Have A Great All Hallow’s Eve
A fallen angel in His lair
In midst of sinners kneeling down before his clout
Friggin’ love Ghost.
Have a great All Hallow’s Eve, everyone.
music
Every Day Is Halloween
Her perfume smells like burning leaves.
Every day is Halloween.
Miss you Pete.
Happy Halloween!
“Things I normally write about”
There are other things in life beside autumn, women, religion, and fire…the things I normally write about. Now we chose death, drugs, depression, and Halloween.
Funeral In My Headphones
“Instead of slashing my wrists, I just write a bunch of really crummy songs.” – Peter Steele, Ink19 interview
I remember it like it was yesterday: Freshman year of college, walking to work at the local elementary, World Coming Down spinning on my portable CD player.
It was 1999, and Type O Negative had a new album out – a gloomy, doom-filled prophecy. It was hard to get in to it at first, especially after the glam-goth love songs of October Rust.
Take “World Coming Down.” It’s basically a dirge, in rock form. Very hard to listen to sometimes. It’s sonic depression.
I remember walking to my job at the school, shuffling through the leaves, trying to make heads or tails of this funeral in my headphones. Everything’s wilting around me, I’m having trouble adjusting to life at college, the weather sucks, and here’s Pete in my ears singing a suicide note.
But now, all these years later, I play this album every autumn, and those slow, death-march songs stick. If you survive eight minutes in, the payoff is just fantastic. Peter Steele really was a fabulous song writer.
Type O Season
“If not being used, then you’re a user – and a loser.”
It’s Type O Negative season, friends.
Four Guitars, Barely Enough
Head to 1:40 for a better version of “Shine” than the album version.
Lord, the ‘90s, when four guitars was just barely enough.
Ceremonials
I feel like Florence + The Machine’s second album, Ceremonials, is probably perfect. Nearly every song on the album could be a single, and it’s full of hooks, melodies, and drama.
But get this: almost every song on the album is a video.
“Shake It Off,” above (and my favorite). “What the Water Gave Me.”
And then there’s “Spectrum.”
Ceremonials is one of those albums where every song almost was a single. Six videos out of a 12-song album? Jiminy.
One Sunday Morning
Wilco – “One Sunday Morning”
Wilco just dropped a free album on us this week. It’s a good time to revisit one of my favorite songs, “One Sunday Morning,” on a Sunday morning.
Ten minutes of sad, sad joyfulness.
Elegantly Wasted
Love Pierre Winther’s album photo for INXS’s Elegantly Wasted.
The colors, the cinematic scene-setting, the light. Lovely stuff. Check out Pierre’s other work.
Brian Vander Ark Live
Brian Vander Ark is one of my musical heroes. He’s a local guy (from Grand Rapids, Michigan) who has worked awfully hard to get where he’s at.
It starts with The Verve Pipe, of course. Everyone’s heard The Big Hit, but the whole Verve Pipe catalog is great. I catch them (almost) every year in Ferndale, Michigan, for their holiday concert.
Brian takes his solo show on the road, and a few weeks back he came to Albion to perform at the restored Bohm Theatre.
Channing and Quinn joined him on stage for a few trio songs, too, and the whole show was really great. Brian snuck a few Verve Pipe songs into the set, and lot of his solo songs and covers.
He put on a great show for the audience that turned out on a spring Sunday evening, and it was great to shake hands with him before the show and introduce myself.