Now Playing: Psychobilly (Better Late Than Never)

According to wikidiff.com, "rockabilly is a genre of music originating from the south and mixing elements of rock, blues, country, hillbilly boogie and bluegrass music while psychobilly is a genre of popular music, blending rockabilly with punk rock, that has grotesque or humorous lyrics which often draw heavily on the imagery of 1950s science fiction and horror films."  But I'll get back to this.

I grew up in a house where Big Band music was ubiquitous.  My dad would listen to it while he worked out in the basement.  So we'd hear his clanking weights and the giant music of Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Woody Herman, and Duke Ellington every week.  He would tell us funny stories about how Count Basie's 1937 track "One O'Clock Jump" was initially called the radio-unfriendly title of "Blue Balls."  He could name any Big Band tune you could throw at him.  The downside of this was when my brother and I were learning to play the clarinet and saxophone, respectively, and he made us sit on the couch with our woodwinds as he played his records.  He wanted us to have a jam session, with improvised solos to his precious records.  My dad was a semi-scary guy, and he'd yell "PLAY!" and I remember having no clue how to "jam"... beings I hadn't memorized the notes yet (beings we were a week into owning these instruments).

Still have my old Alto Saxophone.

Now you'd think that would make you run in the opposite direction of music that fell outside of your time zone.  It didn't.  I truly love the stuff, and I'm very grateful my dad was playing this music for most of my youth.  It was definitely a gift from my old man.  And I found that I loved the older stuff more than any of the current music that was more appropriate or common for my age group as I was growing up.

Enter Stray Cats.  

So it's 1981, and I'm at a grade school dance in the basement cafeteria of the school (I was a shy kid and I'm sure I was forced to go to this dance).  So it's packs of immature boys being boys on one side of the room, and a ton of mature rational girls on the other side of the room.  Those two worlds rarely collided back then.  If they did, it was usually by accident.

The music playing at the time was the usual 80's stuff:  Hall & Oats, Men at Work, Duran Duran, and the Go-Go's.  And then there was the occasional slow song (typically stuff by Journey, Air Supply, and that dreadful duet by Diana Ross & Lionel Richie).  The slow song, and the SLOW DANCE:  that painful, scary moment where you realized who among the boys was progressing according to established norms.  The rest of us pretended not to care.

When those slow songs ended and you got your friends back from their lapses of reason, I guess we just goofed off, ate chips or pretzels, and drank LOTS of soda.  I remember running.  Running in the cafeteria-turned-dance-hall.  There wasn't much dancing on behalf of the males in that basement.  Looking back, that's kind of weird.  And a little embarrassing.  Like why not?  Have fun.  Be stupid.  

I'm probably drinking soda, eating a pretzel, or running when something happens:  a song starts that is unlike any song I had ever heard.  The only comparison I could think of at the time was the old stuff my dad would listen to back home in the basement.  But this thing was cooler.  More exciting.  Felt younger.  But it also felt like it was from the fifties.  It was confusing.  But it was fantastic.  It was the Stray Cat's Rock This Town.  And being deliberately vague - I danced.  And I [think] I made a fool of myself (nah, I actually DID make a fool of myself).  And looking back, I don't really care.  Whatever that song was, it was incredible, and it made me break out of a shell from which I rarely even peered.  Turns out the song and group were of the rockabilly variety.  And I liked it.  A lot.

So you grow up, you find your way through music, TV, movies, books and anything that makes you feel satisfied and more complete.  Stuff that makes life bearable (and fun).  When I was very young, it was old Hammer horror or Godzilla films that my grandmother would let us watch on Saturdays when she visited, or when we visited her.  It was drawing monsters, flipping through horror magazines, and playing with plastic bugs and rubber snakes.  

Me and my rubber snake.

But then when you get older, you start to realize that not everyone is into this darker stuff.  And, worse, it's dismissed by most of the people in your life.  Our cool and amazing grandmother who introduced us to rubber monsters and Peter Cushing passed away when we were young.  My parents didn't watch Horror or Science Fiction, and definitely didn't encourage that stuff.  And my sister, well, she was a social warden - making sure you felt stupid for anything you liked that happened to meet her definition of weird.  And worse:  you find out your dad isn't on the same page with you in any small way in regards to Vampira or Elvira.

In grade school, and then later in high school, you start to figure out who has similar interests, who likes sports, who doesn't.  Who is into horror, or heavy metal...  and who are the "bad kids."  That must be a crappy label.  But that's what we called them, and how we thought of them.  I recall seeing a small sticker back then, on someone's book, sitting on a desk - one of the bad kids' desks, of course.  The sticker was of a small grinning reaper type thing.  A ghost, maybe.  A skull?

It's pretty cool still.  Iconic and unforgettable.  And spooky.  I'm not sure how long it took me to figure out what it was, as this was pre-internet, and I certainly wasn't gonna ask one of those kids.  Turns out it's the Crimson Ghost, an image from a 1940's film serial.  A punk rock band began using this Ghost as their logo way back in 1979, which explains why this image feels like it's always been around, lurking in my life.  It seemed to be everywhere:  stickers, t-shirts, iron-on patches, (on books at school).  That punk rock band, of course, was the Misfits, and they're credited with starting the subgenre of horror punk.  Which sounds complicated, as I wasn't familiar with punk rock music in the least, and now there's a subgenre with an interesting descriptor like "horror" attached to it?  

Strangely, I didn't bite.  I stayed away.  In fact, I avoided it, and that sticker, like some kind of literal warning label.  Despite the "horror" word.  Despite being into darker things.  Despite being a Halloween guy.  I felt like it wasn't my domain for some reason.  And I'm sure my family unknowingly approved.  

So psychobilly... that fusion of rockabilly and punk rock, loaded with horror and Halloween lyrics?  That too was avoided.  Ignored.  And it rarely came up in my Halloween musical travels.  As a huge fan of the guys at Halloween at High Noon, some of their instrumental stuff had a specific sound that I assumed MIGHT have been a form of psychobilly, but I was never sure.  Willful ignorance I guess?  I honestly have no clue.  

Better late than never.

Many many years later (and a couple of months ago), Wren and I were talking about music and she jokingly commented "I thought you only listened to apocalyptic space drone and synthwave soundtracks."  This, while pretty accurate, brought up the topic of punk and rockabilly and psychobilly.  And I confessed my sins to her.  She forgave them.  And I got a playlist out of the deal.  A crash course introduction.

And now I'm going to pay it forward (even though I am assuming I might be preaching to the choir)...  Turns out this music is terrific.  And, more importantly, it's fun (and I wasn't expecting that part).  Psychobilly feels like it was specifically written for the Halloween community.  The music is loaded with spooky lyrics and they're usually sung by people dressed in spooky attire, like fictional theatrical gothic characters.  It's like stuff you'd hear and see at a massive Halloween party.  

Since The Cramps were there at the beginning of this genre of psychobilly, I wanted to feature two of their tracks to kick this off.  

Click below for their cover of Goo Goo Muck, which has become a Cramps anthem of sorts:

And click below for my current Cramps favorite - I Was A Teenage Werewolf:

The Meteors were pretty influential in the genre, and where the Cramps were the first to coin the term psychobilly, the Meteors were the first to embrace it.  They were actually the first band to use the word to describe their music.  So they're up next with a really great song that, to me, is leaning way into its rockabilly side (and I love it):

The Reverand Horton Heat's Psychobilly Freakout is one of the staples of the genre:

And click below for Bodies in the Basement by Demented Are Go:

Psychobilly was pretty much underground in the U.S. until the 90's.  Bands like Nekromantix, Tiger Army, and The Living End helped make it mainstream here.  These later bands were a lot more horror-themed and, to me, often seemed to have a tongue-in-cheek approach to the subject matter.  

A great example of this would be Trick or Treat by Nekromantix:

Tiger Army is definitely a favorite after pouring through a bunch of the required Giants on Wren's list.  Click below for Dark and Lonely Night:

Zombie Ghost Train's R.I.P. is a wonderful song with a perfect video:

Other groups that would be at home on any Halloween party playlist include The Koffin Kats, Horrorpops, Rezurex, The Creepshow, and Zombina and the Skeletons.

And, of course, their sticker was mentioned earlier, so I have to include Halloween by The Misfits:

This blog post is going to end where it sorta began...  The Stray Cats.  Since psychobilly came from rockabilly, it's fitting that a fun conversation with Wren made me think back on a song played at that grade school dance.  I used to get an embarrassing chill when my brain drifted to that night...  drifted to my uncoordinated antics to a rockabilly band's unconventional song.  It's no exaggeration to state that Rock This Town was something of a bad memory trigger.  So I can't say I've listened to a lot of the Stray Cats since the 80's.

But since that conversation, and since she included the Stray Cats as part of my required rockabilly reading, I've been listening to all of these groups pretty regularly.  Especially the Stray Cats.  One song in particular has been played more times than I dare say - Runaway Boys:

And the last song on this long blog entry will be a cover they did of Twenty Flight Rock.  The song is insane:

Again, I realize that I'm incredibly late to this party, and most people who read this Halloween blog are probably well aware of these groups and this music, but I would have loved to have stumbled upon something like this back when I saw that spooky sticker on that kid's book.  

This whole experience made me think about all the strange things we like and follow...  it's all fringe stuff.  I'm willing to bet most of the people in your life don't like this music, or horror films, or Halloween for that matter.  In fact, thinking back to all the years I've been working, I never knew any coworker, not even one, who loved horror films.  We're fringe people.  We're outliers.  Rockabilly, punk, horror punk, and psychobilly is music that knows it's not for everyone.  Music made by groups that totally get being on the fringe.  And you can tell they love that fact.  And I guess that's the entire point of this blog post (and my blog, actually).  This stuff ain't for everyone.  But the people who get it GET it.  And I'm extremely grateful to those people; to you guys reading this right now.  

I'm particularly grateful to Wren.  My crash course put me on the right path (assumption).   And it got rid of my old demon hiding in a grade school basement.  As I mentioned earlier,  all the things we like make life more bearable, and hopefully more than that...  hopefully it makes life fun.

And I've been having fun lately.