Scare yourself with these chilling horror stories!
Pulp writer Michael Avallone’s Tales of the Frightened was published as a book of short stories in 1956, and first recorded in 1961 by Boris Karloff for a pair of record albums [12]. The stories have been reprinted many times, but the original Mercury LPs have become quite rare. Avallone’s son thought to have the Karloff readings reissued, but decided a fresh approach might be a more interesting option. He set to work with Australian actor Vernon Wells (best known to American audiences for his portrayal of Wez in The Road Warrior) and composer Eban Schletter (Mr. Show, SpongeBob SquarePants) to reanimate the dark stories of men bedeviled by bad omens, inexorably hunted by fate and consigned to less-than-ideal forever-afters.
Watson makes old-school sounds with old-school players
Dale Watson has always been a country music militant. But as he’s aged, he’s moved away from explicit railing against the modern country music establishment, choosing instead to show them up by crafting songs that are more country than “country.†Of course, there’s some irony in Watson’s embrace of an era that was scorned by then-contemporary critics who felt Nashville had irrevocably compromised the hillbilly roots of earlier times with the introduction of electric guitars and drums. But one can easily trace the DNA shared by the Carter Family, Merle Haggard and Dale Watson, while many of Nashville’s modern radio stars seem to have grown from the Petri dish of arena rock. The music that Watson idolizes, and the place from which he composes, grew from the same roots, even as electric instruments were introduced and pedals were added to the steel guitars.
His latest album draws directly upon the golden age by featuring Lloyd Green (steel guitar), Hargus “Pig†Robbins (piano) and Pete Wade (guitar) as instrumentalists, with the Carol Lee Cooper Singers (led by the daughter of legends Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper) adding deft countrypolitan touches in the background. Watson’s baritone is less strident than in his earlier days, showing his love of country songs with his vocal caress rather than with lyrical barbs. He shuffles with the swinging glide of Ray Price, tenderly holding a lover, switching to the bottle’s embrace when left behind, and finally counseling the cheaters of the world “How to Break Your Own Heart.â€
Tuneful singer-songwriter indie pop, folk and Americana sounds
The opening track of singer-songwriter Brett Shady’s solo debut is very good (especially for the terrific lyric “For every somebody somewhere in love / there’s somebody elseâ€), but it’s the defeated loneliness of the second track, “Jerome, AZ†that sets the album’s emotional hook. Shady sings of giving up on his big city dream and heading for open skies. But even though he didn’t give up on his own big city dream, his initial discontent with Los Angeles, born of the dislocation and culture shock felt by a gold country immigrant provides much of the album’s emotional fuel.
Shady seems to have finally made himself at home in Southern California, but at the time he wrote these songs, his lack of connection became the locus of his songwriting. Like many lovelorn pop songwriters, he balances himself on the edge of self-pity and self-strength, wallowing in the darkness but mindful that the sun still shines on the other side of his drawn curtains. Shady follows in a long line of rock musicians whose later years led them away from the outward-bound excess of rock and punk to the introspective songwriting of folk and Americana. Dana Gumbiner’s production nicely balances a minimum of studio decorations with Shady’s simple combo of guitar, bass, drums, and banjo, leaving room for the lyrics to be heard and felt.
Shady first latched onto music as a child, and looking back to acts from the ‘50s and early ‘60s in the craft of “Darling.†He suggests the song is seeded in Ivory Joe Hunter’s “Since I Met You Baby,†which you can certainly hear in the piano figure, but the vocal seems more heavily influenced by doo-wop crooning. Winningly, the production gives the whole song an indie-pop feel, which makes the ‘50s influences play more like ghosts. Shady’s country antecedents can be heard in the shuffle beat of “Red House Plea,†but here again the song takes off in an original direction with strummed guitars, a meandering banjo and an imploring vocal whose high tone suggests Don McLean and the Avett Brothers.
Original country, folk and gospel songs of faith
