Often times Horror Movies feature great songs either directly related to the action, or just plain cool. Here’s a breakdown of all the Inclusive Tracks found on The Shindig.
A Critical Madness by Kay Reed with The Church of Our Savior Choir
Tim Ritter is pretty awesome. If you’re a fan of 80’s shot-on-video, backyard horror, than you’re definitely familiar with old Tim.
The auteur behind such insane fare as Twisted Illusions, Creepand Day of the Reaper, Tim was a to-the-bone horror fan armed with a camera who just said “Hey! I can do that.”
And did it he did, creating some of the most entertaining and charming additions to this bizarre, homespun sub-genre. If you like that sort of thing.
And I do, so I’m gonna give you all a double shot of Tim Ritter tunes. First up, the by-line Title Track to his 1986 bonkers opus Truth or Dare: A Critical Madness.
Like most of Tim’s output, it’s a film that really must be seen to be believed and even then I’m sure it’ll be a little tricky to fully wrap your mind around.
After happening upon his wife fuckin his best friend, Mike Strauber begins spiraling into a critical madness, first by playing increasingly masochistic games of truth or dare with people that aren’t really there, sending him straight to the nuthouse.
Eventually, he disfigures his own face and then fashions himself a weird-ass cooper mask. Then the dickhead orderlies give him a picture of his wife, ya know, to warm up his cold, padded cell. Yeah, that’ll probably lead to increased mental stability.
Predictably (and thankfully for us) it does no such thing, propelling Mike to escape and embark on a Silent Night, Deadly Night 2-style daytime killing spree complete with nunchucks, a full-on mace and maybe even a grenade, I dunno.
Shot when Tim was only 18, it belies his age and at times appears to be the work of more mature folks. Not all the time of course, but it’s still pretty impressive for someone who couldn’t even legally get drunk.
Which leads us to this song, this gloriously bizarre and out of place song. Some kinda Dion Warwick sounding left field commission, A Critical Madnessappears to be sung from perspective of Mike’s wife, by crooning woman Kay Reed, complete with an accompanying children’s choir.
I dunno why Tim thought a movie like his should end with a song like this, but thank God he did.
Dr. Hackensteinby Claude LeHanaff and Hard Roaders
Sometime after Stuart Gordon made Re-Animator but before Henenlotter made Frankenhooker, writer/director Richard Clark released his lone feature, Dr. Hackenstein, which combines elements of both in a more traditional Frankenstein setting.
It’s a quaint little horror comedy that, while not especially noteworthy, is perfectly watchable and even somewhat charming. I’d have a hard time imagining anyone who likes either of the aforementioned films not finding at least something about this one they enjoy. Particularly considering the FX, which were provided by none other than Kurtzman, Nicotero and Berger EFX Group. Ya know, B.C. KNB EFX
It stars David Murr from Neon Maniacs as the titular physician, a guy who you’d almost mistake for Roddy McDowell. Playing along side him, as the main damsel in bodily distress, is the lovely Stacey Travis, whom some of you may recognize from Phantasm 2, Hardware or even Earth Girls Are Easy.
Additionally, you get some fun guest appearances from both Ramseys Anne and Logan, Phyllis Diller, and that cheapskate Hotel Manager from Ghostbusters! Not a bad showing.
What’s more? You guessed it. With only one feature to his credit, Richard Clark had the wherewithal to include an honest to God Title Track.
That egghead Stanley Kubrick never had a Title Track. Some auteur he was. No wonder he never got an Oscar. And don’t give me any of that “Well, Dr. Strangelove’sWe’ll Meet Again was technically a Title Track from the musical We’ll Meet Again” baloney, cause I ain’t having it! If we all just start throwing other people’s Title Tracks into our movies with different titles and no Title Tracks and and then calling them Title Tracks, what does that make us? No better than the terrorists, that’s what.
100% anachronistic and totally 80’s, this goofy as all get-out Title Track gets the extra special treatment of being a Sweet Song too boot. Double bonus!
So, sit back and relax, the doctor will see you now.
He calls himself an Obstetrician! He’s Dr. Hackenstein.
Call me an idealists. Call me old fashion. Hell, call me an 80’s fetishist, but I wish every movie ended like 1986’s portmanteau horror, Cat’s Eye.
The 3-pronged anthology from Stephen King and Lewis Teague isn’t even particularly fantastic. It’s all right, I enjoy it, but I wouldn’t put it at the top of any anthology list.
The James Woods story about an invasive smoking cessation program has some fun moments, despite being a little under cooked.
The second story has an intriguing premise, is well acted and provides a fair amount of tension, given a predisposition to acrophobia.
And the final story, the one which everyone remembers, with a cat named General protecting a young Drew Barrymore from a horrible, little, breath-stealing troll. That troll, designed by FX maestro Carlo Rambaldi, is fantastic. And all that set dec making the him look tiny is 80’s practical FX gold.
But that’s not what I mean. No, what I want is for every movie to end with this same kind of weirdly referential, ridiculously popped-out, Title Track bullshit. Say that Title over and over! Gimme that hot synth bass! Talk about the movie in indirect ways! Make it feel like an event. Make me feel like I just watched a movie. Leave a mark.
And boy howdy does Ray Steven’s Cat’s Eye do just that. He Billy Oceans the fuck outta this thing and produces a shinning example of a Title Track. It’s doing everything right.
After 3 Monster Raps, 2 of which I can fully understand struggling with, we have to break out the plastic pumpkin and make with some treats, right?
And around here, nothing spells “treat” like Title Tracks.
So here comes a rockin’ block of plot-talk with some of the finest Title Tracks xx yet featured on the playlist. And it you listened to last months Fistful of Title Tracks episode of Shindig Radio, you got an idea of what’s comin’
First up? Hidden.
Ever seen The Hidden? It’s kinda like The Thing meets Dead Heat, just with less Piscapo and no snow. There’s also little bit of Men In Blackgoin’ on too.
Plus, if you’re a Twin Peaks fan, it can serve as a quick Dale Cooper fix, with Kyle Maclachlan playing another FBI agent amidst high strangeness. Additionally, Hank Jennings shows up, just for good measure.
But that’s not all, as you get Clu Gulager, Jermone from Summer School, a young Danny Trejo, Lin Shaye and even Kincaid’s dog Jason, who took a piss on Freddy’s grave in The Dream Master. Weird.
What’s also weird, is that just like Men in Black, it also has a Title Track. It actually has a pretty kickin soundtrack altogether, as the body jumping alien imposter seems to have an affinity for loud, ruckus music.
Before we get into any of that though, we’re gonna highlight the soundtrack’s crowning achievement, from The Truth.
If you told me you thought Waxwork 2: Lost In Time was a bunch of foolishness, I’d have to concede that yes, it is quite silly. At times even annoyingly so.
However, I would then have to counter with “Ok, yeah, but it’s also pretty awesome.”
If, as a horror fan, you are not enamored (at least somewhat) but it’s loving horror parodies, I might have to revoke your nerd card.
From the awesome Aliens send-up with its fantastic creature FX from Bob Keen’s Image Animation, to the Bruce Campbell-anchored William Castle-meets-Evil Dead Haunted House spoof, it’s a treat for any horror fan.
Yeah, maybe the Mideavel segment overstays it’s welcome a little, but even that has some awesome imagery spread throughout. And director Anthony Hickock still manages to find time to spoof Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,Nosferatu, Dawn of the DeadandInvasion of the Body Snatchers. C’mon now. It’s just fun.
They even nick the end of Back to the Future 2 for some reason. Kinda weird really, but no less fun.
And what’s more? Oh yeah, they wrap it all up with a Monster Rap Sweet Song. Bonus.
This By-Line Title Track from Muffla and Big Dad of the L.A. Posse might not be the finest example of the sub-genre (admittedly, it’s a little on the dull side of hype) but it’s better than some of the other turkeys on this list and it definitely comes correct with an extremely detailed plot synopsis.
Mark ain’t a mark
Cause Mark got heart
But Mark won’t stop
Cause Mark is a part
Of the mystery
Back and forth through history
Gold plated.
So hang out with Billy from Gremlins, Bruce Campbell, that one dude from Die Hard, Rex Manning, Deanna Troi, perpetual on-screen bum Buck Flowers (for a second anyway) and all your favorite monsters, and get Lost In Time…
We’re gonna keep the Golden Raspberry theme goin here for a sec with a song I’ve actively avoided adding to the playlist since 2013, when we had a whole block of Addams Family tunes.
Much like Hammer’sToo Legit with A Little Bit of Peppa (For My Chicken), Miami-Bass duo Tag Team repackage their preexisting hit Whoomp! (There It Is) for the 1993 sequelAddams Family Values.
Despite the general consensus that this song is a complete pile of auditory bullshit, I rather like Addams Family (Whoomp!), as can be cross referenced on Shindig Radio Ep. 4: Monster Raps Pt. 2.
I think the verses are clever, well spit and highly referential. It even refers to itself as the movie’s theme song. That’s a solid play for a song of this nature. And quite frankly, it should have come loaded with a full-on fucking spoiler alert, cause it details the entire plot of this film. It’s a movie theme to the max.
And I get it, maybe it seems lazy just taking your own song and moving some words around and calling it a day. But honestly, its just a sound maneuver to keep the money train on the tracks from a pair of “alleged” rip-off artists who didn’t have a hell of a lot going on outside of Whoomp!
Yeah, you read that right. I referred to them rip-off artists, come at me. Since no one actually seems to have Tag Team’s back except me, I shouldn’t experience any sort of backlash from such a bold assertion. However, I will indulge a small detour here to clarify my statement for those unfamiliar with the sordid backstory concerning Tag Team‘s original #2 peaking hit, Whoomp (There It Is.)
The year was 1993. The month? March. Jacksonville’s Miami Bass trio 95 South just released their hit, Whoot! There It Is! Things are looking good for 95 South. The world is their oyster.
That is until May of 1993, when a curious tune titled, Whoomp! There It Is!, from the Atlanta Georgia duo Tag Team hit the charts like an overhand right from Riddick Bowe.
95 South, goes “Da fuck? What is this bullshit? This song sounds exactly our song. I mean, exactly. Listen to that chorus!”
Tag Team’s DC Brain Supreme claims the phrase was popular in Atlanta strip clubs and they just grabbed it up and put on in wax, suggesting any similarity in the cadence of the chorus being dictated by the phrase itself.
Carlos Spencer of 95 South, however, tells the story just a little bit differently.
He says they recorded their track at Atlanta’s Digital Edge Studio. Shortly after that, they gave the track to a local DJ to see if he would spin it at the club. That DJ? You guessed it. DC Brain Supreme.
And the plot thickens. Seems DC Brain Supreme knew the cats over at Digital Edge, where they were using a newfangled computer program to make records. It was called Pro Tools, maybe you’ve heard of it.
It’s Spencer’s assertion that DC and Steve Roll’n just went in there and laid their own vocals over the track 95 South had already produced.
Snap.
Either way, it seems Tag Team changed the song just enough. They used some different samples and eschewed the raunchier, sex-based lyrics for a more commercial, party-like tone.
And just like that, 95 South’s track is buried under the rubble of a more intelligible, less sexualized and altogether more mainstream-friendly crossover hit.
Despite Spencer’s claims however, there was never much outward animosity between the 2 groups. They even appeared together in July of that year on The Arsenio Hall Show, where they battled it out for “There It is” supremacy.
For 95 cents a pop, viewers at home could call-in and vote on which group they liked more. That night, it was 95 South that walked away with the crown. Very judicial.
The Billboard Hot 100 Chart tells a different tale however, with Tag Team’sWhoomp! reaching number #2 and staying in the top 10 for an unprecedented 24 non-consecutive weeks. It would become the longest running Top 10 song of all time, a place it held until 1997, when Toni Braxton’sUnbreak My Heart went to 25. Snap again. To date, Whoomp! has sold over 3.5 million copies.
Whoot! There It Is? Well, it never got passed #11. That’s still pretty pretty good, but one can’t help but wonder what that number might look like if Whoomp! didn’t come in hot, stealing all it’s thunder, and potentially confusing consumers, who may have even preferred Whoot! and unwitting purchased Whoomp!
It’s not all sour grapes for the “Bass Mechanics” CC Lemonhead and Jay Ski though, the duo responsible from producing Whoot!. They had 2 other hits with separate groups, hits that you may even be familiar with . One was with the 69 Boyz track called the Tootsie Roll. The other was TheQuad City DJ’sC’Mon N Ride It (The Train.) And that’s not to mention their crowning achievement, the 1996 Title Track Space Jam. Eat that shit, Tag Team.
But of course, Tag Team edges out 95 South here in one small, but very important way; they segued pop dominance into Monster Rap gold. No small potatoes around these parts.
So with that being said, Halloween Shindig presents The Golden Raspberry’s Worst Song from a Film 1993 and Mikey Rotella’s pick for worst Monster Rap of all time, it’s Tag Team’sAddams Family (Whoomp!)
Since we seem to be hearing a lot from Shindig members we haven’t seen in a while this year, let’s welcome back That Gal in Black Who Keeps Coming Back, Elvira.
Yep, it’s been about 4 years since The Shindig’s gotten a hitter from Casandra Peterson’s beloved horror icon. To be fair though, we front-loaded this playlist with a ton of Elvira, so giving ourselves a chance to cool off has been helpful.
By 1988, Elvira had burst from the confines of local Los Angeles late-night Television and into homes across the nation with guest appearances on shows like CHiPS, The Fall Guy and endorsements with companies like Coors Light.
However, that was the year Elvira made the great leap from the small screen to the silver screen with Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, a film she co-wrote herself with disembodied Pee-Wee’s Playhouse head, Jambi!
It’s a fun piece of 80’s horror camp that’s very entertaining, with some great special FX work and Elvira at her double entendre-delivering best.
After being sexually harassed by her station’s new owner, Elvira quits her job. Then, she finds out her Great Aunt Morgana died and left her a giant old house! So, she moves to Massachusetts to receive that inheritance.
Unfortunately, the town’s uppity constituency of conservative buttinskis don’t like the cut of her jib. This doesn’t stop Every Tricker’s Treat from indulging in a montage to fix up the old mansion or host a late-night horror fest at the local movie palace. Eventually she gets accused of Witchcraft and almost gets burned at the stake!
All’s well that ends well for Elvira though, as she ultimately uses her inheritance to finance a life-long dream of starring in a lavish Las Vegas show; an occupation Casandra herself actually held at a rather young age.
I do regret to inform you, dear readers, that our beloved Casandra was nominated by those despicable cretins at the Golden Raspberry Committee, for worst actress 1989! Can you believe such a thing?
The good news is she lost to Liza Minnelli for a double-dose of dreafull performances in Arthur 2: On the Rocksand Rent-A-Cop. Still, I can’t believe Casandra was even nominated. Really? It’s a character, and a singular one at that. God, I really think I hate those Razzie fucks.
At any rate, Here I Am is the song she performs in that lavish Vegas show. And while it’s a tad short of my liking, it eventually evolves into a full on Monster Rap, which more than makes up for it’s brevity, in my opinion.
Since the very end of the song has no lyrics, due to Elvira beginning her famous tassel-swinging dance, I’ve included a gif of said dance, to fill the void.This is a dance, I’m proud to say, that I finally got to see Casandra perform live back in 2017, which was the farewell season of her famous, 21-year running Halloween stage show at Knottsberry Farm.
Sail Away Tiny Sparrow by Harry Manferdini & Angela Rotella
Hey gang.
If you’re here reading this, I’ll assume you’re familiar with Jason Voorhees. Seems reasonable. I’ll also assume then that you’re at least familiar with the Friday the 13th film series, in some respect.
From there, I’ll make a lateral maneuver and assume that, since you are here, you may also be familiar with The Halloween Shindig podcast called Shindig Radio.
If you are, then you’re no doubt familiar with Shindig Radio personality and professional Monstersmith, Mikey Rotella.
Now, perhaps then, given you’ve listen to enough episodes (or maybe just the right episodes) and you also have a steel trap memory for weird personal trivia, you may know that Mikey comes from a very musical family.
First, you have his Grandfather, Julius Rotella Sr. He was a drummer and big band leader who had a family band way back. First with his brothers, then later with his own children, including his namesake, Jules Jr., tickling the ivories.
Providing lead vocals for that family band? Why, that was Mikey’s dad – the perpetually good-willed, world-renown spiritual singer, Marty Rotella. That’s right.
Johnny Rotella, on the ready with his fellow Woodwinders.
But wait, that’s not all! Cause you also get Johnny Rotella, an accomplished woodwind session player and the author of over 200 songs, including Nothing But the Best, which Frank Sinatra recorded in 1962.
The Chairman of the Board wasn’t the only one who put a little Johnny Rot on wax either. Dean Martin, Rosemary Clooney, Tony Bennett and Doris Day have all recorded songs written by the illustrious Johnny Rotella. Pretty incredible.
As a session player, Johnny himself can be heard on tracks from the likes of Benny Goodman, Neil Diamond, Tommy Dorsey, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Zappa, and Steely Dan! Snap. That’s a murderer’s row of musicians right there, all with Johnny Rotella right at their side.
But that’s still not all. Because there’s also Johnny’s son, Bill Rotella, who’s band, Urban Shocker, provided the full-throttled action extraction Long After Midnight for the 1989 film Action USA. You can check Bill’s new music right here. Man, does it stop with this family?
Nope, because there’s also Bill’s sister, Geraldine. Who, like her father, is an accomplished flutist. One of the best in the industry, Geraldine can be heard on countless film scores including The Omen, Peter Jackson’s King Kong and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
Mikey’s VG+ looking copy of Tranquil Sun’s …Thinking of You. Hell, with that shrink, I might even go NM on that. And since there isn’t even 1 copy of this on Discogs, I’d hang onto that one pal.
But, back before Action USA,Friday the 13th, and Spock saving the Whales, Marty Rotella and his sister, Angela, had a band called Tranquil Sun. They produced a funky mix of disco pop and soul, with enough driving bass, stabbing brass and smooth synth to satisfy any aficionado. They have a sort of Chicago meets ABBA vibe that’s perfectly a product of it’s era and definitely grooves.
A part time member of this band, rippin’ a Sax himself and sweeping that analog cut-off filter, was a young, local New Jersey musician named Harry Manferdini.
Now, assuming (as I did above) you are familiar with Friday the 13th, then perhaps you are also familiar with Harry Manferdini. He’s the man responsible for scoring every film in the original 10 picture series, with the lone exception of Jason Takes Manhattan.
It was Harry’s “Ki Ki Ki, Ma Ma Ma” which went on to become the stuff of horror legend.
In addition to bustin’ reeds and detuning oscillators on Tranquil Sun’s 1981 release …Thinking of You, Harry also arranged and conducted the enitre album. Not a bad pull for a small New Jersey disco band.
The reverse of the LP, … Thinking of You. Harry on that synth and sax baby. And Jules Jr. hittin’ the organ!
Which brings us to Friday the 13th.
Harry revealed that an early cut of the film featured a fairly well known Dolly Parton tune called Fly Away Little Bluebird. However, Dolly was a bit out of budget for the small production and the track needing replacing. It’s kinda like what happened with Prom Night around the same time.
So, Harry penned the curiously titled, Sail Away Tiny Sparrow, as a replacement. He then tapped the best singer he knew, Angie from Tranquil Sun, to sing the tune.
Yep, that’s Mikey’s Aunt Angie all over the original Friday the 13th soundtrack. You can even hear Marty in the background providing, what Mikey referred to as, “the juice.”
A fan favorite in the Friday message boards, Sail Away Tiny Sparrowis just the kind of nice you’re not expecting from a film like Friday the 13th, and it adds a healthy dose of lived-in realism to environs of Crystal Lake. Lots of fans over the years have wondered about it’s origins and performers, and hopefully this will fill in some of the gaps.
But, is that the end of the Rotella’s musical contributions? Not by a long shot, And not even as it concerns this playlist, as Mikey himself can be heard right here, belting it out with The Kyrpt-Keeper 5 on their cover of The Monster Mash. Sure, it’s no Run-Off, but it’s probably more in-line with our listener’s proclivities.
And hey, don’t knock showing up on The Shindig as a musical accomplishment. The last time I checked, neither Al Jourgensen nor Peter Steele could make that claim. So, check your hater jacket at the door.
And how about Marty? Oh, Marty’s doin’ aces. Don’t worry about that.
He’s been shootin’ 73% from the floor, trailing the Hoboken Bigfoot and recording songs under his very own label, Spirit Power Music, for over 30 years. It’s the banner under which you can find him on Instagram. There you can hear nuggets of sage-like advice and his wonderful singing voice. Follow Marty and show him some love from us over at @spiritpowermusic.
But enough about The Juice, what of this song?
Well, it’s most notably heard in the beginning of the film, when Annie enters the Crystal Lake general store to ask for directions to Camp Blood.
A slightly different version of the song is heard again later, at the Blairsville Diner, when Steve stops in for a quick bite and a coffee during the rainstorm.
Now, a version of this song appears on the Orignal Motion Picture soundtrack, but anyone familiar with the film will immediately hear a discrepancy. It sounds nothing like the prominent version in the film. The tempo has been reduced and Angie’s vocals have been pitched shifted down. Probably just side effect of the tempo change.
There are a few low-bit rate versions floating around the internet which attempt to correct this, and some aren’t bad. But I decided, what the hell, and took a crack at correcting it myself to see if i couldn’t get it a little closer and produce a cleaner, re-timed version for all of the Shindig fans. I tried to match the tempo and pitch as much as I could without being too destructive.
However, such tricks can not be accomplished without introducing some digital artifacts, which the eagle-eared among you may be able to detect. Hopefully, that’s not too distracting.
So, what do you think Friday fans? Did I get it pretty close to matching Angie’s original voice? I guess only She, Harry and The Juice know for sure. But hopefully one day, that original recording will resurface somewhere.
Until then, sail away tiny sparrow, out into the world.
Young horror nerd Mikey Rotella stands next to Harry Manferdini, adorned in a Friday the 13th shirt. Coincidentally though, I’m sure.
There isn’t a more surefire way to get your film webbed-up in The Shindig than to indulge in the time honored tradition of the Title Track.
Carry on Screaming! then, naturally, comes from the 1966 British spoof of the same name.
But what the hell is it?
Well, it’s the 12th installment in the expansive 31 film catalogue of the “Carry On” franchise, an ensemble comedy series which lampooned many popular British film genres.
Carry On Screaming! is a somewhat entertaining Hammer Horror send-up that features a couple of goofy monsters, a lot of yelling in British accents, copious amounts of innuendo and some hilarious mannequin tossing. Check that shit out.
Credited in the film to “Anon,” the identity of this singer remained a mystery for 40 years. In 2006 however, famous British big bander, radio broadcaster and Embassy session singer, Ray Pilgrim, at long last revealed his involvement
Also a member of bands like The Typoons, The Jaybirds and The Earthquakers!, Ray didn’t particularly think singing was a real career and apparently only did it to finance an economics degree. Pretty crazy for a guy with over 200 BBC broadcasts and 150 songs under his belt.
Once Ray achieved this goal, he promptly quit singing and took a “proper” job in senior management of an unnamed multinational company.
Ray came out of retirement to sing this track at producer Eric Roger’s request.
Here’s an interview from Ray’s website where he describes the whole situation:
“By April 1966 I’d been “retired” from singing for nearly a year and was deeply immersed in my ‘proper’ career. Then one evening, completely out of the blue, I got a phone call from Eric Rogers.
He told me that he needed to set up a very urgent session to record the opening title song for the new Carry On film and needed an ‘experienced, professional session singer who can cut it with the minimum fuss in the minimum time’ and wanted me to do it.
I explained that I hadn’t even sung in the bath for months and was really not in the business anymore. He said that they were on an extremely tight schedule, fast approaching the release deadline for the film and would appreciate it if I could come over to his house next day. I was really rather flattered, so I agreed.
Next day I took some time off work and drove up to his house and we ran through the music. I thought the words were a bit odd and he explained that it was a spoof horror film.
We settled on the overall treatment: The chorus (the Carry On Screaming lines) were to be sung reasonably straight in the style of a band ballad singer, with parts of the verse sung with a bit of emotional quivering vibrato. I can’t really remember, but I don’t think that the falsetto bit at the end came until we were actually on the set when we slipped it in because it felt a more natural lead into Odbodd coming through the mist and Doris’s scream.
What I do remember, was that there was no time for any practice or rehearsal because the actual recording session was set up for either the next day or at most a couple of days later.
Although the film was made at Pinewood, according to my 1966 diary, the title song was recorded on the nearby Denham Studios sound set. Probably that was because the actual film itself had wound up at Pinewood a couple of months earlier which, by then, was no doubt the home of a new, completely different film.
Eric had arranged for quite a large orchestra and the set was full of musicians … plus of course the lady who provided the very important screams during the song. I regret that I don’t remember her name. But I recall she was blonde and very attractive and did a brilliant scream.
At one end of the set was a huge screen onto which a silent version of the finished film was projected. I don’t think we had the titles and credits to play and sing to but in my mind’s eye I clearly remember a big clock on or above the screen that rapidly flicked through the fractions of seconds that lead up to the opening scene of the movie.
I was used to doing the recording sessions for Embassy in a just couple of takes so I was very surprised that we needed such a large number of takes to do the Screaming film soundtrack, which was really quite a simple song.
It wasn’t because we kept on making mistakes or bum notes but because the timing had to be absolutely meticulous with everything exactly to the split second. In fact I found it a bit boring doing the same thing over and over again. But when I eventually saw the finished film I realised why it had to be so exact, with each of the lines of the song and the punctuating screams fitting exactly with the quivering credits on the screen.
So that was it. I got paid the princely sum of 27 guineas (excluding any subsequent mechanical use of the recording) … which in those days was not to be sneezed at for a couple of hours work. In today’s money, after 40 years of inflation, I guess it would be worth something approaching £1,000.
I picked up the cheque and hurried back to my day job before I was missed! That was my very last professional session, after which I made a complete, clean break from singing so I was more than happy that my contribution to the film was credited as “Sung by Anon”.
Over the years I have always been amused that the question “Who was Anon?” crops up so frequently and the inevitable wrong answers it leads to. But now I’m coming up to my 70th birthday, it’s probably time to set the record straight. So here goes:
So, here it goes indeed, a silly and short little tune that may just burrow itself under your skull and rest there for a few hours, occasionally popping out ever so often as you find yourself humming its chorus.
Ok. So, now that I do have a record player, I can finally spin my previously only decorative copy of Whodini’s 12″ 45 for The Haunted House of Rock.
What does that mean for you, dear readers? Why a mini-playlist, of course!
Here, for your listening pleasure, are the 4 different versions of The Haunted House of Rock on offer from that single, including the exceedingly spooked-out Vocoder version.
For the uninitiated, a Vocoder is something you’re familiar with even if you aren’t familiar with the term.
Developed throughout the ’30s by Homer Dudley for Bell Labs, it was first unleashed to the public at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York.
It’s essentially a device that synthesizes human speech. It analyzes the source (your voice) and assigns different parts of that signal to different frequency bands. On the other side, a a series of band-pass filter reproduces those frequencies and, with the help of an envelope follower, creates a robotic facsimile of your voice.
Initially, it was intended to reduce the bandwidth of vocal information for transmission over long distances. Problem was, it kind of sucked at reproducing the human voice convincingly. Too creepy.
Since that sort of thing never stops the United States Military, they put it to use during WWII to encrypt voice messages. See, without the proper frequency band information on the other end, the enemy could not decode that messages. Pretty neat.
However, thanks to several industrious souls, the vocoder soon found its way into the hands of musicians. Not the least of those souls were legendary synth builder Bob Moog and equally legendary synth user Wendy Carlos.
The musical incarnation works a bit differently, but it uses the same principle. Your voice is analyzed and then reproduced by the band-pass filters, but in this case, a “carrier” is sent through that filter as well, like the notes of a synthesizer. This allows you to alter the pitch of that robotic voice and create something altogether more interesting and musical.
Used abusively throughout the 80’s by all all different genres, its has the unmistakable sound of a decade. Here, in modulated grandeur, Whodini asks…
Is this what you wanted?
Something funky and haunted?
To which I reply…
Yep.
Also of interest on the single is an Acapella version, which is kind of fun to hear and a Haunted Mix, which is mostly an instrumental track. There’s also a version which claims to be extended, but sounds no different to me than the version already present on Halloween Shindig.
Either way, it all adds up to the a spooky good time any fan of this song should definitely enjoy.
If you don’t wanna party, take your dead ass home!
TRACK #258:
