British Invasion era self professed "rockabilly madman"...Released a handful of great horror rock n roll, rockabilly and r&b singles in the early to mid-sixties...Perfect music for Halloween...Song titles include; "Black & Hairy", "Murder In The Graveyard", "Jack The Ripper", "Dracula's Daughter" etc...Obviously,heavily influenced by Screaming Jay Hawkins...Not much of a singer, great entertainer....
Opened most shows by climbing out of a coffin and incorporated skulls, daggers and corpses in his act...He was Alice Cooper before Alice Cooper ...Very popular in England, almost unheard of in U.S...Big influence on up and coming British Invasion bands...His backing band, The Savages, at one time or another included; Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore, Jeff Beck, Keith Moon & Charlie Watts...Also recorded a couple of singles with legendary producer Joe Meek...Founded The National Teenage
Political Party in 1963 and actually ran for parliament...More of a publicity stunt than actual campaign... Lost badly, picking up only 208 votes...The National Teenage Party eventually morphed into The Monster Raving Loony Party...Sutch ran 39 more times for various offices, never winning an election...
The Monster Raving Loony Party is still a registered political party in the UK today...Lord Sutch, who reportedly suffered from manic depression, comitted suicide in 2008...Checkout Screaming Lord Sutch
performing "Jack The Ripper" below...
Back in the early nineteen seventies, cereal was a very important part of every seven year old's life. For some reason, possibly because life was so mind-numbingly boring back then, (only three tv channels, no video games, no internet, no Netflex, no mandatory cello lessons, cheernastic competitions or musical theatre camp etc...) I remember giving a lot of thought as to what cereal I should ask my parents to purchase on our next trip to the grocery store.
8 essential vitamins!
Taste was not really all that big of a factor, as all cereal was ninety percent sugar anyway. (Unless, of course, your parents brought home some "healthy" non-sugary stuff like Special K or Grape Nuts. This dilemma was quickly solved, however, with a gravy ladle and a trip to the sugar bowl.) The main selling point for me was simply: who had the coolest cartoon character on their cereal box.
Back in the fifties, enterprising companies realized that cartoons helped sell breakfast cereal to kids. By the seventies, full blown ad campaigns were targeted at six year olds. Not only were their cartoon characters on the front of every box, but Saturday morning tv (aka "Cartoon Day") bombarded us with cereal commercials starring animated "spokescartoons" who, get this, actually had personalities!
There was a happy (possibly drunk) leprechaun (Lucky Charms), a crooning Bing Crosbyesque turtle neck wearing bear (Sugar Bear), a giant sociopathic rabbitt (Tricks) and that...uhhhh..., I don't know what it was, but it kinda scared me thing (Coco Puffs). Of course, each cereal contained eight essential vitamins when eaten with a " full breakfast". (I am assuming the other foods in a "full breakfast" had eight vitamins, because this stuff had none.)
What is this thing called?
Although I enjoyed and indulged in all of these sugar coated delights, my favorite by far were what are now referred to as, The Monster Cereals; Count Chocula, Frankenberry and Boo Berry. (Okay, later there was Fruit Brute and Yummy Mummy but, let's be honest, it's kind of like the guys in Kiss who replaced Ace Frehley and Peter Criss. Yes, they technically are a member of Kiss but, they ain't Kiss, you know?)
Each product contained sugar coated cereal (Yay!) and flavored marshmallows (like Lucky Charms). The characters were featured in highly entertaining (well, entertaining to a second grader, anyway) thirty second commercials, in which, they live in an old spooky castle and basically spent their time fighting over who had the tastiest cereal. Although, it was probably over my head at the time, each character's voice was an imitation of a famous horror movie star. (Count Chocula; Bela Lugosi, Franken Berry; Boris Karloff, Boo Berry; Peter Lorre)
Hero
I never cared for the taste of Boo Berry and Frankenberry often caused great alarm in the bathroom an hour after ingesting it, so I liked Count Chocula the best. (Apparently, Frankenberry sometimes turned your feces pink, while Count Chocula was....well...already the color of feces.) I even sent away for a Count Chocula toy that I carried around probably a little longer than my parents were completely comfortable with.
I owned this toy
General Mills phased out The Monster Cereals, for the most part, in the nineties but brought them back last fall for a short Halloween run. I had my first bowl of Count Chocula cereal in thirty odd years and must say it was pretty bad--at first. But after several days, I actually began to enjoy it and, to my wife's chagrin, bought a second box. Sad to say, I have scoured several grocery stores the last couple of weeks and can't find a monster cereal anywhere. If you know where I can score any, please let me know. I am a very desperate man.
"In a modern day mass-marketing economy, a revolutionary song is any song you choose to sing for yourself. Welcome to the revolution"
--Utah Phillips
(1935-2008)
Great B black & white horror movie starring Vincent Price and directed by schlockmeister William Castle (House On Haunted Hill, Thirteen Ghosts). Price plays a scientist searching for the answer as to why we get a tingling feeling up our spine when we become afraid. He believes there is a being called " The Tingler" attached to our spine that is brought to life by our fear and can only be calmed by our screams. In other words, if we become terrified and our unable to scream, the tingler will smash our spine and we will die of "fear"! Somehow, the tingler detaches from somebody's body and begins crawling around and attacking people and the fun begins
Director William Castle was famous for coming up with crazy gimmicks to promote his movies and The Tingler had a feature called, "Percepto". When the movie was released, Castle had electric buzzers attached to various seat in the theatre that would be activated at certain points of the movie, thus, giving the person in the seat the tingling feeling of, well, the tingler.
The highlight of the film is when the screen goes white (as if the film reel has run out) and you hear Vincent Price screaming, "The tingler is loose in the theatre". This is quickly followed by a
silhouette of the tingler crawling across the screen. Obviously, this was meant to cause screaming and mayhem in the theatre. Eventually, calm is restored and the movie continues as if nothing happened.
The Tingler contains everything that makes a B horror movie great; ridiculous plot, overacting, a cheap and cheesy looking monster, secondary plots that go nowhere, an abrupt and unfulfilling ending and perhaps Hollywood's first depiction of an acid trip. That's right boys and girls, Vincent Price on acid! What more could a movie goer ask for?Checkout the movie trailer below.
Perfect 45 to kick off the Halloween season...manic piano + fifties r&b workout + blood curdling screams and maniacal laughter courtesy of Hutch Davie....piano man/arranger/producer extraordinaire...resume includes:
arranging Santo & Johnny 's "Sleepwalk" and The Bob Crewe Generation's "Music To Watch Girls By"...also worked with Frankie Valli, The Shirelles, Mitch Ryder, Ellie Greenwhich, The Angels, Leslie Gore, Patti Duke etc...Also recorded many albums and singles under his own name...
John Hartford (1937-2001) Early Life: Native of St.Louis, Missouri... learned to play the banjo and fiddle as a child. ...In high school, performed locally in a number of bluegrass bands...released a few singles on local record labels....attended Washington University for a year...left before earning a degree...worked at various odd jobs including, commercial artist, radio announcer and steamboat deck hand.
To Nashville: Worked at various radio stations while writing songs and performing ...Began having some success as a songwriter....
Waylon Jennings, Billy Grammer, George Hamilton IV and Patti Page all recorded some of his songs...In 1966, signed with RCA Records... released a half a dozen very weird albums for the label...countrypolitan/MOR/bluegrass/hippie music...worth searching out, if you can find them...
Gentle On My Mind: On his second album, "Earthwords & Music", Hartford recorded an original composition called, "Gentle On My Mind"...Although, his version didn't go anywhere, the song was recorded by dozens of artists...it eventually became a multi-million selling hit for Glen Campbel putting Hartford on the map and making him a very rich man....the song eventually became one of the most recorded songs of the twentieth century with literally hundreds of versions..
Hollywood: Following the success of " Gentle On My Mind", Hollywood beckoned...He appeared regularly on The Smothers Brothers show and The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour and hosted a few specials of his own...CBS offered him a starring role in a detective show they were developing but he turned them down..
Newgrass: In the early seventies, Hartford signed with Warner Brothers records...he released two very innovative bluegrass albums, "Aeroplane" and "Morning Bugle"...Surrounding himself with fellow young longhaired hippie musicians, he turned bluegrass on its ear...introducing jazz, blues and rock n roll influences and writing tunes about sex and marijuana and adding his very un-bluegrassy baritone voice to the mix...
Steamboat Captain: About this time, he began working as a steamboat river pilot...piloting boats of up and down the Mississippi, Illinois and Ohio Rivers...
Mark Twang: In the mid-seventies, he signed with the tiny Flying Fish label and released his magnum opus, "Mark Twang"...A completely solo endeavor, Hartford sang and accompanied himself on banjo, fiddle, guitar and something he called his "womper-stomper" (which consisted of a giant piece of amplified plywood that he tapdanced on while playing--seriously!)...he even plays his face on one song.(again, seriously!)..A true one man band effort, he played everything with no overdubbing or multi-tracking...
Incredible banjo and fiddle playing coupled with some really far out subject matter, including songs about; steamboats (Skipping Thru The Mississippi Dew, Long Hot Summer Days, Julia Belle Swain), warped record albums ("Don't Leave Your Records In The Sun"), a bluegrass "rap" song ("Tater Tate & Allen Mundy") and some just plain weird stuff ("Trying To Do Something To Get Your Attention", "Little Cabin On The Hill")...not to mention "The Lowest Pair" a sort of cannabis soaked Lord's Prayer....
Nothing like it had ever been heard before (or since, mind you)...."Mark Twang" actually won a Grammy Award for "Best Ethnic Recording"...Seriously! (For the third time)"
So Long: Hartford continued to record and tour until his death from cancer in 2001...Although, he performed and recorded with various musicians through the years, he did hundreds and hundreds of one man bands shows...just him his banjo, fiddle and his beloved "womper-stomper"....check him out below performing in Athens, Ohio--1977.
