Welcome to the Monuments in Ruin Music Show Halloween Edition! Packed full of ghouls, goblins, spooks and spirits, this episode is certain to send chills down your spine and have you dancing on your grave. It’s our favorite time of year. Can you hear the howls in the darkness? Don't forget to check out RecordKeeper Cases and get in on their Kickstarter asap!
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(00:00) Monuments in Ruin – Episode 230 Intro
(00:39) TV Theme Song Maniacs - Theme From The Munsters
(01:22) Clipping. - Possession (Interlude)
(03:31) Hail Mary Mallon - Merlin
(08:30) Gorillaz - Dirty Harry
(12:15) Skinny Puppy - Blood on the Wall
(15:10) Lucifer - The Evil Eye
(17:19) Throbbing Gristle - Blood on the Floor
(18:07) Iron Butterfly - Possession
(20:51) Albert King - The Hunter
(23:28) Twilight Zone - The Element of Time
(28:06) Neurosis - Raze the Stray
(49:35) Black Sabbath - Children of the Grave
(54:45) Harry Manferdini - The Boat on the Water - Closing Theme 1 / Jason In The Lake
(59:30) Monuments in Ruin – Episode 230 Outro
Which spooky television family do you prefer?
~ The Addams Family
~ The Munsters
Q: Name a Halloween related movie or song you enjoy!
#TVThemeSongManiacs #Clipping. #Gorillaz #SkinnyPuppy #Lucifer #ThrobbingGristle #IronButterfly #AlbertKing #TwilightZone #Neurosis #BlackSabbath #HarryManferdini @clipping. @skinnypuppy @throbbinggristle @neurosis @blacksabbath
MIR 230 notes
This week we broke a little bit of format tradition and played not one, not two but three tracks in our opening sequence. Hopefully that did not scare anyone away.
Theme from The Munsters – One of the things I loved about the Munsters was their spin on Marylin. The family viewed her as the “poor Marilyn who doesn’t have the family’s genetic good looks. I hope she will find a man someday.” meanwhile, she was a gorgeous young woman to everyone else in the world and the family were the freaks. She was name dropped on episode 229, on the people names show.
If there was a vote for a favorite show between the Munster or the Addams Family, I’m not sure who I would choose but the Munsters theme is my favorite heme song between the two.
While doing some research and discussing these shows with a friend it occurred to me that these two shows basically ran at the same time for very similar durations.
Munsters series originally aired on Thursday at 7:30 pm on CBS from September 24, 1964, to May 12, 1966. Seventy episodes were produced.
Addams Family: The 30-minute television series aired on ABC from September 18, 1964, to April 8, 1966, for a total of 64 episodes.
Side note: The Addams family are the original ghouls though. Their origin is from a cartoon featured in the New Yorker where they first appeared in 1938.
Clipping: 2019 That tune was perfect for this episode. Lots of spooky movie samples and dialog. I could probably listen to that type of stuff all day long. Those classic movie soundscapes or monologues are the best. I’m a huge fan of Twilight Zone for those reasons. We can revisit that thought later down the road.
Merlin 2014, This was a total surprise for me. You never know what you will find under the next stone. This is one of the reasons record collectors are so obsessive about looking in that next box or digging through “one more crate before we leave”. You can not always judge a book by it’s cover and this album is a perfect example of that. My first expectation from the album art , which is this pink and purple dragon, was some type of metal release. Possibly a generic, late 80’s metal band lost to time. As you heard that prediction was totally wrong! Haha! Great track. Short and sweet but hard hitting.
Up next it’s time to pick out our costume for the evening. I’m going as SFPD Inspector Harry Callahan. This is Gorillas featuring Bootie Brown with Dirty Harry.
Gorillaz 2005, Not exactly sure how I could have neglected this album. Another perfect example of not judging a book by its cover. Everyone was talking about this record, and it had zero impact on me until recently. Maybe it was the cartoon concept or something that didn’t sit well with me. This was produced by Danger Mouse, which we have discussed before. That alone should have influenced me to give it another chance. We live and we learn.
Skinny Puppy 1985, talk about some creepy music. This band was first introduced to me by a friend who attended one of my old bands shows in the early 2000’s. We had a full length film we had written and edited to project while we played. They caught up with me after the show and said, “I really enjoyed the project work It reminded me of something Skinny Puppy would do. That was the seed and here we are years later and I’m passing them along to the next unsuspecting listener. This was another song that felt perfect for a Halloween theme.
Lucifer 1971, well now, this is nowhere near as threatening as it would visually imply when flipping through the record bins and picking up the record. Perfect for our All Hallows eve don’t judge a book by its cover theme. The cover is mostly black with the lettering or logo reading Lucifer Black Mass. It was composed and performed by Mort Garson. This is the same person who would later release Mother Earth's Plantasia which was composed specifically for plants to listen to. Suddenly it seems a lot less dangerous. Haha!
Throbbing Gristle 1978, now legendary, was formed in the mid 70’s and are essentially credited with the creation of industrial music. Btw, if you have been listening to some of the previous 5 to 10 episodes, you’ll notice there has been a heavy bit of industrial in the track lists. Throbbing Gristle has a harsher delivery though and, for my own person reference, would be more inclined to reference them among noise artists solely because the industrial genre, to me, tends to feel more musical with heavy synth based percussion pulses. However, when we read the definition it clearly states the following. Industrial music is a genre of music that draws on harsh, mechanical, transgressive or provocative sounds and themes. In that case, Throbbing Gristle are certainly that and I’m simply trying to revise history to my preferences.
Iron Butterfly 1968 , this is the first Iron Butterfly record and is absolutely overlooked in their history. It was released the same year as their most known hit In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida which would hit number 4 on the Billboard charts. Last week we talked about the double -A side single. Tis week we are discussing the power of the album B-Side. Very often you’ll see the true meddle of a band appear on the b-side because the labels are looking for the hits and front loading all of the stuff they hope to strike gold with early in the albums. This leaves the band a little more freedom to fill in the back end of their albums. This would result in bands experimenting more and songs such as In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida would take up the entire B-side of the album, not just the single. Something to be aware of for the vinyl crate diggers out there.
Albert King 1967, the first time i remember hearing this tune was on a cassette copy of Danzig 1 and it’s still one of my favorite blues covers by a non-blues band. The argument could be made that all early Danzig is basically blues rock, which is true, and rock and roll is basically blues, which is also true, but this is a straight blues jam and Danzig took it under his wing in a way that we can all appreciate as heavy metal or heavy rock. This Halloween episode was almost entirely comprised of Danzig songs only, btw. There were some last-minute change ups, but it was close to happening. Not to mention, this track gives us another opportunity to discuss cover songs! Before I specifically began making the conscious effort to discuss cover songs, I really had no idea how often they were being included in the show. I knew they were everywhere, but seem to have had this discussion at some point over the last few episodes.
Twilight Zone , well, well, well. As was previously hinted to, The twilight zone is one of my favorite television series. There have been a few variations, but we are discussing the version created and presented by Rod Serling. My research says the original series ran for five seasons on CBS from October 2, 1959, to June 19, 1964. Between the show concept, the way the camera angles where used, black and white photography or in this case black and white film has always felt like it has more personality to me and may have something visually to do with why I enjoy the show or possibly the nostalgia of it, anyway. On top of all of these elements, the music that was represented in the Twilight Zone was dark, suspenseful and made a huge impact on me and how the use of music and sound can amplify something on film. Think about this for a minute. How many movies, commercials, video clips, anything related to film can you think of that does not use music? There are very, very few that would meet the no-music criteria. So, when I heard people say that do not enjoy ambient or bizarre experimental music I tend to laugh a little to myself because they actually hear more of that on a daily basis than they even realize.
Neurosis 1994, one of my favorite tracks from this group and a mind-altering moment for me in live music. I was able to catch the band on this tour in Atlanta, Georgia and this song was featured in their set. At the time they had a unique visual projection set up. It was very inspiring with multiple overhead projectors, film reel to reels, a color wheel, which is basically what the name implies, a wheel with different transparent film color blocks so when it turns the image slowly changes colors on the screen, and the full time person who is in charge of triggering, changing images, lining up the next footage, etc. Of all the amazing full scale production I had seen up to that date, like Def Leppard Hysteria and Metallica And Justice For All, seeing the Enemy of the Sun tour was easily the most impressive live experience I have ever witnessed, still to this day.
Taking a step back into the cover conversation, Neurosis has a monstrous cover of this next tune from one of my favorite Sabbath albums. This is Children of the Grave from the 1971 release Master of reality.
After that we are closing out with Harry Manfredini with the track The Boat on the Water - Closing Theme 1 / Jason In The Lake from Friday the 13th soundtrack. That scene of little Jason jumping out of the lake and grabbing the person caused lifelong trauma for me and I still refuse to get in a bathtub because of it! Haha That serves us appropriately as the closer for our Halloween special episode. Thank you all and I’d like to give a quick shout out to… hit up the kickstarter… visit the web store… buy me a coffee… tell a friend you are listening to Monuments in Ruin.
Once again, this is Children of the Grave into Boat on the Water / Jason In The Lake.
Happy Halloween everyone!