Summer Songs.

Welcome, friends, welcome!

A bit of work-related travel has kept me from stopping into this fine old establishment lately, and soon will take me away for a short while longer, but for now, I am so glad we can visit for a spell.

I am so happy to see you here, lounging about in the dim coolness of our little pub while the temperatures steadily climb outside... because even though the meteorologists say it's not officially due for another three weeks, there is no doubt that with Memorial Day just past, a new season has arrived for a hot, sunny, months-long visit.

Summer is upon us.

With a new season and a new month, the Skull & Pumpkin once again refreshes the ol' Hallowe'en jukebox with our usual flair for oddly appropriate musical diversion.

Let me offer for those S&P'brains who are relatively new to the ol' place a brief reminder that our jukebox (over there to the upper right) will always begin with the S&P's official theme song, Vince Guaraldi's The Great Pumpkin Waltz, and end with our official incidental music, the Anger-Higbie Quintet's wistful anthem to Autumn, Pumpkintime. These never change.

For the new additions, we begin with one of the catchiest, coolest pop treats I have ever heard and loved -- a sweet, sentimental and sexy little bit of funk called Summerfling, by the one and only kd lang!

First released on her 2000 album Invincible Summer, this version was taken from her Live By Request performance on A&E in 2001. It's about joyous days and nights with new, warm summer love, knowing all the while that such spark and flame is so fleeting. One of the most singable, hummable choruses in lang's long and unique repertoire.

Next up, another mote of S&P oddliness, a summery-swingin' bachelor-pad-era (1965) musical delight by Reg Tilsley's Orchestra called Red Bikini!

I know it's more pink than red but it was too good to pass up!

After such a groovy dance, I felt another 1965 touch of summery swing would fit perfectly.

From the same Vince Guaraldi who gave us our theme song, comes a tiny toe-tapper called Surfin' Snoopy!

Oddly, this song is featured briefly in A Charlie Brown Christmas, while Snoopy is decorating his doghouse for the "lights and display contest." Surfin' at Christmastime? Snoopy can do it all!

Then, because we're the Skull & Pumpkin and we know there's no celebrating any new month without a side of spooky, we give you a selection from John Harrison's chilling synthpad score for the 1982 horror anthology, Creepshow!

Something To Tide You Over is a classic tale of revenge from beyond the grave. That's Gaylen Ross and Ted Danson as the waterlogged undead lovers returning from the sea to wreak their revenge upon the spurned husband who killed them, played with perfectly smug villainy by the late, great Leslie Nielsen.

That smugness rapidly vanishes when he realizes what's about to happen to him. Better hold your breath, Leslie!

Then I thought I'd offer a somewhat obscure song from a somewhat obscure album which featured songs about childhood Junes and Julys in central California's rural wine valleys and beaches, written by Van Dyke Parks and sung by Parks' sometime collaborative genius, Brian Wilson.

From 1995's Orange Crate Art comes Summer In Monterey, a nostalgic remembrance of youthful joy and those endless teenaged summers when shorts and bare feet meant freedom, and the near-promise of a kiss from your crush was all it took to spend an entire summer waiting for the right moment...

And since we've now mentioned the musical genius of Brian Wilson, how can we possibly pretend to have assembled a Summery Song List if we haven't loaded up something from The Beach Boys?

All Summer Long is the infectiously happy 1965 classic about girls, cars, friends, and adventures in summertime fun, whenever and wherever it was found. You'll be singing All Summer Long all summer long, as you do your best to grab some sun-baked fun before summertime is through...

... all the while knowing with a secret smile in your Autumn-loving heart that when summertime is through, the best time of the year is coming soon. 

Even here at the beginning of Summer, we know Hallowe'en is just lying in wait along the shoreline of another season...

Happy June, and happy Summer, dear S&Pers.

DDSummermeansPlaytime!

In memoriam.

Your big holiday weekend is on them.

Enjoy it because you can.

DDSP!

Lizarraga, you magnificent bastard!

Hello dear S&Pers!

I'm glad you're all here tonight, because I need you to help this spooky little place celebrate something utterly unimportant and therefore completely praiseworthy.

The Skull & Pumpkin has just received its -- are your ready for this?

ONE THOUSANDTH COMMENT!

Yes dear Autumn Friends, just this evening was posted on the door of this fine old pub a parchment scrawled with commentary from a loyal S&P-brain, for what is now the thousandth time since our doors were first opened to S&P-brains.

1,000 thoughts, questions, answers, laughs, sympathies, tears, jokes, well-wishes and words of encouragement, all from you wonderful pubgoers who frequent this tiny tavern of terror.

And just who had the good fortune of being Commentor #1000?

This is the best part for me.

My friend, longtime loyal S&P-brain, and uniquely incredible artist of what he calls 'Kreepy Swank', the great Bob Lizarraga!

The kreepswank way to start your day!

I've posted about Bob before. In fact, the 5th post to this blog, way back in June 2009, was of Bob's print Halloween Fever Dream, which captures so perfectly my own sense of All Hallow's Cool...

Bob was also interviewed by Allie MacKay during the first Monsterpalooza/KTLA TV5 early morning segments of 2011 -- he drew a zombified Allie as she interviewed him. One of the great monstery joys of my life is that I got to be a part of making that happen.

I just wish I'd had a better camera.

I am very proud to say that I have three Lizarraga prints on display here at the S&P, including a great Werewolf of London sketch that was a gift from Bob, and another gift he just gave me at Monsterpalooza this year -- a signed copy of Famous Monsters #259, which features his cover art tribute to the freaks of The Twilight Zone...

Had to lift this from Bob's amazing art blog. I hope he won't mind!

What he wrote is not what's important -- you can read it at the bottom of this post here, or on the PubTalk scroll to your left -- or even that he wrote it, and sent it, and now the S&P has one thousand of 'em.

The truly important thing is, you ALL need to click the highlighted links of Bob's name and blog I've provided in this post (and which have been in the Rest of the Neighborhood links area to your right since the very beginning of this blog), and see for yourselves, if you haven't yet, the wonders he creates.

Thank you for the Big One Gee Comment, my man.

Of course you don't really win anything for it, other than my gratitude, but you've always had that.

But thanks for the amazing art.

And thank you for your friendship.

Everyone, a toast to Bob Lizarraga... raise 'em high now --

DUMDUMSHREKPOP-ART!

Spook on --

Happy CincoPierceTuckyDerbMayo!

Yes, you read it right.

 Happy Birthday Jack Pierce!

 Happy Kentucky Derby Day!

Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

It's a big Saturday here at the S&P.

Enjoy yours!

DDSP!

Happy Wizarding Independence Day.

"You and whose army?"
 -- Neville Longbottom

Today, all Autumn People who discovered the added Hallowe'en magic of the world of Harry Potter celebrate the day -- 14 years ago now -- when the greater gathering of good destroyed a terrible network of evil. When Tom met his end, when the 'complete git' bit it.

When Voldey went mouldy.

A bittersweet, awe-inspiring night and day.

Bittersweet like the end of a good job, a long production, a particularly difficult and mind-changing, heart-learning adventure...

"No ending can be right, because it shouldn't be over at all. 

The magic is not supposed to go away."

 -- Stephen King on the end of the book series

It's alright though. 

The magic never goes away. Like Remus, and Tonks, and Fred, and even the bad guys... it never ends.

Not really.

To those who know -- Happy Wizarding Independence Day.

To those who don't -- now might be a perfect time to begin the adventure.

DDSPotter!

May You Always, always.

Welcome, welcome.

Happy May, all of you.

Last year at this time I found that no amount of effort, of thinking and scouring the music library of this ol' S&P, could equal (let alone better) the May 1st post I had created the previous year.

So I repeated it, to some acclaim and appreciation from many who hadn't been hanging around the S&P the previous year.

And you know something? This year, I am not even going to bother myself -- it is now Skull & Pumpkin tradition that the original May Day post is upon us again. It is just as heartfelt to me, and will always mean just what I wanted it to mean.

Again, I've added the same songs to the jukebox, as ever, and left a few from last month because May is still Spring, don'tcha'know?

So -- for those who are new to the ol' pub, I once again offer the best May post I could ever make.

If you had visited the ol' S&P on this date exactly one year -- now two years -- ago, you would have seen this...

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 May you always...

"... walk in sunshine."

Five years ago today, the great Matriarch of the Lennon family, my Gram, passed away at the age of 85.

It was her way to help you walk in sunshine even when she knew times could be cloudy, dark, and unsure, as they often were in her long, storied life.

She was stoic, she was unbelievably strong and resilient, she held the deepest faith in God and in her convictions... and she was one of the funniest ladies I've ever known -- not always on purpose, mind you -- and when it wasn't on purpose it was extra funny.

She was our Rock and our Light so often and for so long that it's still nearly impossible to think she's not in her kitchen somewhere making the world's most perfect pancakes, or using a little tough love and a wooden spoon to teach a grand- or great grandchild how to be a real person.

My Great Grandmother Nana, my Grandmother Sis, and me, July 1968

And as I've written before, she gave me Hallowe'en -- that she passed away exactly half the year 'round from her favorite holiday must have made her soul giggle at least a little bit. It does mine now.

She had 12 children, and really, I've stopped counting the grandchildren and great grandchildren which now number well into the 60s. And never even mind the hundreds of people whose lives she affected in personal friendship, and the many thousands who have been made joyful by the music and art that her children and grandchildren have brought (and continue to bring) to the world.

  Much that is beautiful and unique in my life and yours would not be here but for her.

Still... if anything, Gram was a trooper with way too much to do to cave into emotional wreckage. I can hear her right now: 'Oh! Why do you have to get so dramatic? Smile, lighten up, go outside and do something!'

Yes ma'am!

So we'll go outside...

May is Spring with an attitude. The child April has become a bit of a sullen, wild teen, knowing its time will turn to Summer soon enough.

In honor, I have changed the jukebox just a bit. I will only comment on additions -- the songs still there from last month have their comments in this entry.

The first new addition is a natural. Julie Andrews singing The Lusty Month of May from the original Broadway cast recording of Camelot (1960). Perfection.

Then, from the incredible mind of Corky St. Clair comes a song about Spring rains, flooding rivers, storming skies and the water ravaged but defiant generations of Plains folk -- This Bulging River is a moving number from St. Clair's one-night-only 1997 stage production Red, White & Blaine, celebrating Blaine, Missouri's sesquicentennial (that's 150 years).

The last two additions are in honor of my grandmother.

Flashes is a solo piano piece composed in 1931 by the inimitable Bix Beiderbecke, a wondrous work performed here by Dick Hyman in 2008 (Bix never recorded it in his short life). Now this song, and all of Bix's music, reminds me of my father because he was a cornet player who was often compared to Bix, and he was of an era of the great Jazz players.

But Beiderbecke's music also reminds me often of my grandmother -- this one particularly has always made me feel the way I used to when I was at Gram's house alone, or nearly so, and just walking, or laying on the couch, listening to her radio station or hearing the Venice beach breezes rattle the windows and chimes. Like her, it is as complex and subtle as it is warm and inviting... and like her, it is simply one of the most beautiful things that ever was.

Lastly, since we all agree that if it hadn't been for her, the world would never have had these lovely ladies and their incredible voices...

I had numerous images at my disposal, but I HAD to pick this one... I just had to.

... then I feel a 'May' song that has become so closely identified with the Lennon Sisters (that's my Mama at lower right) was in order. This version of May You Always was taken from a late '60s episode of The Lawrence Welk Show. I had the honor of performing May You Always with them when they sang it together for the first time in years, on the occasion of their 50th anniversary in show biz...

I know Gram always loved to hear them sing it.

I hope you all walk in sunshine, now that May, and mid-Spring, have arrived.

Just don't forget, in the midst of all that sunshine, greenery and flowery-tude-inous-ness, that we are halfway around the year from dark, orange-black, undead loveliness...


DDSP!

Ghost of the Ghoul Goes West, pt. 15

Hello again, loyal S&Pbrains!

Still recuperating from a long two weeks' traveling and gearing up for performing two shows a night, five nights a week, for the next month.

I'll take the work, trust me. But it might be a little daunting.

At least at my age.

I am still organizing souvenirs and photos from my trip, and as I mentioned in my last post, my friend Adam Dougherty's table in the Monsterpalooza showroom was (probably) the coolest in the whole place, with its vintage Hallowe'en decor, and his incredible limited edition Hallowe'en Nightmare! series of model kits.

See for yourself...

He made that TV, too. 

Those kits just kill me. If the original Topstone Mummy, Ghoul, Melting Man and Shock Monster masks had actually been living, breathing monsters in the heyday of Monster Kid Hallowe'en nights, well -- it would've looked exactly like these scenes (as always, click to enlarge)...

Add to this brilliance the fact that the sidewalk and white picket fence look so exactly like the fence and walk around my Grandmother's house -- the scene of my Hallowe'en birth and growth -- and you have a perfect storm of old school All Hallow's LOVE churning through my soul.

Oh, and this li'l kit (called The Ghost!) is pure genius...

Brilliant work, Adam.

Happy Hallowe'en!

DDSP!