When we think about Halloween and art, we sort of automatically think of film. And why not. We have a decades-long library of movies designed to scare the pants off us. But there are some bands out there working the shadows with their music, as well. While it’s unfair to dismiss so many talented artists as Halloween acts – because talented and unconventional is cool 24/7/365 – it’s also true that during this week the veil between the mundane and arcane grows thin.

So, to help you prepare your playlist, here are some of our scary music favorites.

First, from Toronto, one of the absolute best darkpop bands in the world, The Birthday Massacre. This is their video for “Blue”: Full Story »

Imagine you’re cancelled puppet-driven Fox comedy series “Greg the Bunny.” You’re unemployed, naturally, and rather depressed. You show up at a bar and chat up “Sesame Street.”

The two of you get nice and sauced, stagger towards the subway and eventually make it back to Sesame’s $4.5 million penthouse, where you proceed to wildly bump unprotected uglies and find out the other’s dirty secret: That you both cry during sex.

Warning for those with heart conditions, delicate eardrums towards 2:00. Full Story »

It was such a pleasant weekend. Fall is in the air. Football is on TV, and the Angels sent the Boston Red Sox golfing. It even felt wholesome and normal to listen to the soothing sounds of Republicans and Democrats making fun of each other and playing nerf meme dodge ball. I suppose that we owe the Nobel Committee a thank you note. But all good things must come to an end. Or…. Now that we’ve got that peace prize thing out of the way, let’s get back to the business of war.

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One day my Austrian roommate came home and told me that one of the biggest bands in Russian rock history would be playing a show in Piter. How could i say no? So i went to the Cultural Palace with a group of Austrian students, a nation not known for its dedication to rock. The lobby was filled with Russians of every age and clique. Middleagers. Teens. Hippies. Metalheads. Punks. New Russians. Everyone. We found our seats near the back of the auditorium, but it was clear that the Russians–as is their way–were going to pay no attention to any rule stamped on a piece of paper. The chair free section in front of the stage was filling up fast, and i wanted to be up there. Once the band played their first chord i turned to my companions and said, “Stay here if you want, but i won’t.” I pushed down into the crowd with my companions following and had one of the best times of my life.

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Grover helps Thomas Jefferson meet a deadline:

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Question: Which of the following doesn’t belong with the rest?

a: kittens
b: bunnies
c: rainbows
d: unicorns flying out of your ass
e: Rammstein

Answer:

Thx to Ubertramp for passing this along.

More awesomeness from Playing for Change. Happy Saturday.

Our friend Jeffrey Dean Foster has a new video for “Corner of My Eye,” and we thought we’d share. It takes a distinctly indie approach, but in doing so conjures a lot of the actual warmth that attends Jeff’s music and live shows. Very nice.

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Our friend Lee Camp is at it again:

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One of my favorite bands is Aerosmith, but in the early 1980s I didn’t know it. I was happily listening to songs like “Walk This Way” and “Dream On” and “Back in the Saddle” long before I knew that it was Aerosmith. My sister was doing everything she could to broaden my mind to include music that wasn’t Pet Shop Boys, Madonna, Toto, or Gloria Estefan, and Aerosmith was one of the bands I half listened to as we were washing dishes after dinner every night. But I didn’t hit my stride into hard rock and metal until after a certain video came out on MTV: the 1986 Run DMC cover of “Walk This Way.” Full Story »

Want to see a dog enjoying the snow? Pay attention – at the 1:20 mark it nearly turns into a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

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I’m sure you’ll have questions. But first, just indulge yourself in the magic of milk-rock legends White Gold.

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Elizabeth Dole, wife of former Senator and presidential candidate Robert Dole, and Republican Senator from North Carolina (or “Nawth Ca’lina” if you prefer the proper pronunciation), was possessed today by Jesse Helms’ twisted, gangrenous, suppurating soul.  Channeling Helms’ mavericky energy, Dole released an ad accusing her opponent in this year’s senatorial campaign, Kay Hagan, in what has to be the most … well … just watch it.  It’s only 30 seconds.

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Part two in a series.

There’s a rising tide on the rivers of blood
But if the answer isn’t violence, neither is your silence

- Pop Will Eat Itself, “Ich Bin Ein Auslander”

When all is said and done, nothing communicates the racism and knee-buckling stupidity of all-too-wide swaths of our nation quite like video. So if you don’t trust me to tell the truth about these folks, maybe you’ll trust their own words.

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Part one in a series.

Listen to the victim, abused by the system
The basis is racist, you know that we must face this

In 1991 Pop Will Eat Itself produced one of the most damning comments on racism in society in the history of popular music. “Ich Bin Ein Auslander” was specifically aimed at anti-immigrant racism in Europe, but over the past 17 years it’s been impossible for me to hear the song without mapping its penetrating, undeniable truth onto our American context. Our black auslanders aren’t recent arrivals (although many of our brown ones are), but they nonetheless remain social, political, economic and cultural outsiders, and whatever progress they may have made in the several hundred years since they first arrived in shackles, only a fool can believe that the basis is no longer racist.

I said some time back, as the presidential election lurched into overdrive, that the heavy racist stuff was coming. Full Story »

In some grand Rovian afterlife, the late Michael Deaver, Republican image machinator extraordinaire, is smiling, even laughing.

You remember Mr. Deaver, don’t you?

As the White House deputy chief of staff during the first term of the Reagan presidency, Deaver orchestrated Reagan’s every public appearance, staging announcements with an eye for television and news cameras. From a West Wing office adjacent to the Oval Office, Deaver did more than anyone before him to package and control the presidential image.[emphasis added]

Were Mr. Deaver with us today, he’d be overweeningly proud of whoever’s handling — abusing, actually — the press for Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for vice president.
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Y’know, these days, so many people with so many different motives are trying to tell me in so many ways what the “truth” is that I wonder whether I’d recognize a “truth” — any “truth” at all.

I give up. I’ve collapsed under the oppressing weight of lies, prevarications, deceits, “policy adjustments,” rhetoric, no-longer-operative statements, attack ads, Perino-isms, cunningly packaged spin, and Rovian stump speeches with the rhetorical content equivalent to the unflushed contents of a toilet bowl.

Would someone please make possession of a Teleprompter a federal crime, punishable by listening to Rush Limbaugh 24/7 for life? Or Al Franken, for that matter? Can we stop the incessant harangue so reminiscent of “Father Knows Best” or, in the event Sarah Palin is speaking, “Mother Knows Best”? Or Hillary or Bill: “We Know Best”?
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