From The Crap Heap (Part One)

For every Spookshow In Your Pants song I like, there are a dozen more that just seem stupid. My hard drive is littered with such orphaned attempts and I thought it might be fun to post some of the dumber ones. Plus, what I think sucks someone else might like and vice-versa. So here's round one of my most embarrassing musical moments. Click on the titles to have a listen.

Bye


Come Have Breakfast With Jesus

Corn Curls

Depressatron Two

Gloria/L'Absintheur

Piece of Crap


Sunlight Streaming From Your Butt

You Boys Oughta Take Your Shirts Off And Get Some Sun

You Get Sleepy I Get Creepy

Ok, I have to admit I like the last one. Probably for the memory behind it rather than the song itself. Mortification does a body good.

But seriously, the 2nd worst thing I ever did was so-called "music" for a local audio/video duplication service. Revel and squirm along with me at it's absolute wretchedness:

Audio Video Memories

NBC4 Follows the AIDS Story With Some Funny Monkeys

I did this song years and years ago when Spookshow was in the clunky drum machine phase and I forget what I originally called it. I re-named it after a friend started working for a local network affiliate and became aware of just what whores local TV stations really are. They try to present themselves as "Ooh, we care so much about the community" when in fact the only thing they really give a shit about is ratings. They just want you to suck the glass tit and pretend they actually care about your health, your children and your neighborhood when, in fact, if you die in a public place, your kids get raped or your block gets firebombed they will be there with cameras to intrude on your most private, horrible moments.

So the same friend once set this music to video of monkeys at the zoo and it struck me as being absolutely the sort of thing any TV news outlet would do for filler shit. "Woman bashed in the head with bolt cutters; coming up next: Kitties!"

So around that time I changed the name of the music. It's not a great song but it sounds absolutely like what your local news outlet would put behind stock footage in order to suggest they give a crap about you and your neighborhood. Click on the title and pretend I care as well.

Eclipse

Christopher Hoffman put out a gospel album entitled 'The Road'. On it, he explores his faith and his relationship with Jesus Christ. There's just one problem, at least as where Evangelicals are concerned: He's gay as a picnic basket.

I love the idea of anybody who feels no need to thump their chest and proclaim how their brand of faith is The One True Message in order to make them feel superior in the here and now. Christopher simply details the road he's traveled, spiritually, and isn't out to convert anyone. But were his sexuality not enough to piss off the people who think they hold a copyright on the words of Jesus Christ, he also strongly identifies with the Wiccan faith. Myself, I'll quote from The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra: "I'm a scientist. I don't believe in anything." But Chris is a Christian Wiccan, or a Wiccan Christian, depending. I recently told him, "Hey, if you're going to be a person of faith, why settle for just one?"

After a years-long struggle, he and his partner, Jake, have finally adopted two kids (again, a major difference of opinion in that I think NOT breeding is the major perk of homosexuality) and are, finally a real family. He's ready to record again.

And he's asked me to produce. My first return to audio in years and I'm working on a fucking gospel album. Okay, granted, a queer, witchy gospel album from a guy with sleeve tats featuring tarot cards and Harry Potter characters, but still. What's next? I get a call from Alan Jackson?

If you click on Christopher's name at the beginning of this post you can hear samples from his last album. This is not at all the sort of thing I generally listen to, but because of our shared love of penises and Italian horror movies we ended up friends.

There's one song on the album, Eclipse, that has nothing to do with faith but rather his struggle with bi-polar disorder. It's sheer hell to suddenly find yourself miserable for no real reason. You know it's biochemical, but that does nothing to relieve the sheer physical and mental torture you're going through. Chris wrote a song comparing this to planetary motion and I thought the analogy was brilliant. Again, click on his name to hear a sample from it. Even though I'm not a fan of the arrangements on the album, there's no disputing the boy has pipes and can belt them out. Just for fun and just for him, I did a remix of this song:

Christopher Hoffman--Eclipse (Spookshow In Your Pants Prozac Remix)

So now he wants to do something true to his beliefs but sounding freaky and weird. The ancient Chinese had a curse: May you live in interesting times.

Gothpop

This is an old, throwaway Spookshow In Your Pants tune I did when I was living in a warehouse with bare insulation for walls and exposed electrical conduit hanging everywhere. The sound is much as the title implies. Click on it to have a listen.

Floating Fish

I had the weirdest kindergarten experience ever.

I started at age four, a year younger than most of my classmates. I guess it made sense; I could already read on my own at the time whereas the older students had yet to completely learn their ABCs. People saw this as a sign of genius. But people are idiots. I could do this one thing well and that was it. My oldest brother believes this happened because my mother started reading to me the day I came home from the hospital after being born and never let up. He might be right. I don't remember being taught anything; I just remember picking up books and somehow knowing what the arrangement of letters was supposed to mean. Mom read the same books over and over, I watched and followed along and through repetition got that certain funny shapes related to specific words and it all kind of sank in through osmosis. Somehow my four-year-old mind was able to break it down so that this combination of letters resulted in this sound, and that another, and somehow I learned to read. The more I read, the better spoken I became. In other words, as a toddler, I interviewed well. So I got to attend kindergarten a year early.

This was hardly a state-supported entity, but rather a self defined institution some woman ran in a garage-like structure in back of her house. It was West Virginia in the sixties, so this sort of shit could fly.

The kindergarten teacher had no idea I could read. I would spring that one on her later. Her primary concern was the fact that when it came to Art time, all I would do was scribble. Other kids were doing stick figures and block houses but I only seemed interested in grabbing a handful of crayons and running them across the page. One of the few sense memories I retain of the time is that I liked the way it looked. I remember how much fun I thought it was to see six different-colored lines streaking across the page at the same time. But no, the teacher wanted to see me draw Mommy and Daddy and Me, so when I kept scribbling she sent home a strongly-worded note, in the language of the time, voicing her suspicion that I might be retarded.

Hell, in the art world everyone's a critic.

But my Mom went to bat for me and essentially said, "Oh yeah? Why don't you give him a candy bar wrapper and ask him to read the ingredients?"

The next day the kindergarten teacher thrust a wrapper in my hands and asked me what it said.

"Sugar, Corn Syrup, Milk Chocolate (Sugar, Cocoa Butter Chocolate, Milk, Dextrose, Emulsifiers (Lecithin), Butter Fat, Salt, with Vanillin and Ethyl Vanillin, Artificial Flavorings), Sweetened Condensed Skim Milk (Sugar, Skim Milk)
CONTAINS LESS THAN .05% OF THE FOLLOWING: Partially Hydrogenated Blend of Vegetable Oils, (CONTAINS ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLWING: Cottonseed, Peanut, Soybean), Soy Protein, Artificial and Natural Flavors, Maple Syrup, Delactosed Whey, Invertase, Tapioca, Flour, Salt, Citric Acid, Artificial Color (Blue #1, Red #3)"

She nearly fainted before I reached Milk Chocolate. But she revived enough to realize that I could be her kindergarten star and recreate the turn of events so that it was SHE who taught me how to read ahead of my time. What fucking wonderful advertising! A four-year-old attends Miss Hick's backyard babysitting and comes away a prodigy! Good luck backing that one up when Ma and Pa Toothless finds their kid still can't count to three.

Thing was, before she hit on the fact that my advanced reading skills could mean advertising gold, something really creepy went down. By total accident I opened the bathroom door and walked in on a female kindergarten classmate, being assisted by the student intern who was probably all of 17 or 18. But the woman who ran the kindergarten got wind of this and decided to go for an eye for an eye approach to punishment.

Here is where things get sketchy, fragmented and perhaps hidden under a few layers of denial. But this definitely happened: I was made to stand on top of a table and pull my pants down in full view of my kindergarten class, so that they could all see me in a vulnerable state, to atone for the unconscionable sin of opening an unlocked restroom door.

Was it just pulling down my pants and seeing me in my underwear, or was my four-year-old peen exposed before everyone? I don't know. I remember the ordeal, just not the details. And really, if you're a supposed "teacher" making a kid do this does it make a fucking difference?

It has taken years to piece one part of the puzzle with another. I did something shortly later, that perhaps began a lifetime of passive-agression. Now, I'm grown up enough to prefer outright aggression, calling things the way you see them, to this, but still: I'm very proud of my four-year-old, kindergarten self for having the balls to react instead of just sucking it up.

My kindergarten teacher had a fish tank full of what she called her "prize" fish.

I dumped half a can of Ajax into it and killed them all.

Ten years ago I set this experience to music as a Spookshow In Your Pants song. Click on the title if you want to listen.

Very Empty Spaces

Spookshow In Your Pants is not exactly known for keeping up with the times. The only cover songs so far has been Debbie Reynolds' Tammy, the James Bond Theme and In The Hall of the Mountain King. Now there's this, a funky slap-bass kind of noodling that unexpectedly morphs into Pink Floyd's (although, I suppose, legally, now Roger Waters') 'Empty Spaces' from The Wall. But since it came out in 1979 I guess we're getting closer to what's current. At this rate a Lady Gaga cover should appear in about thirty years or so.

As usual, click the title if you wanna listen.

Wish Things Were Different

Man, was I ever in a bad place when I did this one. The title could not have been more heartfelt and even still it's not something I listen to very often because the music always takes me right back there emotionally. But Sunday nights are meant for wallowing in your own sorrows so what the hey. I know I've built the expectation I'm supposed to be hi-larious all the time but the other side of me is a pathetic, depressed fuck no one should have to be around. Click on the title to share in my misery.

Roughage

This was an older Spookshow In Your Pants ditty I had every intention of making the theme song for the Spookshow In Your Pants Radio Hour. I still might.

You know the drill: click on the title to listen or save.

Mother Complex

I guess I'm posting this a day late because there's a sample in this Spookshow song of my mother saying, "...and we want to wish you a Happy Easter." I pulled it off an answering machine message around 1993 or so, used it in a tape collage, then actually put it to music a couple years later. She passed away earlier this year and I like to think she's making her displeasure known since as I type this thunderclaps are sounding through my window.

But she should have been used to the idea of a day late: I was forever sending belated birthday cards and forgetting to call on important dates. Anyone who knows me will understand she was not alone in this position; I just don't have that seemingly important piece other people do and just cannot remember or even get the significance of specific dates. I'd rather remember the significance of people. But for some reason a lot of folk tie that into the calendar and in that realm, to many, I'm sure, I'm a big disappointment. I think it was Aristophanes who first said: "Oh well."

But my mother is only one of many guest stars in this earlier Spookshow In Your Pants recording. Also featured are Tor and Becca, a vapid local newscaster, CNR, a kindergarten class, Ray and most notably, Mr. Alfonso from Alice, Sweet Alice.

Click on the title to listen or save.

Oh, but it if you'd like to share in a personal joke Chris and I ran into the ground as an escape from insufferable working conditions a couple of years ago, look at the above picture then click here.

When The Light Comes On The Chicken Dances

It's hard to get solid information when it comes to a dancing chicken. Harder still when it comes to a piano-playing chicken.

When I vacationed throughout the south with my parents as a small child I saw numerous fair exhibits involving animals in small cages where, if you put a quarter in the slot, the animal would perform a tiny vaudeville act just for you. Put a quarter in the box, and a squirrel suddenly shoots out of a box overhead and rides a tiny bicycle on a tightrope stretching from one end of the tent to the other and back again. But my favorite was the piano-playing chicken. You'd put a quarter in the slot, a light bulb would come on and the chicken would hop up on a toy piano and dance across the keyboard, playing a random cacophonous non-tune with its feet. The only Google results I've seen show pictures of chickens pecking at the keys with their beaks; the explanation being that if the chicken hits the right keys in the right sequence a handful of chicken feed will come cascading out of the piano at the finish.

These explanations are far more humane than what I remembered. My dad explained that, when the light came on, the chicken had a few seconds to hop up on the piano before the floor became electrified. Same with the squirrel. It did it's thing or got the crap shocked out of it. They're probably doing the same thing with Justin Bieber.

But the title here is a Spookshow In Your Pants song, a slightly different version once known as 'Crashing'. Click on the above title to have a listen.

I Gotta Come Clean

There's a reason I did a cover of Debbie Reynolds' Tammy. I'm tired of hiding it so click on this or this to find the real tale.

Man, I miss my football days. And my freaking kidney.

Oh wait, I forgot. I'm dead.

The Wasp Woman

Roger Corman made a movie in 1960 called The Wasp Woman about a cosmetics magnate with an insane quest for eternal youth. She couples up with a crazed, beekeeping scientist who claims injecting her with royal jelly from his special wasps will do the trick. (Of course, in real life, only bees secrete this substance--wasps do not--but scientific accuracy was never the hallmark of anything Corman put out.) It does indeed restore her beauty, but has the unfortunate side effect of causing her to transform into a murderous wasp-lady.

Upon seeing this, like anyone, my very first thought was Why not set it to music?

So I put together what was essentially an EP of music inspired by this really lame film. When all was said and done I didn't much care for it. It was during the phase where I wanted to take the generic samples that came with the Acid sequencing program and try to transcend the fact that a kerjillion other people were using them by tweaking the actual song structure and come up with something different. I don't know if I succeeded or not, but the end results left me less than satisfied. Funny thing, time, in that in the here and now I don't mind it so much. If I remove myself from the process and just listen to it as music instead of a grand experiment I'm not quite so repulsed. I used a couple of these things in other projects, but here, for the first time in public, is the original sequence as it was originally designed:

Click on the titles in order to hear the mini-concept-cycle as God and myself intended:

1) Infestation

2) I Am The Wasp Woman

3) Some Days Just Get Shittier (Parts 1 and 2)

4) Wish Things Were Different

Snakecharmer

Another oldie from back in the "Clunky Drum Machine" phase of Spookshow In Your Pants. I like the song, but the drums were at their clunkiest on this one. Click on the title to listen or save.

Bananas

Another very short song from the Spookshow In Your Pants dicography, probably because once again I was trying to be real and can't do that for very long periods of time. When the dark clouds roll in, I feel helpless, horrified, and disgusted at who I am as as a person and want to wish it all away. This clip is supposed to mirror the mindset, combining the usual wacky outlook with disturbing intruding thoughts. I've used this sequence in other pieces, but I think the stark brevity of the original sums it up best.

Click on the title if you want to share my less-peppy moments.

But of course this post wouldn't be complete without this:

Something's Not Quite Right About The Baby / Feel

Legendary among Spookshow In Your Pants fans (all four of them) was the epic concept piece Monkey Barbara And The Other, which told the story of a girl with four-meter forearms locked away in an attic by her cruel parents in a town that valued conformity above everything and also worshiped waffles. This cut from that song cycle still makes me smile after all these years. Click on the title to have a listen.

To bring you up to speed in the story: The Earl of Waffleton and his wife just had a baby that turned out non-standard and so by decree of the Chancellor of Waffleton it, and they, have to be destroyed. Monkey Barbra hears ths announcement on her radio.

The Chancellor of Waffleton:

Citizens of Waffleton I come to you with weighted heart.
The shower for the Earl’s wife is cancelled as of now.
Sorry ‘bout the inconvenience; hope your gifts can be returned.
Go buy something nice to help you ease the sting of grief.
Take heart in the knowledge when bad things happen to the faithful

We grow stronger with each passing trial.
Try and hold to some small hope that someday you will understand
The Waffle King don’t cause these things—he allows them.

Something’s not quite right about the baby!
Something’s gone amiss in utero.
Someone’s nonconformity resulted in deformity.
Someone’s little bundle has to go!

Citizens of Waffleton, you can’t imagine how it looks—
Just so sick and ugly we can’t take a photograph.
Baby’s arms and legs are fleshy flaps devoid of bone.
Nothing there from the neck up; no eyes, no ears, no button
Just a mouth atop a stump that spits and gurgles constantly
And as for baby’s sex…uh…we’ll get back to you…

Something’s not quite right about the baby!
Something in it’s strange genetic code.
Someone was a Ho and that fucked up the embryo—
Someone’s payment for the crime is owed.

In accordance with the laws and wishes of The Waffle King
Triple execution makes good sense.
Nothing gets exterminated while it’s being incubated—
Once it’s born, the judgments will commence.

Citizens of Waffleton, please gather in the parking lot
Of Flapjack Mall ‘round two o’ clock tomorrow afternoon.
Three unwholesome reprobates will be destroyed per holy law—
Three small fires burning with the stench of family shame.
The Earl and his wife agree to take their places willingly.
Offering themselves to Waffle King in sacrifice.
Only their foul offspring will be shackled with restraints.
Come on down—I guarantee a blessing!

Something’s not quite right about the baby!
Something in the way the bastard looks.
Fire up the tallows; bring the hot dogs and marshmallows.
See the way it dances while it cooks!

Monkey Barbara:

Funny how I’m jealous of The Earl and his wife
Yeah, they’re going down in flames—at least they had a life
Safe here in my attic no one knows that I exist
It’s always someone else who’s getting caught and crisped
Can’t take much more of this
Can’t take much more of this
Can’t take much more of this
I just might freak I just might learn to feel

Feel

I know the consequences
I know the consequences
I know the consequences then
If I should crack and just give in
I just might get out of this rut
And off my pimply, monkey butt
I might behave like one sick pup
Do a little acting up
Do something dangerous and real
Something more than simply feel

Feel

Pariah The Clown

In the Spookshow canon this is one of my favorites. Deep within the vaults there is even a version with me playing guitar, but I still like this keyboards-only version better. What is presented here is a remake of a really old track where I sang, but again I like this version better, especially without my no-talent voice fucking with things. Click on the title to listen or save one of my finer moments.

A Prayer For Miss Melba

Brother Russell is a genius when it comes to phone pranking. His character, Melba,is goddamn freaky. Spookshow In Your Pants took one of his calls to Bob Larsen, the crazed, fundy talk-show host and set it to music. Click on the title if you want to listen to a religious nut praying with what he thinks is an old lady.

History

This is from the now-defunct arthoar.com site which once housed the definitive history of Spookshow In Your Pants:


SPOOKSHOW IN YOUR PANTS

The phenomenon known as Spookshow In Your Pants started in 1990 after the accidental combination and ingestion of several household cleaning products. Charles Nelson Reilly appeared to members of the band wearing a poodle skirt and floating in clouds of ammonia/chlorine gas, whereupon he commissioned the composition of music befitting his eventual 1000 year reign on earth before the seven seals are opened and the apes take over. SSIYP met this challenge head on and immediately began constructing an immense cream cheese pipe organ (to this day the backbone of their sound) in order to properly convey his mighty, nasal glory. Their sonic scope expanded in 1993 after second-dealing their way through a high stakes poker game and winning a Vegas novelty act consisting of a six piece horn section played by specially trained cats. Tragedy befell the band in '97 when it was discovered their lead singer, despite his protests to the contrary, didn't actually exist. SSIYP immediately re-grouped and, hoping to ride the lucrative boy-band trend to the top of the charts, began their strictly enforced policy of mandatory cheekbone implants, some members sporting up to seven or eight pairs. The dawn of a new century brought exciting changes, finally, in the form of a recording contract! If the band agreed to buy seven more at regular prices within the scope of two years, it read, they could get the first six CDs for only a penny. It was during this period they composed their masterwork, the title of which no one bothered to remember; the master tapes unfortunately ending up baked in a pudding. Currently the band is wishing away their future without actively pursuing a single goal in a tangible manner. This may continue for some time.

Get Your Tentacles Off My Pentacles

Not much to say about this one other than the opening spoken bit is from the same session I mentioned in 'Even It Out' where I was roaring drunk and recorded myself just so I could later be properly embarassed. The rest is from a vintage Bozo the Clown cartoon with my music thrown overtop.

Click on the title to listen or save.

Shaken, Not Stirred

Shoulda put this one several posts down so that it fit in with the whole James Bond vibe I had going on. But this post is sort of personal and has to do with a phone call I had with a friend tonight and that's all I'm gonna say. You're not the only one, honeypot. Everybody feels like that sometimes. Shortest Spookshow In Your Pants song ever and for good reason: if I'm talking about fucking squirrels or corpses I can go on and on but if I have to be real I'll clam up in a heartbeat. Click on the title to listen or save it to your digital scrapbook.