Scary Songs: The Beach Boys, “Monster Mash/Papa Oom Mow Mow”

OK, so it ain’t that scary, it’s fun. And, maybe you expected the original from Bobby Boris Pickett, but this song was a staple of the Beach Boys live set for a while. Every time I saw them, they played it.

Couple of things I noticed, though:

Brian plays the bass with his thumb, rather than all his fingers or a pick.

Never realized Carl played a Rickenbacker sometimes. I always saw them all play white Fenders.

Mike Love seemed goofy back then, but the truth is he was fucked up crazy all the time. He just realized his potential in the interim. I mean, I get Brian has had his issues, and well, Dennis and Carl were sort of sad stories. But, that troika was raised by the equally fucked up Murray Wilson.

Love was their cousin. He is a crazy right wing Ted Nugent-like nutcase. Being Dracula pushes him just that much closer to sane.

 

Scary Songs: Metallica, “Enter Sandman”

I am not sure why human beings like to be frightened, and yet hate to be scared?

We love a scary movie, or a wild crazy roller coaster, or even riding on a bike of any kind, skateboard, skis, car, pretty much anything capable of independent locomotion, really fast.metallica

Yet, if we get home alone, and it is dark and late and no one else is home and you have to go upstairs which means traipsing through the house, under the right circumstances, it is scary. Yet, again, watching someone do that in a movie–knowing the person will get sliced to pieces with a chain saw–is fun?

Anyway, I was thinking about this, and I remembered sometime back Steve said one thing he liked about one of his albums as a kid was that it scared the shit out of his brother, and, what prompted all those synapses to snap was hearing Enter Sandman on the radio the other day.

I cannot claim to be a huge Metallica fan (note that I was working a Giants game the day the band did the National Anthem at ATT). I like them well enough, but by the 80’s, when they were hitting full stride, I was in my mid-to-late 30’s, hiding behind Bruce Springsteen and Crowded House, waiting for Nirvana and The Stone Roses to reclaim me, (like the Pistols and Clash did 15 years earlier).

And, they are a fine band, and even more important, from El Cerrito, Ca, which is where I live (it is right next door to Berkeley).

So, in honor of Steve scaring the shit out of his brother, I came up with this category. I can think of some more songs that are essentially scary in their essence. As for Enter Sandman, if I had heard this when I was eight, I would have loved it and it would have scared the shit out of me.