Posts Tagged ‘Spooky Songs’

  
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

Spooky Songs: Two from Todd Rundgren

by Matthew Bolin

To me, Todd Rundgren’s 1972 Something/Anything? is kind of the white Sign ‘O’ the Times. Like Prince’s masterwork, Rundgren’s is a sprawling, two disc, self-contained epic, bouncing from style to style and voice to voice, where pure pop pleasure press up against faux artiste spiritualism. Another thing they share is at least a couple of songs that bring a dash of creepy to the musical stew. For Prince, the weirdness surfaces via the inclusion of songs from an aborted album recorded by his female persona, Camille. In fact, the biggest hit single “U Got the Look,” is actually listed on Sign’s liner notes as a duet between Sheena Easton and Camille, not Prince.

But I’ve written about Prince just within the last couple of months, and enough ink has been spilled over the years on both His Purple Badness and this album in particular. There’s no joy in repetition of previous articles that have likely come before me. And besides, most anyone reading this is both familiar with Sign ‘O’ the Times and used to Prince’s weirdness. Rather, I’m here to focus on a couple of Rundgren’s more experimental (and creepy) tracks from the first disc of his oft-called magnum opus.

“The Day the Carousel Burnt Down” (download) starts out like a Carole King solo song, with a slow but jaunty electric piano line. It has a nice switch twice within the song from 4/4 to 3/4 time and back that feels natural and appropriate given the subject matter and arrangement.

At 1:56 at the first musical break, though, things start to get weird. The sounds in the right channel start to back off and shift to the left channel, then reverse back to the right. At 2:09, Rundgren starts to play with the tape speed slightly while he continues to make the music swirl from channel to channel–like a carousel going in a circle around its central musical source, only inverted. After a few rejoinders of the tag line, the second musical break begins in 3:20 with a another slight speed change. Then, around 3:35 a whooshing noise starts in the back, emulating a fire, and the speed changes becomes more distorted and pronounced. This continues on for another 20 seconds, until this madness sinks behind the original piano line that began the song, and plays itself out into the fade for the last half-minute. (more…)

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Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

Spooky Songs: The Rolling Stones, “Beggars Banquet”

by Matthew Bolin

Last week I talked about the Beatles’ 1968 masterpiece, The White Album; this week, I’m talking about the Rolling Stones’ masterpiece from the same year, Beggars Banquet. A good deal of credit for the album’s feel needs to go to its producer, the late Jimmy Miller. Banquet was actually one of the first albums he produced, and would be the first of the four consecutive records he would helm which also formed the peak of the band’s career (along with Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main Street), in the years proceeding Mick in Keith’s full transformation to the Glimmer Twins, and eventual full parody of themselves from the 1980s onward.

Back in 1968, though, the Stones were a different band, fully absorbed in American blues and country, and Miller helped generate a sound that played to those strengths. And actually, he helped create a sound that also played to their greatest weakness at the time: namely, that the band’s founder and multi-instrumentalist, Brian Jones, was in bad shape. Heavily into drugs by this point, Jones was as much a band liability as a contributor. Film footage of album sessions show him out of it at times, and limited to the most minimal levels of participation: slide guitar on one track, harmonica on three others, and a bit of keyboard here and there. Thus, Miller often had only a four-piece combo to work with, and the arrangements that could be brought out of them play directly into the final mix: Stripped down to something more acoustic, murky and lo-fi throughout much of the proceedings, the album sounds at times like it could have been recorded after hours at a Louisiana gin joint.

(An added serendipitous reason that the album may sound as menacing as it does is that it was originally mastered at a speed just slightly slower than it was recorded. This made the record in total only 30 seconds longer than when it was finally corrected for a CD re-release in 2002, but did set things just off-key enough that things would not seem quite “right” to the listener’s ears.) (more…)

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Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

Spooky Songs: The Beatles, “Long, Long, Long”

by Matthew Bolin

1968’s The Beatles, aka “The White Album,” is the Beatles at their most frightening: the sound of drugs, of implosion, of tension and competition. Added to that are the numerous songs which present the band at their most menacing, loaded with echo and reverb; sound collages and mumbles; the sudden bursts of vocals from Yoko Ono on “The Continuing Adventures of Bungalow Bill” and “Birthday.” A primary example is the slash and burn of “Helter Skelter,” which leaves the listener on edge as it fades out and back in, then starts to fade out again, but rushes back with a final crash, followed by the most punk moment in the history of the band: Ringo’s scream of “I’ve got blisters on my fingers!” and a final guitar slash. This song is scary enough as it is — made even more so by the claim from Charles Manson that it contained secret messages that led him to order the Tate-La Bianca murders.

Then there’s “Revolution 9,” which really isn’t a song — it’s an experimental art piece — but is spooky enough as it is, with the seemingly endless swirl of moans, crowd noises, backwards tracks, and the monotonous repetition of “number nine.” Add the rumors that it contains a secret message — that if played backwards, the “number nine” becomes “turn me on, dead man” — and you’ve got more possible chills. (As for the “dead man” rumor: yeah, it sounds a bit like that, if that was specifically what you were listening for when you played it. Otherwise, nuh-uh.)

But the track that really gets me on “the White Album” is what follows “Helter Skelter”: a track by my favorite Beatle, George Harrison. “Long, Long, Long” is, for some critics, Harrison’s high point with the group: a languid, swirling love song — possibly to God. Both the composition and arrangement are effective at keeping the listener on edge: it opens with an acoustic guitar amped to sound almost sitar-like, and doubled with a Hammond organ playing slow, Gothic triplets through a Leslie speaker to give it a swirling effect. George starts singing, double-tracked with himself — almost in a whisper, and a little behind the chord, as if he’s caught up in prayer. Then….THWACK, Ringo’s drums come in, puncturing the quiet with rolls drenched in echo. The basic structure of the song plays out a second time, then producer Chris Thomas joins in with a piano in the more forceful bridge, as at least three Georges sing in unison, almost screaming the “Oh!”’s at the end of this portion, then switch back to the creepy placidity of the verses one final time. (more…)

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Thursday, September 18th, 2008

Spooky Songs: Gordon Lightfoot, “If You Could Read My Mind”

by Matthew Bolin

I don’t think any other song scared me more as a child than “If You Could Read My Mind,” the moody ballad that became Gordon Lightfoot’s first self-sung hit in the United States (peaking at #5 in 1971). And I heard this song a lot: my father was a big folkie, and when I was a kid, this was still a regular staple on many FM radio stations. So, my indoctrination to this song was swift and total during these formative, psyche-building years. With that in mind, imagine hearing the lyrics to the first verse as a kid, especially at night:

If you could read my mind love, what a tale my thoughts could tell
Just like an old time movie, about a ghost from a wishin’ well
In a castle dark or a fortress strong, with chains upon my feet
You know that ghost is me
And I will never be set free, as long as I’m a ghost that you can’t see.

Holy. Crap.

Now, being the analytical young chap that I was (and still am), think about what my mind was trying to process here: The guy singing this song…is a ghost….chained up…..in the bottom of a well….and the well is in the middle of a dark (and likely abandoned) castle or fortress.

Add to that the sparse arrangement and production — the lightly finger-picked guitar, the rhythmic heartbeat of the bass, and the swirling strings, which move increasingly higher as each of the verses progress, ending almost as a ghostly whine that doubles with the stark dissolution of the lyrics — lyrics sung by a man whose voice had enough of a natural trill that if you were young, and thought about it enough, you could convince yourself was coming from the living dead. (more…)

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Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

Spooky Songs: The Shangri-Las

by Matthew Bolin

With summer moving towards fall, and the greatest and creepiest holiday of the year now less than two months away, I thought I’d take a break from flogging the careers of bastards, and move onto another subject near and dear to my heart: Songs that unintentionally give one the creeps.

I’m sure if you’re like me, you have at least one childhood memory of sitting in a dark room listening to the radio. Suddenly, a song comes on that’s so weird, so dark, so strange, that you rush to turn the lights on and the radio off at the same time, for fear of losing your mind — or to ward off the beasts of hell that surely lurk within the song.

Of course, the song in question might be something by Gordon Lightfoot — but dammit, back then it was freakin’ scary, so lay off, man!

Anyway, these next few weeks, leading up to Halloween, I’m going to be giving you some of the most unintentionally creepy compositions that have burned themselves into my brain. I’d love you to use the comments sections to tell me about some of your own that you think I should cover.

So, let’s start things off with a bang — or a crash, if you’re talking about this group’s most popular song. The Shangri-Las might pack the most per-capita creepiness into their career than any other pop group (or at least girl group). Riding the early-’60s wave of both girl groups and teenager tragedy songs, the Shangri-Las’ first hit, “Remember (Walking in the Sand)”, provided a template for the rest of their career, using all the elements that would make them memorable: spoken lyrics, sound effects, and melodrama so rich it bordered on camp. These were mixed together with echo-drenched vocals that varied between emotive belts one second and almost zombie-like monotones the next, and all of it was produced via a dime-store recreation of Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound courtesy of Brill Building oddball George “Shadow” Morton (so nicknamed because he had the habit of often disappearing for days without telling anyone where he was going). (more…)

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