drac tracks

Audio

Dracula’s Daughter (1974)

TRACK #416:

Dracula’s Daughter by Thunderthighs

Remember when I said that’s there’s a song every year that’s been waiting around forever to finally get on the playlist? Well, I said that about Don’t Let Go this year because, well because that’s true, but mostly because our next song was originally scheduled for next year. Now, I did include the caveat that there’s usually more than one a year, especially at this stage in the game. And I’ll admit, Don’t Let Go has been waiting for much longer than tonight’s jam, but no song has been burning a hole in the bullpen for me quite like this one.

When I first ran across this tune (whenever that was originally) I dismissed it as a Screaming Lord Sutch cover, tossed it onto the YouTube Bullpen playlist and promptly forgot about it altogether.

Then, while randomly listening to that playlist in my car (who knows how many months later) this song fired up and it immediately grabbed my attention. What the hell was this? And when the hell had I added it?

I drop a lot of boring and forgettable songs on that playlist, just to see what they got going on. Some of it never gets a 2nd listening before being summarily dumped. But this song, this was a stake straight through the heart of a listless Dracula block filled with just those kind of boring and forgettable tunes.

An awesome Dracula voice, a spooky organ, a seriously fuzzed out guitar lick and an aggressive female vocal all demanded I take notice. This was no Screaming Lord Sutch cover. No, it was much more.

What follows, amid epic 70’s strings, some assaultive brass stabs, that classic werewolf sound effect and is that a fuckin clarinet (?) is one seriously rocking Monster Song. It’s like ABBA blasted a few rails and covered Spirit in the Sky at a Halloween party but forgot how it went so they just sang whatever the fuck about Dracula, and I’m about it.

And look at this 45 sleeve! That’s one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long time. In fact, despite the song being readily available on the internet, I shelled out to get one shipped from England just so I could get a high rez scan and throw it on a T-Shirt. It’s available here, in the Shindig Shop (or here, if you prefer Redbubble). Don’t make me the only weirdo rockin’ this thing, alright? Everyone buy one cause that’s the coolest thing ever.

Back to this song, or rather to Thunderthighs, which is awesome name for a female rock group, let’s be real. I had never heard of this band and I wondered what their story was all about.

Turns out they were a backing vocal trio from the UK consisting of Karen Friedman, Dari Lalou and Casey Synge. The were most known from providing Lou Reed with the do-do-doos for Walk On the Wild Side. They are not, in fact, “colored girls”, despite chiming in right at the moment Lou suggests they might be. Over the years, some folks have taken umbrage with this fact, and I can see why. If you’re satirizing the music industry’s proclivity for taking advantage of minority singers without providing the proper credit, proper compensation, proper royalty structures or the opportunity to step out from behind the shadow of their white counterparts, doing so with trio white women may just be undercutting that point. Perhaps it’s not though. Perhaps that’s the only responsible way to make such a critique. Or maybe it’s not that deep at all and it’s simply Digital Blackface in the analog era. I’m not sure. All I know is that regardless of what Lou sings, the girl’s were Thunderthighs.

As an act on their own, Thunderthighs never really seemed to catch on. They released a handful of singles to critical acclaim and some chart performance, but nothing viewed as an undeniable hit. They recorded a debut LP, but the label cut their losses and  shelved the effort. Years and years later the material was released as an untitled album and is currently available to listen to on the various streaming services.

Despite struggling to find solo success, these woman were still very sought after for their incredible vocal gifts. The trio can be heard on various albums from Mott the Hoople, Arthur Brown, Jerry Lee Lewis and David Verity.

But for our week of Hallo-Women, we don’t want them in the background. We want the ladies of Thunderthighs front and center singing about possibly the most monstrous woman of them all, Dracula’s Daughter.

 

Audio

Dracula’s Tango (Sucker for Your Love)

TRACK #415:

Dracula’s Tango (Sucker For Your Love) by Toto Coelo

Since we’re talking about women talking about monsters, how about 5 women talking about monsters. Or at least one monster anyway. Yeah, you guessed it – Dracula. Of course it’s Dracula. It’s always Dracula. So much Dracula. Too much Dracula.

I know I said I was only gonna give you 1 Dracula song this year, and that’s because this block wasn’t initially scheduled for this season. But as I was finishing up the Disco block I wasn’t quite settled about how it was segueing into the next part of the playlist. So, I decided to move these songs up a bit, shuffled out a few tunes, and viola! Now you got more Dracula. It’s honesty just that easy to suddenly have Dracula around here, such is the extent of Draculas littering the bullpen. There’s a whole other crop coming at you in 2026. Just Draculas. So much Draculas. Too much Draculas.

But this one’s a great monster dance song that’s pretty well known and exactly the type of song that should have made the list years ago. It’s been hanging around the bullpen forever just waiting to find the right spot to call home, and I think we’ve now found it.

It’s a poppy number that comes from a group of British ladies originally named Toto. The United States made them change their name though to avoid confusion with the real Toto, cause that’s the kinda bullshit the United States does. I suppose I get it, but this seems more geared toward preventing a customer from buying an album they maybe didn’t want, than it is seems geared toward maybe helping an artist sell some records on a little borrowed name recognition. The music industry suddenly developed a consciousness toward its customers, or something? Get the fuck outta here.

I will say that I wouldn’t have complained at all about an alternate cut of Lynch’s Dune scored by the likes of Toto Coelo.

Speaking of which, that’s what they changed their name to, Toto Coelo. In Latin it means “by all of Heaven” or “the whole of the Heavens.” It seems like a fancy way of saying completely, or absolutely. So there’s that.

According to Wikipedia, By The Full Breadth of The Heavens formed in ’81 and their first recording was a Buggles tune produced by Trevor Horn. How do you like that? Sometimes the small weird ways things end up unintentionally connected around here is kinda wild. Apparently this was an unreleased track though, but that little thread is still interesting.

Their actual breakout hit came the following year in the form I Eat Cannibals. Not exactly a number one hit, either in England or here (peaked at 8 in the UK and 66 here in the states) but it was enough to warrant a follow up single right on its heels.

Now, why someone thought a weird song about wanting to fuck Dracula was the ticket, I couldn’t say. Never seems to me like the thing to bet the farm on, and I’m a guy who literally wants your next hit to be a song about you wanting to fuck Dracula. Like I’m here for it, literally. I’m literally here at this domain for the express purpose of talking about your weird 1982 hit song about how you’re getting all horny for Dracula. But yeah, I’ve seen the numbers. It’s not a large constituency.

So, as you might imagine Toto Coelo’s flash was of an “in the pan” variety. They went for the hat trick and released Milk From The Coconut, the 3rd single off their 1983 album Man O’War, but that one didn’t really move the needle either. Anyone who was really feeling I Eat Cannibals had moved on.

Now, I’m usually a pretty generous listener with things like that, and there is a vocoder, and that’s awesome obviously, but I struggle with Milk from the Coconut a bit. It’s ok, but I’m not surprised this one failed to chart.

Now Dracula’s Tango, on the other hand, provides no such obstacle. It is the clear winner of the 3 singles, my biases not withstanding. Anyone claiming I Eat Cannibals is the better single is not to be trusted. So, while I think I Eat Cannibals could make for a perfectly reasonable addition to The Shindig, we have obviously and predictably staked our flag on Dracula’s Tango.

An interesting bit of trivia about the ladies of Toto Coelo; they fully appear performing in the 1983 sequel, Grizzly II: The Predator. That sucker was shot in Budapest, and the production ran out of money so the Hungarian government confiscated all their equipment. As a result, the movie was never released or finished. Canon bought the rights with the intention to release it in the late 80’s but that didn’t happen before Canon fell apart.

In 2020, an independent company shot some extra footage and finally got the film released as Grizzly II: The Revenge. It’s not good, and has tons of weird new footage spliced-in that feels all out of place. And since it featured a bunch of young actors that had since became famous, they bill them all like the real stars of the film.

It’s got John Rhys-Davies and Louise Fletcher and Charles Cyphers. But those are the real actors. In small ass cameos you had the likes of George Clooney, Laura Dern and even Charlie Sheen! According to IMDb Charlie Sheen actually turned down the role of Daniel in The Karate Kid so he could go to Hungary and be in this trash. Holy shit. Poor guy. No wonder he kept bangin’ 7 grams rocks. I would too if I had given up a shot at bring the Karate Kid for fuckin Grizzly II, only to see it get full-on shelved for 40 years.

Though, to be fair, being Topper Harley and Rick Vaughn kinda makes up for not getting to be Daniel Larusso. In the grand scheme of things, maybe that’s even better. Maybe he really was winning. In the end though, he’s still Charlie Sheen, and that don’t sound like any kind of winning to me. Rest in peace Corey Haim.

Holy shit, that was a detour. What the hell were we talking about again? Oh, another song about women obsessed with a fucking literal creature of the night, that will completely drain their body of life in order to sustain their own, with absolutely no thought or concerned paid to the very object of that sustenance, rendering them into what one Dracula referred to as a “beautiful wine press” ?Yeah, that sounds about par for the Dracula course.

Here’s Toto Coelo with a toto dance-floor ‘digger sure to get your blood flowing. It’s Dracula’s Tango (Sucker For Your Love)

 

Audio

Dracula (The Zane Brothers)

TRACK #393:

Dracula by The Zane Brothers

For every Shindig All-Star with multiple songs on the playlist, or even huge stars with one-off additions like Michael Jackson or Chuck Berry,
there’s probably 10 tracks from guys that never cut another record in their entire careers. Hell, some of them never even released another song.

The Zane Brothers, whomever they may be, are just such fellas.

Now, thank the maker though, because with their one musical life they choose to make a song about Dracula. It’s quite probably the very reason they only got to shoot one shot, but it’s definitely what I’m looking for, and (by extension) what you’re looking for, as a person reading these words.

It’s a humdinger of Drac Track too, one that ought to get your feet moving. At least if you’re already in a dance-friendly environment that is, like maybe a Halloween party, expecting to hear dance worthy songs about Dracula. If you’re just driving in your ‘83 Ford Fiesta on your way to a double shift at the diner, perhaps a song about Dracula just gets shut the fuck off, who knows?

Me? I’m keepin it on, rolling down the window and leaning on the volume knob just pumped that any station is broadcasting a song about Dracula through actual radio waves. And that’s not simply because I’m the kinda guy who would compile songs like that onto an unnecessarily and obnoxiously long Halloween playlist for the past 13 years. I mean, that certainly doesn’t hurt, but it’s not the only reason.

Naw, it’s cause this song is cool. Trust me! I’ve waded through a several pints of Dracula songs that aren’t even worth mentioning, much less listening to, and this is definitely not one of them. Not at all. This one grooves and it’s even, dare I say, kinda funny.

And I still have a capes worth of Dracula songs sitting in the bullpen, but I’ll leave it at just the one this year. Maybe next year I’ll drop another full on Dracula block, cause man, they are seriously piling up. 

For now, let’s let The Zane Brothers spin their unique yarn about that age old Halloween song staple, Dracula.

 

Audio

Dracula Mini-Playlist

 

Well, it was only a matter of time before all these Drac-Tracks started to stack and needed a coffin to call their own.

So, for all The Count’s solo outings (and for all those still yet to come) here’s a mini-playlist for all ya’ll Fang-atics to enjoy!

Sink your teeth into the (admittedly, mostly disco, and mostly already blocked out) goodness that is Dracula on wax, without any of those annoying songs about Freddy Krueger or Trick or Tricking to harsh the buzz.

 

 

Audio

Sweet Sexy Dracula

TRACK #356:

Sweet Sexy Dracula by Café Au Lait

Disco was pretty big in Japan. While American Rock ‘N Roll grabbed Japanese pop culture for the late 60’s and early 70’s, by 1974, that island was dancing to a new beat.

As such, lots of Disco artists enjoyed great success overseas. Some even went so far as to release records exclusively in Japan. Ice (aka Captain Dax) is a good example of a band directing their attention almost entirely to the Japanese market. And it seems such was the case with our next Disco Dracula enablers, the curiously French named, Café Au Lait.

Café Au Lait is a coffee drink. I know this now because if you try and search for this band, the results are pretty much exclusively this drink. It’s kinda like a latte I guess, only it’s made with regular coffee instead of espresso. Great. I feel more sophisticated already.

Now, what the fuck a French coffee beverage has to do with Disco, Dracula or Japan is anyone’s guess. But let’s talk less about coffee and more about those other 3 things for a moment.

Hot Blood’s 1975 gateway drug Soul Dracula, was a pretty big hit in Japan. I mean, it was a pretty big hit here too, and practically spawned what’s shaping up to be an entire sub-genre of music, but in Japan, they were clamoring for it a bit more insatiably.

So much so it seems that, according to wild and unconfirmed sources on the crazy ass internet, Japan (the entire country, I guess) asked Mr. Alain Goraguer to produce his Soul Dracula sound-alike Sexy Dracula. Ok, that seems plausible, weird commenter on discogs, sure. We’ll just go with that.

Was it a hit. I dunno. Maybe?

Not to be outdone, Café Au Lait sought to court a case of Japanese disco fever 3 years later with Sweet Sexy Dracula.

Now, it can be tricky digging up info on these old, sometimes one-off, bands from over 40 years ago. And that difficultly gets compounded if you name your group after a fuckin’ coffee drink.

They don’t sound French to me. Could be Canadian, I suppose. Hell, could be French, but I’m not hearing it. Least not from the lead singer.

So, who were Café Au Lait? Where were they from? Surely they’re not Japanese, but this record was released there. They actually produced a whole LP titled Midnight Bazaar. That’s more than you can say for a lot of these Disco Dracula folk. Sweet Sexy Dracula is the lead-off batter on that album too and you’re goddamn right it is.

I search and type, and dig through YouTube comments and discog notes. Search again with different keywords but mostly I just find people selling the record or featuring it on write-ups or mixes of Disco Dracula songs with no more information than “Hey, here’s another one.” Maybe I’m just bad at looking. Maybe I can’t read Japanese. Maybe the information just isn’t out there.

I did find this fascinating article recently from Diabolique Magazine in 2018. It details a bunch of the big Dracula Disco hitters, in addition to the films of 1979, all as a framework for Disco Demolition Night.

That was the night of the infamous anti-disco promotional shitshow cooked up by Shock Jock Steve Dahl in Chicago. They held it at Comisky Park after a White Sox double-header in July of 1979. The plan was that everyone who came to the stadium that night would bring a disco record with them and then Steve would blow up the whole lot after the games. And he did! Then shit got a little out of hand over at the ballpark. It always comes back to baseball around here, it seems.

But this article appears to be the only thing of its kind really. And perhaps rightfully so. But it doesn’t touch upon any of the little guys; the Hotlines, the Bob Babylones or sadly, the Café Au Laits.

Am I crazy? Am I the only one who cares? Am I the lone person hearing these tunes thinking – man, I’d like to know just a little bit more about the people that made this weird song, so I can write more than “Hey Dracula and cocaine were a crazy duo in the 70’s, huh?”

Feeling at my wits end I actually consulted the harbinger of human civilization’s ruin du jour, ChatGPT.

After wrestling for hours with that goofball, who can’t even seem to return the results of a basic Google search, I did get a bit of information.

Who knows how solid that it is though, as I have yet to get that dipshit to provide me a link that actually takes me where it says it’s suppose to.

Seriously, anyone who’s afraid ChatGPT might be the end of humanity, go have a fuckin’ conversation with that nimrod about a 40 year old Dracula Disco song. Your fears will be instantly quelled, particularly when it repeats back the information you just feed it as though it dug it up on its own. Oh Café Au Lait seem to be fairly obscure Disco band that only released 1 record called Midnight Bazaar, huh? No shit, buddy, I just fuckin’ told you that.

So alas, that’s what I’m left with. That and some speculation. Maybe no one actually cares. Maybe no one wants to read about me caring that no one seems to care. Maybe nobody wants to read at all, particularly dumb things written by dumb me on this dumb blog devoted to dumb shit. Who knows?

Maybe all they want (if they even want this at all) is to just hear the damn song and move on. And maybe that all ya’ll want too, so here it comes.

 

Audio

Dracula Pt. I

TRACK #351:

Dracula Pt. 1 by The Jimmy Castor Bunch

I dunno what the cocaine was cut with in the 1970’s, but people were goin fuckin’ nuts for Dracula. The amount of Soul, Funk, Disco and Rock tunes from that era, dedicated specifically to the old leech, is staggering.

In the bullpen right now I have another 16 Dracula songs from the 1970’s, of which 6 are from 1979 alone. And there’s already 7 of those on the playlist! So, I had to be a little picky here or we’d be stuck listening to Dracula songs until track #400.

We’ll stake out a healthy block here though, cause I gotta clear out some of these long suffering prospects.

And to kick off our Dracula block in style, we got Jimmy Castor, aka The Everything Man, and his funked out ode to the Prince of Darkness.

In 1975, right on the heels of (or perhaps even before) Soul Dracula, Jimmy and his Bunch dropped Dracula Pt. 1. Don’t worry about Pt. 2 though, it’s just an instrumental version.

Jimmy takes on the persona of Drac and slips in and out of character on this laid back cut that pays tribute to what a smooth motherfucker that count was.

According to the BBC (who are clearly the authorities on such matters) Jimmy Castor is one of the most sampled musicians of all time. And Jimmy’s been sampled quite a bit, no doubt. Specifically, bits of his 1972 songs Troglodyte and It’s Just Begun have popped up on tracks from the likes of N.W.A., Kool Moe D, Ice T, Arianna Grande, JJ Fad and Redman!

But one of the most sampled musicians of all time? I dunno about all that.

So, I consulted an actual authority, ya know, not just some tosser over at the British Broadcasting Company, to find out if that claim held any water.

According to whosampled.com, Jimmy isn’t even cracking the top 100 most sampled artists of all time. At 320 samples, Jimmy is a full 183 samples away from the 100th most sampled musician, legendary composer Ennio Morricone.

So, one of the most sampled? Not exactly, but definitely more than most.

And what of Dracula Pt. 1? Well, unfortunately no one seems to have sampled any parts of this tune. Which is a shame, cause this thing grooves. If the hip-hop constituency doesn’t wanna show this Jimmy Castor track any love, it’s ok. That’s what Halloween Shindig is here for.

So let’s let Dracula introduce himself now, cause we’re gonna be spending a little time with the old Count.

 

 

Audio

Dracula: King of the Monster References

Is there a single character – literary or otherwise, dead or undead, monster or not – more referenced than Count Dracula?

Since 1897, that unholy creature has captured mortal minds the world over. Some 200 films feature appearances from The Count. Over 150 of those films contain his name. Almost 100 different actors have played the fiend in just as many years. Those are some pretty big league numbers, any way you slice it.

And the songs? Where do we even start?

According to discogs, there’s 666 master releases with the word “Dracula.” Are you serious with that number? Is that bonkers or what? I will say, some of those look like doubles though. It’s hard to completely bypass dupes in the discog search. But still, a peculiar number to pop up, to say the least.

A search over at Lyrics.com pulls over 2,300 hits for songs containing the word “Dracula.” A similar search over at The Music Lyrics Database has a more alarming statistic at some 236,000 mentions. That number is a little wild though. Has me wondering if they’re just counting instances of the word in each song, cause that shit is ridiculous.

Point is, this guy’s fuckin’ name can’t keep out of anyone’s fuckin’ mouth.

So, given that this is the year of the Referential Monster Jam, we thought we’d pay tribute to the most referenced of all time, the King of the Monsters himself, Count Dracula.

I have a jugular vein’s worth of Dracula songs still waiting in the bullpen. We’ll clear out a few here, but you have yet to hear the last of Dracula on this playlist, I can assure you of that.

So, let’s all grab a cape and sink our teeth into a big ole pint of Drac-Tracks.

Audio

Disco Blood

 

TRACK #292:

Disco Blood by The Vamps

No, it’s not that Disco Blood, featured in 1981’s slasher classic, The Prowler, as performed by Nowherefast. Unfortunately, that one still appears to be unobtainium at the moment. Nope, this disco hit comes courtesy of Brazilian dance outfit, The Vamps.

It’s the title track the from their only LP, Disco Blood, released back in 1977.

And boy, what a weird ass tune this is.

It’s essentially a disco tale of a nubile woman who runs afoul “the vampire.” And not just a vampire, mind you, but the vampire. We could assume this means Dracula, as it typically does, but perhaps not. We’re just not sure.

Anyway, after some less than coy flirtations, and then overt unsolicited advances, this thing turns to (from the sounds of it anyway) straight up Vampire rape. After which, this poor young woman seems to acquiesce to the dire situation and the song then devolves into these 2 audibly fucking for almost 2 minutes over a disco beat. Well then.

The story itself, in all its myriad complexity, is actually illustrated for us on the album’s sleeve. Well, that’s a curious bonus. Chalk one up for The Vamps.

 

Disco Blood 1
Disco Blood 2
Disco Blood 3
Disco Blood 4
Disco Blood 5
Disco Blood 6

These are some great pictures to have on the back of an album, and it was an unexpected treat when I received this record in the mail.

As for the song, there’s some serious bongo work on display with this tune and man if it don’t get yer foot tapping.

Sure, you could take issue with the less than favorable subject matter, either as a moralistic objection to sex in general, the performance and distribution of simulated sex on record, or the unholy union of a human and creature of the night in sexual congress. Any one of those would make perfect sense and could impair someone’s desire to dance. I get that.

However, having no objection to the above, one could still find it difficult to dance to a song featuring a woman being thrust upon by a man (or monster) against her will. True enough. This woman literally yells “Get out of me!” Not sure if that’s just a language barrier or something more specific, but whatever’s happening here is not (at least initially anyway) consensual in the slightest.

But then again, I think that’s the nature of the vampire. For what is a vampire attack, if not a wildly non-consensual act.

But, if you can square yourself with that unfavorable situation, then you got one hell of a smokin’ disco number on you’re hands.

Unfortunately, like most of the artists this year it seems, I couldn’t dig up too much information on The Vamps.

So, I guess all we have are these drawings and 7 and a half minutes of a little 33rpm auditory pornography/maybe rape/probably horror/definitely disco. Eh, why not?

I apologize in advance.