|
It's called Monster Party 2000, and you really want to have it if you're a Halloween
fan of any sort. If you're gonna have a party this Halloween, it's mandatory. It
has everything from creepy, reverb-drenched instrumentals to creepy, power-soaked
vocal rockers. And it has a cover that's sure to piss off feminists while it assures
there will be sales. The CD is on MuSick Recordings, which really has come to mean
quality. We decided it would be fun to get a bunch of the musicians together for an
interview. Pekka Laine is the guitarist for The Hypnomen: Helsinki, Finland's coolest,
most unusual band. Evan Foster leads so many bands it's hard to keep count, but you
probably know him from The Boss Martians, Seattle's premier instro outfit; or possibly
The Mystery Action, a killer power-pop group. Freddy Fortune led the legendary garage
band known as Fortune & Maltese. Dalibor Pavicic heads up the Croatian surf band,
Bambi Molesters. Rick Mills has two bands on this CD: 3-D Invisibles and The Hellbenders.
The Professor is a member of The Woggles. Art Bourasseau is the label dude from
MuSick. Here's what happens when you get them all in one place.
Cosmik: You guys should know that Halloween is sacred to me, so I'm considering you all gospel artists now. How did you all get involved with the Monster Party 2000 project?
Pekka Laine: It's pretty simple: Art asked me if we're interested and I
said yes. Horror-halloween is a pretty fun starting point to write
instrumental stuff.
Cosmik: What about you, Evan? You had more than one band in the project.
Evan Foster: Well with a manager like Art we had no choice in the matter... JOKIN'! HAH! Well, Art told me about it a while ago and I was into the idea, as well as the rest of the Boss Martians and my other band, The CobraJets. I dig Halloween and dig the whole ghoul/ghost thing, so I wrote up a Martians tune to fit the nature of the record. For The CobraJets tracks we had already been playing a few tunes which would have fit the bill due to their sheer nastiness. That's pretty much the deal.
The Professor: We had just finished a several week tour around the country and when we got back Art sent a message saying that he'd really like us to contribute to a Halloween comp. Now we (the Woggles) are all fans of the holiday and to us we wanted our contribution to be more on the fun side. I'm a fan of Peter Cushing and Vincent Price as well as Boris Karloff and all the really classy monster movies, but I do have an appreciation of the whimsical, too, so I can enjoy Abbott and Costello Meet whoever and find fun in the very things they spoof, which at the same time I hold dear. I guess what I'm saying is that they'll be goofin' the very things that I think are cool, but I don't think it belittles those things at all.
Rick Mills: Well, Art invited us to be on the comp and of course we said yes. C'mon, monsters and rock & roll? A proven winning combination.
Cosmik: Can't argue with that. So Dalibor, how 'bout the Bambi Molesters?
Dalibor Pavicic: We liked Art's idea and agreed to be a part of it. I guess that with a band name like ours, someday you have to end up on some kind of monster compilation.
Cosmik: Awesome idea, Art. You've put out all these great instro records, surf and stuff like that.... what made you think of a Halloween comp?
Art Bourasseau: Thanks for the compliments on the 'Sick catalog. Well, Halloween is my favorite "Holiday" and I always wanted to release a monster or Halloween record. I've always dug monsters and creepy stuff. 2000 was the right year... a good year for a "Monster Party."
Cosmik: What's involved in putting something like this together, Art?
Art Bourasseau: Like I said, I had been thinking that MuSick needed to release a Halloween record, from the beginning of the label, really. We thought of releasing one in 1998, but Rob Zombie's label did it that year. That comp had some good bands -- some that appear on ours, too -- and pretty cool artwork. After its release, that record became the one to beat and I started planning the strategy. I wanted ours to have better bands, better songs and better artwork. I think we succeeded. I knew it would be a great record once I started getting the songs from all the different bands, but it wasn't until the finished CD arrived that I realized that we had accomplished something very cool. It's a scary, creepy, tantalizing and even sexy Monster record. We're very excited about it. And retailers, apparently, are, too. Hope music fans will be, as well.
Cosmik: Once you had the bands on board, what came next?
Art Bourasseau: It was the "look" of the CD that I tackled next.
I believed that without the proper artwork to go with the record,
it wouldn't work. I contacted this amazing artist by the name of
Mitch O'Connell and asked him to paint the creepiest, coolest
Monster party he could come up with. I told him which monsters I
wanted on it and he took it from there and did his thing. He has
all of the coolest creatures in there. I believe he outdid himself...
it's a great painting. What do you think, DJ?
Cosmik: I immediately scanned it, sized it to 600 by 600 and made it my desktop wallpaper. What does that tell ya? (Laughs) And at the risk of sounding like a necropheliac, the graveyard girl is HOT! How close was it to what you had in mind when you described it to Mitch?
Art Bourasseau: Very close and beyond expectations, really. It's one of my favorite record covers ever. And I'm not saying it because it's on MuSick, but it really is. I should add that without the excellent layout done by Prof. Yaya, it wouldn't look as sharp. He layed out Mitch's artwork and everything else and made it look sharp with many cool details all over the CD, including a cool metallic blue ink around the title on both the cover and side spine.
Cosmik: How about the music? Like you imagined it?
Art Bourasseau: Musicwise, I feel the same. The bands went all out to create the mood for the "monster party," from slow, moody tunes [Hypnomen, Bambi Molesters, Fifty Foot Combo] to A Go-Go shakin' beat numbers [Tiki Tones, Pelegrinos Negros, Woggles] and hard-rocking stuff [Electric Frankenstein, Bleed, Boss Martians, Satan's Pilgrims] to some well known monster classics like "The Munsters Theme" as an intro to the CD, "It's the Mummy," "Dracula's Deuce" and the "Theme from Young Frankenstein." There's humorous stuff, too, like "Billy's Dead" by Deadbolt and "Frankie's Groovy Monster Boots" by Eddie Angel of Los Straitjackets teaming up with 60s A Go-Go kids The Omega Men.
Cosmik: Kids? No, wait... 60s A Go-Go kids?!
Art Bourasseau: (Laughs) Yeah! Well, I think we covered all the bases. Different styles of music, too: garage, beat, instrumental, surf, punk and even metal. It's all there.
Cosmik: It really is. Makes you realize how many styles of music can fit into the Halloween thing. So did everyone here grow up diggin' Halloweenish music? What were you into?
Rick Mills: Does "Thrilling, Chilling Sounds of the Haunted House" count?
Cosmik: Sure, it does. Even Elvira counts.
Rick Mills: I was a huge Munsters fan as a kid. Everybody knows how cool that theme song is. Wish I still had that lunch box.
The Professor: Creepy organs and the Disney Halloween Haunted House
record. I always had a ghoulish fascination with Jimmy Cross' "I want my
Baby back." The sound of that shovel goin' into the dirt... yikes! It gives
me chills still, but it's just so real. Another song -- well, 45, but I'm not
sure when or where I got it as a kid, or found it, maybe discarded from my
uncle Joe Jones Junior -- is on Chancellor and the song is sung by
Claudine Clark, and it's called "Walkin' Through A Cemetery." It's a 50s
R&B feel with lots of shu-bops, but it's pretty wild, with her running
into ghosts and trippin' over bodies and all. Thinking back on it, a lot
of the Halloween flavored music I liked and continue to enjoy is pretty
novelty oriented, but I think that terror and humour go hand in hand. One
is a way to deal with the other.
Freddy Fortune: Oh yeah, I had that Disney Haunted house record, and A Monster Mash record with all the big monster type songs, "Dinner With Drac," etc. Plus in the Detroit area we had two monster movie hosts, The Ghoul & Sir Graves Ghastly. Every weekend as a kid time was always invested in monster movies. Plus there were also other monster movie shows without hosts like Creature Feature. So without a doubt Halloween was always special, even if I did have to go Trick or Treating as the standard Bum or Ghost costume too many times. Plus my favorite cereals were Count Chocula, Boo Berry, Franken Berry, and Fruit Brute.
Evan Foster: I've always kinda dug novelty or gimmick records. I just like the idea of rock and roll with a theme, you know? It keeps it kinda fun, as long as its not corny to the point of total lameness. Like with instros, I've always dug nasty instros with theme names and stuff.
Dalibor Pavicic: The Halloween thing is not a major event in Croatia.
Cosmik: Oh... my... GOD! You're kidding. I'm so sorry, man.
Dalibor Pavicic: If it wasn't for John Carpenter I would be completely unaware of it. As for Halloweenish music we all dig "Ghost Guitars," by Baron Deamon and the Vampires. We even thought to make a cover of this song for the Monster comp, but we couldn't do the creepy voice on breaks. There were also songs that I used to be afraid of back in my childhood. For instance, "Strawberry Fields Forever" has this really scary ending. That was probably the scariest thing I've experienced as a child.
Cosmik: Really? Did you hear "Tomorrow Never Knows" when you were a kid, too?
Dalibor Pavicic: Sure, that one also fits well into the creepy category.
Pekka Laine: To me this comp's concept was just horror-ghost stuff in general. Halloween doesn't have any meaning to us as a special day, it's just part of American culture, I suppose. But I like creepy and scary sounding stuff, for sure. Not so much the novelty aspect but the eerie, otherworldly element you can find in horror-inspired music.
Cosmik: I hear that! Give us some examples.
Pekka Laine: In the novelty department, my favorite is probably Screaming Lord Sutch and songs like "All Black and Hairy." As far as instrumentals go, I suppose you can find the spooky element in several areas: Link Wray, Joe Meek productions and so on. That's where we got it. And psychedelia, too, of course. There's always a sinister element involved in real freakout stuff like "Interstellar Overdrive," which we're really into.
Cosmik: It would be cool if you'd each tell us about the song you recorded for the album, and talk a bit about why you chose it.
Evan Foster: Well the Martians are on the comp with a track that I wrote
specially for it called
"Have You Ever Seen..(The Walking Dead)?" Been
listening to a lot of crazy-ass, freaked out R&B like Esquerita as well as
Northwest rock and roll like the Sonics and Raiders, so I guess I let that
influence me some - the track is a little on the nastier side I guess -
way heavy organ and nasty loud drums and stuff - and yeah its a vocal
tune. Its about this scumbag guy whose car breaks down on the way to a
Halloween party and it rolls to a stop outside some crazy old cemetery and
then he ends up getting the living shit scared out of him by rotting
corpses walkin around after midnight - just your standard ass Halloween
tale type of thing.
Freddy Fortune: Art e-mailed me suggesting Fortune & Maltese should cut "Dracula's Deuce," knowing our love of Gary Usher-styled productions, I suppose. I told him F&M were splitsville, but that my new group could handle the responsibility. We tried not to just cover the song exactly; we had some fun with it.
The Professor: I guess getting back to the things I've already mentioned is why we came up with a number called "Dracula's Daughter." Before that seed grew, however, we were all at each others throat about it, figuratively. I wanted to cover a not-so-well known thing, Montague wanted to cover the Fleshtones' "Return to a Haunted House," etcetera. But the following day, Buzz announced that he had gone home that night and written "Dracula's Daughter." Pekka: Our track is called "Pendulum," and the title, of course, is a tribute to Edgar Allan Poe, a real goth guy if there ever was one. Starting point for us was to make a tune that sounds like us, but has a horror flavor in it. Also, I wanted the tune to have a groovy beat to it - both because we wanted a danceable song and because we wanted to avoid the most horror- instro-solutions. We started to build upon a bass riff and just basically composed the song in one rehearsal. I just had an idea and sort of general atmosphere in mind and we went from there. Go-go beat, fuzz-tone, Hammond and a psychedelic and slightly freaky atmosphere- that's us and that's "Pendulum" also.
Rick Mills: The 3-D Invisibles track, "Nosferatu," is a spooky, minor key instrumental that Art suggested might be good for the project. We agreed. The Hellbenders song, "The Ghosts of Boot Hill" is a new original. It's our attempt at combining "western" and "spooky." I see it as something sort of in the vein of "Ghost Riders in the Sky."
Dalibor Pavicic: At the time Art told us about Monster Party project we had one song
finished ["(Theme From) Slaying Beauty"].So, it was not written especially for the CD. It was just
another song we wrote for some future release. I hope it fits the mood. It
has this dangerous theme and everything but I'm afraid that the real fright
is in the title.
Cosmik: I'm assuming you've all got copies already. Is that some killer cover art or what?
Dalibor Pavicic: Our copies are in the mail but I saw the cover on the MuSick site and it looks great.
Freddy Fortune: It looks like it is going to be amazing.
Rick Mills: Super cool!
Evan Foster: Yeah, I dig it shit loads. It really swings, man. That Shelby cat did it real swingin.
Cosmik: What were some of the songs that almost made the cut for each of you before you decided which way to go? Like The Professor mentioned The Fleshtones. There must have been some tough choices.
Dalibor Pavicic: As I said before, we tried "Ghost Guitars" but it just didn't work. We also tried "Halloween" but this one would be too obvious a choice for a cover.
Pekka Laine: One instro-tune that's totally fucking scary is Link Wray's "Genocide." It would be perfect here, but I understand some moron decided to do a hack job on that one for Art's upcoming Link tribute
Cosmik: I'm guessing you mean you... but just in case it's a powder keg, I'll tiptoe over here and ask the next question. So what's going on with all your bands now? What are the plans for everyone here?
Rick Mills: Well, the Hellbenders have an album in the can that will hopefully see the light of day soon.
Pekka Laine: The Hypnomen are rehearsing new material at the moment. We're getting ready for a short Scandinavian tour in November. Also we'll TRY to do our first US tour next spring to promote our Musick and Gearhead albums. Nothing really spectacular going on. We might cut a 45 for Gearhead soon but I'm not totally sure when.
Freddy Fortune: Hopefully we will have a new full length album done sometime
early next year. We recently cut a track with Max Crook & his Musitron. Max is
the cat who played on Del Shannon's "Runaway" not to mention others. The Musitron
was sort of the first synthesizer that he invented himself. What does that have
to do with this article, well that creepy weird organ sound Baby, that's what!
Dalibor Pavicic: In December we are going to tour Germany. In the meantime we are busy preparing material for the 3rd CD which we will record somewhere in the US next year. MuSick Recordings will also reissue our 2nd CD Intensity together with some bonus tracks.
Evan Foster: The Martians' new LP/CD on Dionysus, MOVE!, is DONE finally and going to master soon. It'll be out, then we're gonna freak out on the live scene for a mean-ass while. Its a lot meaner and more North Goddamned West these days. More in the vein that we been goin' for a long time - MORE SONICS, YEAH! Crazy, man. So touring as much as we can after the release and then its going to be back into the studio to work on the NEXT friggin' long player.
Cosmik: Jeez, Evan, do you ever NOT have a record coming out?
Evan Foster: We have a 7" comin out on Gerhard Fluch's Pure Vinyl, as well, with some outtakes from the Move sessions. Uhm... other than that, the crazy rock and roll band The CobraJets that appears on the CD, that me and Jason from the Martians and Craig from the Gimmicks are in, will most likely cut some more tracks and do a few shows around the Npthwest, but for right now that's mostly a side line so all of us sick MOTORHEAD fans can get our nasty-ass YA YA's out, you know?
Cosmik: How about your Halloween ya ya's? Aside from you guys who live where Halloween... I can't say it... oooh.. ISN'T CELEBRATED, what is everyone else gonna be doing for Halloween this year?
Freddy Fortune: Whatever Creepy Rick is going to do!
Rick Mills: The 3-D Invisibles will be doing our annual Halloween show at a club here in Detroit called Lili's. We've been doing it for many moons and it's always a cool rock & roll costume party.
Evan Foster: Well, looks like we'll be entertainin' some sick drunks and low down nasty people that night. I might be personally drinking too much that night as well, so we'll see how it will end up or whatever.