Fire and Water Records: A VERY DALY HALLOWEEN Volume 2

6 responses to “Fire and Water Records: A VERY DALY HALLOWEEN Volume 2”

1. Great episode, Dalys. I just love these holiday shows you guys do. Heck, they’ve become a part of MY holiday traditions, as I really look forward to them!

   We’ve had the Disney “Trick or Treat” song stuck in our heads for the past two months around here, each of us going back and forth singing it, so thanks for adding to the mania.

   I’m glad I’m not the only one who was floored by a rewatch of the Garfield special. I watched that with Dani a year or so ago, and I had totally forgotten about how dark it got at the end! I think Neil is right on it being a potential dream. And Binky…my God!!! They used him a lot on the excellent Garfield and Friends Saturday morning series that followed as well. “HEYYYYY KIDS!!!”

   Oh, and I think Jon had a recurring girlfriend that was also Garfield and Ottie’s vet, as a I recall.

   As a father, it’s funny how you come to appreciate GOOD children’s programming like the “If You Give a Mouse…” series. There’s so much mind-numbingly bad and/or bland material out there that you have to semi-suffer through with your kids, but there are some real gems there too. Great story.

   I remember seeing “Trick or Treat”, “Lonesome Ghosts” and the “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” segment on the annual Disney Halloween TV special, which I believe at one point was called “The Disney Halloween Treat”. I recall begging my Mom to race home from my Elementary School’s fall festival to make sure I caught all of it, in the days before we owned a VCR!

   I LOVE the Ichabod segment…and yeah, he’s kind of an opportunistic jerk. I think Brom Bones is a bit of a Gaston from Beauty and the Beast prototype as well. And I’m so glad you pointed out the color palette. Those reds, oranges and yellows really just put you in the Halloween mood…even before you get to the scary part!

   I haven’t read the original story in a while, but as I recall, the Disney film is surprisingly faithful to Irving’s version, the only real difference being they do offer the distinct possibility of the Horseman being Brom all along. There are some segments in Burton’s film which recreate the animated version almost shot for shot, despite it being VERY different.

   Again, great show guys. Happy Halloween!!!

   Reply

2. I’m with Chris on this one, this show is becoming my new Halloween tradition! And it sounded great as always! I’m a sucker for Halloween and Halloween playlists, so this particular episode was great to hear.

   I agree with you guys that Rockwell seems to be putting on an affected voice for this song. It’s not even really “sung” so much as he talks his lyrics. I also don’t know if he did anything else. To me, Rockwell is in the same part of my brain as Taco and Falco.

   I’ll also second Chris on Garfield, in the comic strip, Jon is always trying to go out with Liz (his vet he takes Garfield to) but is always inept at asking her out. I believe you see them on some dates but you can tell Liz is doing it as a favour or she feels bad for Jon. I can’t believe I have so much Garfield trivia in my head, but there you go.

   I’m already looking forward to any Eddie Van Halen tribute shows you got coming up as he was a god when I was young so I’m interested to hear your takes on him.

   Keep up the great work!

   Reply

   1. Our Van Halen episode should come out next month.

      Reply

3. INXS was one of my first favorite bands of the ’80s, and remained such until Michael Hutchence’s passing. As a teenager, like every teenager, I fantasized about being a rock star. I imagined myself in the Michael Hutchence mold**, which obviously was secondhand Jim Morrison, but I’ll throw down for INXS over the Doors any day (unless we’re talking about a Vietnam movie soundtrack or something.) I even have a fake INXS song that I wrote in a grade school class on either a scrap of paper or more likely just a deep recess at the back of my mind. Anyway, INXS did the whole dangerous-sexy-cool thing that epitomized the ’80s vampire scene of Tony Scott and Joel Schumacher, so even as tangential a horror connection as referencing the devil is enough to validate inclusion in a Halloween mix.

   Jace Everett’s “Bad Things” reminded me so much of “Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing” that I have to actively remind myself that it isn’t a Chris Isaak song, even though it’s admittedly the better of the two. The theme was so evocative in True Blood that my girlfriend and I fell in love with both. Watching True Blood and Game of Thrones on DVD is what finally prompted us to subscribe to HBO, so that we wouldn’t keep getting the shows spoiled for us. That said, I never watched the music video before today, and I’m not sure that I ever heard the full song. The show unfailingly got worse with every succeeding season, and Ryan was wise to jump off when he did. I thought they were hanging a lampshade, but it’s the absolute truth going forward when Sookie says “I’m A Fairy? How FUCKING Lame!”*** By season seven, it was such a hate watch that I doubt I could ever force myself to revisit our DVDs of the earlier episodes. I only ever watched a handful of Dexter episodes, so it was only the worst series finale that we’ve ever experienced.

   I always liked “Somebody’s Watching Me”, which crossed over into my isolated music sphere. I wasn’t aware of the Jacksons connection (Jermaine also sings back-up) until many years later. You’re exactly right that without the guest chorus, that song would have gone nowhere. I decided to do a little research, and supposedly Berry Gordy’s son wore a mask to compete in the Amazonian Contest in order to get his recording contract with his father’s specific label and with no influence from his childhood Michael Jackson without anyone smelling the slightest hint of nepotism. Kennedy Gordy as it turns out was never the acerbic English butler of a millionaire vigilante and did not guest voice the breakdown on Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me with Science”, so that ridiculous English accent was entirely affected As I type this, I watching the video for his follow-up, “Obscene Phone Caller” which is as clumsy and Jack-o-less as you’d expect from that terrible title. This is the chorus:

   Oh, oh, oh, find someone else to bother
   Mister or miss obscene phone caller
   Why do get off breathing on the phone
   Obscene phone caller leave me alone

   Getting back to “Somebody’s”, which plays for the better part of a minute into the follow-up video in a pathetic bid to stretch out another moment with the King of Pop, the synth is swell. I think somebody like Cameo or The Time could have covered it more successfully if Rockwell hadn’t wrangled the salvation chorus. I watched an interview with Rockwell from 2016 and the man seems to be an insufferable and oblivious talent vacuum. I think he was going for a pervy Prince thing, because he did a video for “Peeping Tom” on his follow-up album singing like a normal if utterly generic performer. It was featured on the soundtrack to Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon, purely coincidentally, but it was the second single to flop off the album after its sole hit, DeBarge’s “Rhythm of the Night”.*

   1988 was peak Freddy Krueger, which means that it was also the start of the descent with A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and Freddy’s Nightmares. It was a quick turnaround for me because I’d only just gotten into horror with Freddy’s Revenge on VHS**** and Dream Warriors theatrically, only to realize that the best was now behind me. Anyway, that was the summer I became an all-night owl, waking up in the late afternoon and turning in sometime after dawn. Television still went off the air back then, and we didn’t have expensive extras, so I spent a lot of that time reading and listening to the radio. On one of my off-broadcast recordings, I had The Fat Boys “Are You Ready For Freddy?” and/or an ad for The Dream Master that smash-edited into Gap Band’s “You Dropped A Bomb On Me.” Even though it’s an up-tempo funk number, the mildly ominous synth intro is now forever associated with finger claws and child murder. WTF was wrong with our culture in the ’80s, right? Anyway, DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince’s flow was much better on “A Nightmare On My Street,” which effectively recapped the first two films and even told its own horror story over the unauthorized iconic Charles Bernstein sample. I love the paragraph long disclaimer that bookends the video in legalize. They should have just pulled a “Tom’s Diner” and negotiated an absorption of the song into the canon. It doesn’t really matter though, because despite Dream Master‘s having the best song selection of the franchise, none of the best songs were actually on the official soundtrack album, including Robert Englund’s dad rap.

   I saw Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride with Mr. Fixit and Pussycat theatrically fifteen years ago, thought it was fine, and never think about it unbidden.

   “Gretchen… stop trying to make Halestorm happen! It’s not going to happen!”

   “The Kill” broke into the Billboard top 40 and reached #3 on the Alternative chart, so it’s not as if Thirty Seconds to Mars is some obscure bar band that no one’s ever heard of like Halestorm.***** I was never an active listener, but the tune sounds fine and the video was cute. I don’t get a Halloween vibe off it, though.

   I tried some of your cartoon suggestions, but it didn’t work out for me. I started up The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad on Disney+, but started skipping the songs and fell asleep in the recliner around the same time Crane turns in on the show. I remember it from childhood though, and was surprised but not scared by the downbeat ending. I figured it was the jock dude getting his murder on.

   I’m sure it’s a familiar experience of my generation that we liked comic books, but our librarians did not, so collections of comic strips were as close as we could manage to check out on a regular basis. I didn’t read the newspaper, so those were my primary reference for Garfield, and I was a fan for a few years in the ’80s. My favorite was His 9 Lives, because they got weird with it, expanding what a Garfield story could be. That lasted until maybe the first season of the Saturday morning cartoon before my interest waned. I saw the Halloween Special first run on TV, and like the strip, it was lazy, spare, limited, and repetitive. I’d forgotten all about this thing until I rewatched it on YouTube today. I liked the Lou Rawls parts, but it just confirmed why I parted ways with this property.

   I don’t specifically recall Bugs Bunny’s Howl-oween Special, but I loved Looney Tunes and probably saw all those Witch Hazel and Gossamer numbers one way or another. As a zombie aficionado, I appreciated “Pinkeye”, but South Park’s politics never set well with me. I did my dance with Sam Kinison and the Diceman back in the day, and was made lesser for it.

   It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown remains an American classic, and even though I haven’t revisited it in ages, I remember it fondly. I checked out or bought a fair few Peanuts collections in my childhood, as well.

   I promise not to go all David Crosby on your Van Halen episode.

   * The first flop was “7th Heaven” by Vanity, who y’know, had to rely on her own talents without Prince by that point, so… yeah.

   ** Also Love & Rockets, but exclusively for “So Alive,” and not with that hair.

   *** I didn’t remember the exact quote, so I googled “fucking fairies” and discovered that there’s an entire video series by that name. I thought that I was at least aware of the entire expanse of porn subgenres, but the internet can still surprise me on occasion.

   **** No, I didn’t catch the gay subtext, and actually related to Jesse as a sissy-boy who was squeamish, and still had my half-brother tell me when I could look after hiding my eyes during the gorier sequences. It was only after the internet started pointing it out that I wasn’t able to see it any other way. We did a double feature of the documentary Scream, Queen! and the flick, which was interesting. There was a lot of bitterness in the doc, some earned, some misdirected, but I’m happy Mark Patton’s place in horror history has been secured in a happier, healthier place than where it started.

   ***** I’m not some closet Jared Leto fan, so the simple fact that I was even aware of his existence as both a notable actor and a popular alt-rocker in 2006 speaks to his band’s cultural penetration. They had 7 top 10 alternative chart hits, including 3 #1s, and had their own freestanding cardboard display at Best Buy back in the day.

   Reply

   1. About a year ago, maybe more, Michael Bailey did a show on the Nightmare franchise. That was the first time I ever thought about or realized the gay subtext in the second movie, which admittedly I only saw once (I think) over twenty years ago. Even though I hadn’t thought about that movie in decades, my overall impression was the movie felt like… it was at war with itself, and after putting the subtext in perspective and thinking about what the movie wanted to be vs. what the studio wanted it to be, it’s a lot more fascinating and might be worth a rewatch.

      Reply

      1. Rewatching Freddy’s Revenge, it wasn’t as good as I remembered, but still better than anything that came out after 3. I don’t see the internal war you speak of so much as the filmmakers taking pains not to follow what came before too closely, to the point of it straining against expectations in overt ways. I think Friday the 13th benefited from a combination of the decidedly unnatural evolution of a very narrow initial concept and everybody readily acknowledging that Jason was just a Michael Myers lift. That series could take really odd turns so long as Jason racked up a solid kill count, because it was always a cheesy knock-off starring a murder machine that never should have existed in the first place– antagonist as a upright homicidal conceptual abortion. Halloween was injured by being shaped so thoroughly by the initial entry that audiences wanted little variation on that formula, which to some degree served as a cautionary tale to others. It’s easy to blame the Freddy’s Revenge backlash against it on pure homophobia, but it also takes major liberties with the mythology set up in the first film. I’ll typically favor taking chances with a sequel over stifling hyper-fidelity, and I do think the series became a victim of the limitations formula ultimate placed upon it. Every time the series tried to change course, as with Dream Child and New Nightmare, the fans punished them for it with poor response and low receipts. It was decided that the movies should only be fanciful dream kills and Bondian puns. It’s funny because it’s easy to see in retrospect that Freddy’s Revenge expanded the franchise and contributed elements that have survived near as long as the first entry’s, but all the credit goes to Dream Warriors because that’s where the platonic ideal of Nightmare movies crystallized.

         Reply