From This Swamp - Lovecraftian and Dystopian Music: doo-wop

Showing posts with label doo-wop. Show all posts

Friday, August 5, 2011

Scorpio Rising Soundtrack

This appears to be a fan-made collection of the songs from Kenneth Anger's transgressive biker-Nazi fetish-film Scorpio Rising. Divorced from context, it's fairly benign; mostly soul, doo-wop, girl groups, and surf, it nonetheless holds darker intimations for those who have had images from the short movie seared into their retinas. If you haven't had the pleasure, by all means do so here. The next time you're on a picnic with the family or hosting a tea party, pop this on in the background and try to think nice thoughts.
Hit the Road, Jack

Monday, June 20, 2011

RIP Wild Man Fischer

The Monkey and the Donkey

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

African Sixties Garage vol. 1

Some great stuff on the turntable today, a compilation of sub-Saharan garage from the era where American fifties rock and sixties punk, along with British invasion sounds, began to filter out of the radios of white colonizers and out into greater Africa. There's little information on these bands, and the sounds vary greatly from songs almost indistinguishable from their northern hemisphere counterparts to crazy fusions of local rhythms and patois with off-kilter surf and psych. Twenty three songs, and not a dud among them. This is in the same league as the mighty Nuggets and Back From the Grave comps, but almost from another planet.
No Money No Honey

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Don't Knock the Rok!

Here's another underrated gem from Roky Erickson's back catalog: a collection of loose, improvised, fragmentary covers of oldies, recorded as a warm-up for the band The Aliens in preparation for the seminal album The Evil One. Never intended for release, the songs contained herein are sloppy, full of missed notes, sung off key, and simultaneously hilarious and poignant. The opening track, for instance, is "Teenager in Love," but by the third verse Roky is stealing hubcaps and lamenting wistfully "Why must I be a teenager in jail?" Full of false starts, cracked falsetto, and between-song bloviating, this one is perhaps for fans only, but those Roky lovers among you should lap it up lustily.
Bumblebee! Bumblebee! Zombie! Zombie!