists ranging from Janis Siegel of The Manhattan Transfer to Thomas Dolby.There is the famous line in Dolby’s biggest hit, “She Blinded Me With Science” in which he sings, “Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto! You’re beautiful!”Apparently, Yano had been observing the recording of the song, and Dolby was referring to her, since she had been married to YMO’s Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一） at the time. This is according to J-Wiki, but at another site, Miss Sakamoto is supposed to refer to their daughter, Miyu（美雨）, who is now also a musician but was only around 1 year old when “Science”came out. Not sure if this is true or not…just throwing it out there.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x11lvw_thomas-dolby-she-blinded-me-with-sc_music#tab_embed
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