MONSTER ROCK & ROLL!!
Hey there fiends, I mean friends!!
Tonight I will be serving gruesome goodies in the Dining Room!! As you already know, I am here to expose you to esoteric delights & avoid the mundane, that being said, lets take on the world of monsters and Rock & Roll!! We all know that in the late 1950s the classic monsters, returned (on TV) while Sci-Monsters invaded the movie houses!! This led to the creation of the Horror Host!! Enter Zacherle, a host who was asked to record "Dinner with Drac", (peaked at #6 in 1958!!) this gave birth to "Monster Rock"!!
A side note here, the line in "Dinner with Drac" about eating "the veins of a mummy named Betty" got the record banned in Britain!! Speaking of banned, another rocker got a radio ban because of the groans & screams in " I put a spell on you" by Screamin' Jay Hawkins, a true wild man of monster rock who used coffins, skulls and smoke machines!! The radio ban did not stop the song from selling a million copies because of all the hoo-ha about nothing!! So there!! (Strangely, it never registered on Billboard!)
In 1962, the year of kooky dances, Bobby "Boris" Pickett unleashed the "Monster Mash" and Halloween would never be the same!! The catchy tune, sung by Pickett doing a Boris Karloff impersonation sent this baby to #1 on the charts!! The uptight British also banned this song (as they did "Dinner with Drac") for being offensive!! (?)
All I can say is thank God we live in the USA!! The "Monster Mash" is the only song to be a #1 hit 3 times!! Once in 1962, 1970 and 1973!! ( In 73, it was released in England at last!)
There were more monster hits to come as Jumpin' Gene Simmons (NOT the man from KISS) scored #11 in 1964 with "Haunted House" that tells the story of a tough guy who will not be driven out of his house by spooks, ghost or spacemen!! The Monster Rock kept on rolling, as 1965 saw the release of Gene Moss' "Dracula's Greatest Hits" that has Moss doing a Bela voice as he sings " I Want To Bite Your Hand", "Drac The Knife" and other bloody hits!
Then just as you thought it was all over, Monster Rock goes Psychedelic as British madman Arthur Brown (the Brits no longer uptight) scores a hit in 1968 with "Fire" as Brown performs the song in ghoulish makeup and a flaming crown on his head!! After that great start, Arthur Brown got into that hippy dippy crap so there were no more monster hits from him, too bad!! In the 1970s Alice Cooper became the King of "Shock Rock" not just because of his monster songs but his horror show on stage!!
Alice brought monsters and other horrors on stage and even cut off his own head at the end of the show!! Later Alice would go to Hollywood and star in some movies like "The Alice Copper Show", "Monster Dog" and some TV shows like "The New Soppy Sales Show" (!!) and the "Muppets" (Gasp!!) This left a gap in the world of Monster Rock and soon four young men from New York would fill that gap!!
From 1973 to now, Kiss became THE Monster Rock & Roll band!! (Kiss was voted the #1 band in the world by the Gallup poll in 1977!!) For those of you who have been on Planet X all these years, Kiss with their Kabuki makeup, far out costumes, blood spitting, super stage show and fireworks, were the greatest band of the 1970s!! They are still going strong in the 21 Century, putting out action figures, comic books, an action movie ( Kiss meets the Phantom 1978), lots of Kiss stuff (even Kiss condoms!!) and in 2003 Kiss teamed up with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and did a sold out concert (they did Symphony/Rock hybrids of classic Kiss songs!!) As of this writing, Kiss just finished a tour of Iceland & Finland!!
Speaking of Finland, a new band who was influenced by Kiss is Lordi from Finland, Lordi took some pages out of the Kiss playbook ( Lordi admits to being big Kiss fans!) like Kiss, Lordi plays catchy hard rock songs with great hooks!! Also like Kiss, they use the old Kiss gimmick of never being photographed without their monster makeup!!
Kiss unmasked in 1984 but put the makeup back in 1996. Interesting that 1996 was the return of the monster rock Kiss, because that is also the year that Lordi busted loose and like Kiss, Lordi seems unstoppable!! In a time when music is being ruined by Rap, Thrash Metal and American Idol, it's great to see and hear a rock & roll band that has balls and puts the fun back in rock!! Lordi shocked the world in 2006 when they won the Eurovision song contest!!
Let me give you some background on Eurovision, it's been around since 1958 and is a candy ass contest with wimp music, most of the groups or solo artist who win are never heard from again, unless you're already a bad ass group
like Lordi!! Not only did Lordi win the contest BUT they won by the highest points for ANY entry in Eurovision history!!! Only 3 countries didn't vote for them, they were: Albania, Armenia & Monaco, but who cares about these boring countries!!? The make things even more sweet for Lordi, President Tarja Halonen of Finland, gave Lordi the bronze key award for exemplary Finnish work!!
So as you can see, with these and others (Cramps, Misfits, etc) monster rock & roll bands, Monster Rock will never die!!! To see or hear any of these fine groups, you should click on the Count's Amazon link!!
So Rock on!!!
Rock Savage
To rock with me go to...
http://www.savagefilmgroup.com/
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