A really unique Halloween sound effects LP, there’s enough non-linear weirdness on here that if you wanted to start a collector scum stampede you could probably make the case for some of it being the work of a moonlighting Chrome (“pre-Visitation! In the tradition of Ultra Soundtrack!”), or a collection of Sun City Girls throw-aways (a comparison I’m stealing from my pal Pee Cat over at Disco: Very). Wherever this stuff actually sprung from, the dada/ proto-industrial noises on here are some of the oddest & crudest you’re likely to run across from the 1970’s “golden era” (or perhaps that’s “sunset years”) of supercheapo Halloween records. Hell, if nothing else you can at least rest easy knowing that you’ll find no familiar library sound effects here (and once again I’d like to extend my thanks to Cake & Polka Parade for turning me on to this bizarro gem). Enjoy!
An amazing 7″ originally released in 1957 & reissued in a limited edition of 500 back in 1997, these tracks are also available on the OOP CD “The Al-Stan Masters: The Best Of Reading’s Oldies”. Here’s an excellent overview I nicked from an ebay description, which looks to be the only source out there for the remaining vinyl singles (and trust me, if you can find a copy it’s well worth the money; just a totally cool artifact).
“The original was recorded back in 1957 by Al Zanino and Cliff Juranis of Reading, PA. Only a few copies of the original pressing survive. They have gone for more than $200 at record shows all over the world. This one features a new pic sleeve designed by John Fundyga along with artist Rick Ulrich. The back features a copy of a rejection letter written by Roland/Zacherle on his original 1957 letterhead. Al Zanino sent a copy of the 45 to Roland when he hosted his Chiller Theater show back in 1957 in Philly. His letter was recreated from the original copy on the back of the sleeve. The letter has some funny comments written by Roland himself! The record label was painstakingly made to look like the original. It is a very interesting piece of horror history.
The record is very cool. Al Zanino does a dead on (pun intended) impression of Bela Lugosi complete with scary sound effects and weird piano music. There is a point on the record where the vampire remembers a time when a stake was thrust into his heart. The sound effects on that are chilling to say the least. The A side is called The Vampire Speaks and the B side is called In The Vampires Lair. Al does all the voices, Cliff did the piano work and effects. What a super cool piece of horror memorabelia.”
I was a 70’s sugar cereal kid, and while my taste buds have progressed somewhat, I continue to unabashedly enjoy the Monster Cereals. Every October when they get stocked in previously un-Monster Cereal friendly outlets I end up picking up a complete set or two, and trust me when I say that those boxes contain nothing but marshmallow dust within a day at most. The whole classic monster angle is a killer hook of course, but I also love super-crazy sweetness, the over the top celebrity impersonations given to the characters, and all the cool product tie-ins over the years (that glow in the dark Fruit Brute light switch sticker I put up at age 7 seemed to stay affixed in my bedroom forever).
All of which brings us to these flexis. Freed from the constraints of their 30 second TV spots (often a high point of 1970’s Saturday morning commercial viewing), they coulda been pretty great really. Hey even the titles, while obviously not playing up the whole “scary” angle, seem somewhat promising, right? Right? Well while I still think that in spots these (nearly 5 minute!) stories feel horribly endless, I guess for cheapjack flexi cereal giveaways they’re not ALL bad. Still (and this is breaking my heart to type), imagine if instead of going “Disco” they’d managed to go “Punk” instead? So many oportunities! So much potential greatness squandered! Ah well, there’s still that catchy “Monster Mania” tune to be thankful for, years down the road I STILL find myself (apropos of nothing at all) singing it in my head.
Oh and hey, if anyone has Count Chocula Goes Hollywood, feel free to pony it on up!UPDATE: Complete the set! The delightful Way Out Junk blog has posted a nicely cleaned up version of the elusive “Count Chocula Goes Hollywood” right here!
While I’m knee-deep in all things Monster Cereal, here’s the ad introducing Count Chocula & Frankenberry — still the most popular flavors! Pity the poor Fruity Yummy Mummy, cursed to spend eternity in his pyramid of solitude & fruity loneliness.
To wit: this 22 minute Fat Albert album that would seem to merely be a vinyl pressing of the soundtrack to a TV show. No extra narration, no real attempts to place the story in a non-visual context (you could argue that the LPs that correspond to the Peanuts TV specials at least gave it a shot for example), just a steady stream of “hair-raising sound effects” for that ol’ theatre of the mind.
Heya folks! Well with Halloween creeping up, I figured it was really time to get back into action. I enjoyed my break & got a lot of other things done, so now let’s see if I can manage to get back in the swing of squeezing out a steady stream of audio goodies to share. Looks like a lot was going on in my absence (& sadly it looks like a number of great blogs have vanished), but I’ll do my best to address the comments I missed as well as toss out the new gems I’ve picked up and/ or encoded!
Released by MGM in 1947, this 3 disc 78 rpm set is one of the earliest Halloween records I have. Narrated by Lionel Barrymore and based on a performance he produced at the Hollywood Bowl in 1945, it’s a real departure from the more frightening manifestations of the supernatural that we tend to associate with the holiday. As Barrymore explains it in his liner notes:
“This is the story of a little girl named Myrtle, and Myrtle’s dreams of wonderful things. It’s the story of Boo Boo the big bear in the woods who stole little children, and of six delightful little elves who popped out of eggs and rescued Myrtle from the bear. […] For the benefit of grown-ups, (although you children may be interested, too) I originally wrote the composition for piano and narrator, but since then prepared it for a symphony orchestra. I felt the story had great musical possibilities, especially the scene where the little elves become hypnotized by a flame of light.”
Mr Barrymore is helped here by conductor Miklos Rozsa, soprano Marion Bell (Myrtle), tenor Edward Lear (Bertle the shoemaker),and “deep, deep bass singer” John Ford (the fearless woodman). While this certainly isn’t going to frighten anyone (nor was that the intent), as a window into the 60-years-past world of “Hallowe’en” (and kid-culture), I found it pretty interesting. For an opposing viewpoint though, let me quote my friend Scott (who originally made me a cassette transfer of the 78’s years ago): “You know how that thing is subtitled ‘a musical fantasy’? That’s because it’s a complete fantasy that anyone would ever want to hear it more than once”. But hey, he’s a cynic.
In 1974 this collection was issued as “Halloween Songs That Tickle Your Funny Bone” through Michael Brent Productions (part of their children’s educational aid series), and apparently it was commercially viable enough that Wonderland records decided to license it for general release that same year. The material was written by professional songwriters Ruth Roberts & Bill Katz (“Meet the Mets”, the official tune of the New York Mets since 1963, numbers among their many accomplishments) along with Gene Piller, but the reissue’s new cover design found the credits changed to highlight the “Wonderland Singers and Accompaniment”. In the transition process Wonderland also dropped the “how-to” insert explaining the potential use of the songs in a classroom setting, then gave the album a somewhat altered running order which (due to the intro sound effect sequence being moved from “A Halloween Song” to “There Is A Haunted House In Town”) created a few slightly different edits.
Clearly aimed at a very young audience, you’ll find no real sense of menace or fright here at all — but there’s still a weird kind of sideways appeal. Personally I can remember that when I got my copy as a kid I was initially excited by the scary sounding intro, only to find myself wincing almost immediately once the friendly and well trained chorus of voices began to sing about the simple joys of Halloween. “I won’t be playing this very often”, I smirked. But for whatever reason — The comforting nature of the singers? The CleverSimplicity of the lyrics? The bizarre alternate universe the settings of the songs seemed to inhabit? — I did end up playing it often, and snippets from puh-LENTY of these numbers still get stuck in my head to this very day.
Well played, Roberts, Katz & Piller. Well played.
By the way, Michael Brent Productions is still going strong today and you can get the original sequencing of these songs on a CD (complete with a lyric book) here, along with lots of other great kids collections. Check it on out!
Probably the last gasp of the true Scooby Doo clones, ABC’s Fangface at least has the distinction of being created by the same Scooby team of Joe Ruby and Ken Spears. Featuring an actual werewolf as the title character and a roving assortment of ghouls & ghosts in the plotlines, the supernatural Fangface (if the cover is to be believed) apparently became “America’s #1 TV Show!” somewhere along the way. Here’s the introductory synopsis of the series that won the collective hearts and minds of the US citizenship:
“Every four hundred years a baby werewolf is born into the Fangsworth Family, and so when the moon shined on little Sherman Fangsworth, he changed into Fangface, a werewolf. Only the sun can change him back to normal, and so little Fangsworth grew up and teamed up with three daring teenagers — Kim, Biff and Puggsy, and together they find danger, excitement and adventure. Who can save the day, who can wrong the rights and right the wrongs… none other than FANGFACE!”
Now I admit that the four original stories here (credited to Arthur Kolb & Peter Bryant) aren’t likely to scare you very much, but hey — any show with a character riffing on Joe R. Ross probably still deserves a place in your heart, right? C’mon America, you loved it in 1979!
A hot robot toy product tie-in & mid 1950’s kiddie record rolled into one, this was part of the early wave of boomer cross-marketing that has come to dominate pretty much all forms of consumer media. To shamelessly quote ChaosKids.com, starting in 1954 Robert the Robot “was manufactured by the Ideal Toy Corporation, of Hollis, New York[…] Robert had good distribution, and was a common fixture in many suburban households during the early days of television. Robert’s movement is controlled by a gun-like remote controller, that attaches to his back via a wire. Turning the crank on the controller makes him walk or back up, while squeezing the controller’s trigger makes him turn right or left. While moving, his arms swing back and forth and his eyes light up. Robert also features a talking device, controlled by a crank on his back.”
Though the “talking device” turned out to be something of a simple miniature record player, this was all pretty futuristic in 1954. Maybe to counter that the record here turns out to be pretty standard kiddie-tune fare; side one is a bit of ad copy regurgitation (“there’s a boy I’ve known for quite a while/ with electric eyes and a neon smile/ personality that warms your soul/ he’ll obey what you say by remote control”) and side two gives us a little vignette wherein Robert “Saves the Day” by lifting up a fallen tree (thereafter named the “Robert the Robot Oak” due to his efforts). The world domination part obviously came later.
As an added bonus, I’ve also included an mp3 of Robert saying his little catch phrase (“I am Robert Robot, mechanical man. Ride me and steer me, wherever you can”), and you can currently buy Robert once again if you’re so inclined (ebay is lousy with the guy). Might be a smart move if you think any oak trees are likely to collapse in your town square.
Well since I was recently visited upon by a welcome but unexpected boing boing link (my page loads shot up to about 6,500 a day as result — hello new friends), it would seem to be as good a time as any to break from posting for a bit so I can work on a few other projects that need my attention. Don’t worry much; I’ve got plenty of fun new stuff waiting in the wings and should be back within a week at the latest (if I can stay away that long).
If you’d like to waste some time ’til then you could always check out this exciting TELL ALL interview I just did for the fine Shuffle blog; this thing oughtta give you far more insight into my muddled brain than you’d ever actually require. Hell, as an added bonus for the folks who have written asking me about my setup, I’ll even leave you with a snap of good ol’ Casa de Scar Stuff complete with a sleepy blogger & an awesome cat. Hope to talk with you all soon.
