Tangled Rope

I’ve been a fan of The Wedding Present for quite a while (sorry, David, not 27 years–actually just since Cinerama), and had checked their tour dates from time to time on the off chance that they’d make it to my home state of Utah. No luck so far, but as I was browsing their site after the release of the excellent new album Valentina, I noticed they were scheduled for a brief tour of the West Coast, including San Francisco on the day I happen to fly into town for business in San Jose. What synchronicity!

I was staggered by the show.

Know first that, generally speaking, I am not a fan of live concerts. I hate the vibe of the crowd. I’d rather be at home. But some bands are able to deafen the influence of the audience on my feeble mind and harpoon their music into my thick hide. Dirty Three has done that more than any other band I’ve seen, but The Wedding Present pulled that off too last night. The strength and brilliance of their stage presence left the audience a faint distraction to the conscious mind.

Second, the Wedding Present just rocks live. Don’t let Cinerama or some of their more quiet offerings make you forget that they are, heart and soul, indy rock. Their music may not seem deliberately so to the casual listener, but on stage David Gedge makes it clear that these songs are a part of him, and ever chord and chorus is like the public unthreading of a cherished valentine, woven of ectoplasm from long gone romance, and swallowed whole to hide the shame until it is extracted, by force on stage. That’s about the only way I can describe his performance on songs such as Lovenest, Suck, Dare, and Heather (yes, they played the classic Seamonsters in its entirety; thanks to this performance Seamonsters has become my favorite TWP album, even overcoming the post-Cinerama excellence of Take Fountain).

The best live performances inspire me, and more: they physically and psychologically drive me away from the concert itself, with new motivation to create, to do, to aim for more. The Wedding Present managed this, despite the state I am in: neck-deep in travel, a fully invested family man, committed to a book contract, mid-way through another grad degree. In short, busy, distracted, and confused. This is good and bad; on the one hand, it pushes me towards more creative engagement; on the other hand, it’s quite depressing to have creative urges and longings when one can’t yet act on them.

The dream of a creative life I’ve given up on, but it’s allure persists, and performances like this remind me that there’s a reason for that: to connect with others, to give them something powerful and beautiful, something exciting and motivating, something that they carry with them during the concert, into the night, and, with a little luck, through the days and nights beyond.

Episode 7 of The SciFiPunkRockabillySurfHorror Half-Hour for DS106 Radio:

Episode 7: Reanimate? Annihilate!

1. Zombina & The Skeletones – Evil Science
2. The Creepshow – Grave Diggers
3. Nekromantix – Luni Lab
4. Frankenstein “It’s alive!”
5. Plan 9 – Manmade Monster
6. BALZAC – Frankenstein’s Walk
7. 12 Step Rebels – The Ballad Of Frankenstein’s Monster
8. Cobra Skulls – Dead Inside
9. The Koffin Kats – Graveyard Tree 2
10. Groovie Ghoulies – Daughter Of Frankenstein
11. The Apers – Reanimate My Heart
12. Famous Monsters – Blood of Frankenstein
13. Groovie Ghoulies – 99 Lives

Episode 6 of The SciFiPunkRockabillySurfHorror Half-Hour for DS106 Radio flaps heavy on the rockabilly/psychobilly side of the alley.

Scheduling seems sketchy, so I can’t say when this might play, but here’s the set list anyway:

Episode 6: Sucks on the Beach

1. Batmobile – Bat Dream
2. The Coffinshakers – Dracula Has Risen From The Grave
3. Vampire Beach Babes – Gothic Surf-A-Rama
4. Groovie Ghoulies – Do The Bat
5. “The X-Files” – We Got Em
6. Zombina & The Skeletones – Dracula Blood
7. Thee Flatliners – Vampires
8. Blitzkid – Nosferatu
9. “Dracula” – He Opened a Vein
10. Devils Brigade – Vampire Girl
11. The Misfits – Vampira
12. Docteur Legume et Les Surfwerks – Vixen Vampira
13. “The Vampire Lovers” – Beware
14. Zombie Ghost Train – Step into My Coffin
15. Rezurex – Vampira Calling
16. Tiger Army – Santa Carla Twilight

A lot of these selections were obvious, though a few were tough. For instance, I had a hard time settling on a Thee Flatliners track from the Vampires EP–I favored “Dracula’s Descendants” but ended up choosing “Vampires” because of its distinct Castlevania sound. Blitzkid is not a band I’d normally favor for this show, but, man, this track “Nosferatu” is crazy! Tiger Army finishes with a slower, introspective track — a little more subtle than the rest of the psychobilly songs in this set.

Another episode of The SciFiPunkRockabillySurfHorror Half-Hour for DS106 Radio.

Episode 5: The Invaders

Synopsis: Dragonmen and Devilgirls invade the Earth, using our own rock n’ roll against us!

1. Pixies – The Happening
2. Groovie Ghoulies – 50000 Spaceships (Watching Over Me)
3. Mad Sin – U.F.O.
4. “The Invaders” – David Vincent, Mental Case
5. Frank Black – Bad, Wicked World
6. Zodiac Killers – UFO Invasion
7. The Lillingtons – Target Earth
8. Man or Astroman? – Invasion Of The Dragonmen
9. Ramones – Zero Zero UFO
10. “Devil Girl from Mars” – Much As We Expected
11. The Misfits – I Turned Into a Martian
12. Man or Astroman? – Evil Plans of Planet Spectra
13. The Heartaches – Rock N Roll UFO
14. “Space Ghost” – Energy Ray
15. Docteur Legume et les Surfwerks – Raumpatrouille Surf
16. Zombina and the Skeletones – End of the World
17. Teenage Bottlerocket – Forbidden Planet

Special thanks to Bradley Trinnaman for introducing me to some great, new psychbilly and horror punk this week–plenty of material, now, for the next several episodes. Coming up: vampires, ghosts, evil laboratories, and more zombie love.

Not sure if/when this will play on DS106 Radio, but here’s the next episode of The SciFiPunkRockabillySurfHorror Half-Hour.

Episode 4: Monster Attack!

Synopsis: Sharks in the surf! Primates from prehistory! Monsters by the megaton! Hippies without heads!

1. Man or Astroman? – Mystery Science Theater 3000 Love Theme
2. The Lillingtons – Caveman
3. Groovie Ghoulies – Blood Beach
4. Beach Girls and the Monster – Making Hey Hey
5. Daikaiju – Sharkakhan
6. The Aquabats – The Shark Fighter!
7. Horrorpops – HorrorBeach Pt. II
8. The Dead Milkmen – The Thing That Only Eats Hippies
9. Groovie Ghoulies – The Lizard King
10. Famous Monsters – Monsters Over Tokyo!
11. The Creepshow – Run For Your Life
12. Man or Astroman? – Gargantua’s Last Stand
13. Zombina & The Skeletones – Teenage Caveman Beat Gargantua
14. Groovie Ghoulies – The King Kong Stomp

I lived out a bit of a childhood dream by creating set lists for a music show on DS106 online radio station, as masterminded by Jim Groom, Grant Potter, et al. Frankly, I could run a different kind of set night after night, week after week, from industrial to electropop, from post-punk to classical, but decided to focus on a peculiar theme that I’ve enjoyed for a number of years, the exotic, bizarre, obscure, and often silly sci-fi/horror themed music put out by a small group of punk rock, surf rock, and rockabilly/psychobilly bands. And so we have the SciFiPunkRockabillySurfHorror Half-Hour.

Since the songs themselves tend to be highly narrative, it was easy to put them together in a way that created something approximating a narrative arc. I sometimes traded variety to showcase my favorite bands repeatedly, yet am proud to have been pretty stubborn about excluding songs/bands if they didn’t fit the plotline.

Here are the set lists for the first three episodes, along with a synopsis of the storyline I had in mind:

Episode 1: Young Zombie Vampires in Love

Synopsis: Young (vampire) love is threatened when an asteroid on a cataclysmic collision course with Earth is preceded by radioactivated zombies.

1. Me First and the Gimme Gimmes – Science Fiction Double Feature
2. Man or Astroman? – Planet Collision
3. The Epoxies – Radiation
4. Groovie Ghoulies – Deviltown
5. The Lillingtons – Zombies
6. The Soviettes – Paranoia Cha Cha Cha!
7. Koffin Kats – Graveyard Tree
8. Groovie Ghoulies – Vampire Girl
9. The Creep Show – Zombies Ate Her Brain
10. The Incredible Staggers – Zombies of Love
11. The Dead Milkmen – Lucky
12. – La Fin Absolue du Monde
13. The Riverdales – Countdown
14. The Phenomenauts – Infinite Frontier

Episode 2: Crossed in Space

Synopsis: The vampire-turned-zombie lovers escape a doomed Earth, but will romance survive capture by the alien cyborgs who are following in the asteroid’s path?

1. Shonen Knife – Riding on the Rocket
2. Batmobile – Rock This Planet
3. Man or Astroman? – Cyborg Control
4. Damon Alexander and the Ten Cent Rentals – Robot Monster
5. The Lillingtons – I Saw the Apeman on the Moon
6. Dr Who – You Will Become Like Us
7. Zombina and the Skeletones – Love Droid
8. Devil Girl from Mars – Johnny
9. The Phenomenauts – Cyborg
10. The Dollyrots – Because I’m Awesome
11. Docteur Legume et Les Surfwerks – La Femme Electrique
12. Teenage Bottlerocket – Lost in Space
13. Stereophonic Space Sound Unlimited – Birdman

Episode 3: Eternal Return

Synopsis: Our vampire-turned-zombie-turned-cyborg hero returns to a scorched Earth. Tormented by memories of his lost love, he flees to his homeland of Transylvania.

1. Teen Idols – Midnight Picture Show
2. The Lillingtons – Black Hole in my Mind
3. Ramones – Pet Sematary
4. Batmobile – Transylvanian Express
5. Frank Black – The Black Rider #1
6. Docteur Legume et Les Surfwerks – Bienvenue a la Maison Meduse
7. Teenage Bottlerocket – They Came from the Shadows
8. The Horrorpops – Hitchcock Starlet
9. The Sonics – The Witch
10. Groovie Ghoulies – Wolf Girl
11. The Phenomenauts – Make a Circuit with Me
12. Groovie Ghoulies – Til Death Do Us Party

Episodes 4 & 5 are both planned, and will showcase Nekromantix, Zombina and the Skeletones, Famous Monsters, Daikaiju, The Pixies, and more.

I hadn’t watched Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc with composer Einhorn’s “Voices of Light” until just this week. Einhorn has done a masterful job with the work, and indeed accentuates this already stunning and troubling film. If you haven’t caught this on Criterion, do. Here’s a clip from what I thought to be the most breathless scene, Jeanne’s confession: