Weird Nightmare #8

Not that anyone but me will notice but I'm going to finish posting this mix if it takes me till next Halloween. Here's a trio of spooky jazz and doo-wop cuts, featuring two contributions from the inestimable Sun Ra and a spectral ballad from Little Jimmy Scott.


Sun Ra & His Astro Infinity Arkestra, October (Compact Disc - Download)

Jimmy Scott, Time On My Hands (Compact Disc or Box Set - Download)


The Cosmic Rays featuring Sun Ra, Dreaming (Compact Disc - Download)

Weird Nightmare: Halloween Mix #7

Hrvatski, Paint it Black (Painted Black Compact Disc - Hrvatski downloads)
One of 11 dead flowers on a Tumult Records compilation.

Weird Nightmare: Halloween Mix #6

Sometimes I like to write bad poetry:

Oh bleak branch and leaf in windy disjoinment
Sunday afternoon full of crows and disappointment
full of rattling twigs and clacking beaks
every window leaks
cold sunlight, slanting through the enjambment
a gritty balm for the wounds of the week



MP3: Tom Waits, Flash Pan Hunter/Intro & That's the Way (Compact Disc - Download)
A pair of songs from The Black Rider make the point with less fuss.

Weird Nightmare: Halloween Mix #5

Not long ago, Reis at Geek Orthodox did a post featuring the classic cartoons and illustrations of Charles Addams. Perhaps less well known is another macabre humorist, the writer and illustrator Edward Gorey.

Here are a few of his moody and mordantly funny illustrations, followed by one of his poems adapted by the eccentric cabaret act The Tiger Lillies.





MP3: Tiger Lilies, The Hipdeep Family (Compact Disc & Downloads)

WHY DID I NOT GET THE MEMO DEPT: The Tiger Lillies meet Alexander Hacke of Einsturzende Neubaten for a Lovecraft tribute? Man what?

Weird Nightmare: Halloween Mix #4

It's a bit florid, but I really love this arrangement of "Transylvanian Lullaby" from Young Frankenstein. "Haunting" is high on my list of words that should be permanently retired from music writing -- cf. "angular," "Dylanesque," and, ugh, "soundscapes" -- but is this melody, so lyrical and longing that it lures the monster from its bride-to-be, anything but?

Gil Shaham & Jonathan Feldman, A Transylvanian Rhapsody (from John Morris's Transylvanian Lullaby) (Compact Disc & Download)

Weird Nightmare: Halloween Mix #3

Masque
(5th level Illusionist spell)

Type: Enchantment
Range: 80"
Area: up to 5"x5" and see below
Duration: 1 round/level

The masque spell gives all creatures within the area of effect a grotesque, mask-like semblance, a visage of fear, rage, despair, or other strong emotions. Those who save against the spell will be shaken and unable to tell friend from foe. They will make all attacks and saves at -1, and suffer a -2 penalty to morale. Those who fail a saving throw will be overcome by the emotion depicted by their masks. Typical masks and effects include:

Contempt: scorn and loathing for all present; will refuse any parley or collaboration and seek to part with them at the earliest opportunity
Despair: crushing sadness saps will to live; -2 to saving throws and initiative rolls
Euphoria: giddy delirium overloads the senses, even pain is delightful; -2 to AC, +2 to all damage taken during the spell
Mockery: convulsive laughter; -2 to attack and damage rolls
Rage: attack a random target each round at +2 to hit and damage
Terror: panicked; as fear spell.

These effects last for the duration of the spell. Other masks such as lust, gluttony and envy are possible, according to the player's ingenuity and the DM's discretion. This spell has no effect on mindless creatures.

Masque has one significant drawback: the caster must also make a saving throw each round of the spell's duration or suffer the effect of one of the masks.

Variants: Domino allows the caster to don a mask of his choosing and cause its effects by gaze, without being subject to them himself. Bal Masque creates an illusory retinue of 2-5 ghostly images surrounding the caster, each wearing a mask and causing its effects by gaze.

MP3: Dave Douglas, Bal Masque (Compact Disc)

Weird Nightmare: Halloween Mix #2

Kind of Doom...



Bohren & der Club of Gore, from the album Black Earth. Check out a track from their forthcoming album Dolores, here.

Weird Nightmare: Halloween Mix #1

From now till Halloween, hoping I don't run out of bandwidth on my free file host, I'll be posting one of my favorite Halloween mixtapes, Weird Nightmare. Enjoy.


Elvis Costello sings the lead track from Hal Willner's eponymous Charles Mingus tribute Weird Nightmare, which brought together Mingus's music and poetry, great players from the New York avant jazz scene, and iconoclastic composer Harry Partch's incredible hand-built instruments.

Elvis Costello et al. Weird Nightmare (Compact Disc)

BHMK: Gods from Outer Space

My dad sells real estate for a living, and every now and he'll pass along something interesting he salvages from a vacant house. Odd bits of knick-knackery, old LPs and paperbacks, etc.

He recently sent me a package containing a brown accordion file labeled "Kelly Pollock - game notes." The file is splitting on the bottom, held together with brittle old tape, and just crammed with gaming stuff: a few early 90s Dragon mags, some Gamma World modules, a copy of Keep on the Borderlands sans cover (just for fun I might have to redraw the maps from memory), pages cut out of a Michigan county almanac annotated with encounter ideas and Pitz Burke style names for the cities, and page after page of loose leaf notes.

The folder also contains, in one of those coincidences so common among EC fans, an incredible collection of Encounter Critical material! Along with a copy of the Second Corrected Edition, there are a couple issues of Daniel David's "Journey Masters Journal," and even the ultra-rare EC module Asteroid 1618, all gathered in a ziplock bag with a price tag from Ludington Goodwill.

Judging from the Dragon issue dates and clues in the notes, this kid was running Encounter Critical as late as 1995! I've never heard of another sighting of the game "in the wild" that late, not till it was rediscovered a few years ago.


And what's more, a bunch of the game notes in the folder are homebrew EC stuff, including a three part adventure, "Gods From Outer Space" The adventure makes it pretty clear that Kelly and his crew were big-time horror fans -- there are references and ripoffs of everything from Lovecraft to Michael Myers to Troma. I've been trying to polish it up for World Adventure Writing Month, but it's in a rougher and more disorganized state than I realized and I keep riffing off it in my own directions, so it won't be finished for a couple more weeks.

In the meantime, I took a few minutes tonight putting together an inspirational mixtape. Some of the songs and bands are namechecked directly in the adventure or Kelly's notes, especially the middle adventure "Black Hole Metal Kult." Others are my own tribute to Kelly and his gonzo crew. Track list after the cut.


Black Hole Metal Kult: Gods from Outer Space

Frank Sinatra - Old Devil Moon
Mayhem - De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas
Dinosaur Jr - Freak Scene
Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians - Brenda's Iron Sledge
Syd Barrett - Clown & Jugglers (Octopus)
Venom - Black Metal
Blue Öyster Cult - Black Blade
Emperor - I Am The Black Wizards
Sonic Youth - Silver Rocket
Hawkwind - Space Is Deep
Tales Of Terror - Gods From Outer Space
The Mountain Goats - The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton

Zombie Poll Axe

A few days ago Badelaire made a persuasive argument for the poll-axe as the anti-zombie weapon par excellence and I certainly wouldn't argue. He signed off his post saying, "I just need a motorcycle and a kickass heavy metal theme song, and I'm good to go..." Zombie-killin' metal? Hmmm. This got me searching through my own haphazard metal collection...

I ended up with the soundtrack to an imaginary zombie flick. Now playing at the Max Benign Drive-In (look for the big M out on Highway 6), and at my Muxtape:

Howard Phillips Hovercraft

Just a quick note to point out my Lovecraftian mixtape to any readers who might be interested, linked in the sidebar and right here in this very paragraph. Not exhaustive, for sure, but it's not too bad a survey of metal, rock and esoterica more or less inspired by HPL.

(With gratitude to the Onion AV Club commenter who uses HP Hovercraft as his handle)

SEE ALSO: Arzachel, Aazthoth. Fantastic bit of eldritch psych I haven't got in my personal collection.