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Can you believe there’s no active auctions for a Misfits - Halloween 7″ on ebay? What kind of Halloween are we having here anyway? How good of a Halloween can it even be?

Other crucial Halloweens:

• King Diamond - Halloween (Fatal Portrait, 1986)
• Sonic Youth - Halloween (Bad Moon Rising, 1985)
• Mudhoney - Halloween (split w/ Sonic Youth, 1988)
• Dead Kennedys - Halloween (Plastic Surgery Disasters –[i think?]– 1982)

Samhain - Initium 

Danzig took the name of the band from Samhain, the ancient Celtic New Year, which influenced the evolution of the modern Halloween. The band’s name is typically pronounced “sam-hane” (i.e. the syllables rhyme with “ham” and “pain”, respectively), though when the word occurs in song lyrics, Danzig himself pronounces it “sa-wun”, in conformity with the generally accepted pronunciation of the name of the eponymous ancient holiday. This is evident in the song “Samhain” itself, and in “November’s Fire” and the Danzig song “Soul on Fire”.

Ham and Pain made me laugh when reading Wikipedia to remember what I think of Samhain, who I first discovered in my freshman year of college. Perfect fall listening, as Halloween is about a month away and the leaves are starting to turn here. Initium was probably one of the first things I attempted to download via Napster as the albums were out of print at that time. How far we’ve come. Even then I knew what a mess of an lp it was, but I also loved it. As Danzig’s first band after the Misfits, it was his big chance to prove that he was the most important piece of that puzzle, and to also branch out stylistically beyond the Satanic Ramones image the Misfits had cultivated since the late 70’s. Unfortunately, it was 1983, and what may have seemed cutting edge and modern then, is painfully dated now. You can take it for better or worse, embracing it, or not, but you can’t ignore things like the over processed fake sounding drums and the cruddy sounding direct line guitar tracking. But you also can’t deny that, even when experimenting with studio trickery and inept-goth rock poses, Glenn is still close enough to his prime that he has more hits than misses by far.

The record begins with one of the worst openings ever, an ambient intro of distortion, echo, and tape noise that was recorded on a 4track (as noted in numerous interviews) and which is painfully obvious from all the “SHHH” and “PUH” that comes from using a cheap mic for Danzig’s awful spoken piece on this track “yoouuu think you know paiiin, you know nothing!” which sounds not even a little bit scary. After what seems an interminable amount of time, the first song actually starts and is pretty good. It sounds like a rougher version of the swaggery blues metal Danzig would play later with vocals on a heavy crooning Jim Morrison tip. The music is extremely simple though, and doesn’t seem to be much beyond a rough sketch. It feels unfinished with only a small difference between the verse and chorus, and not much happening in either one. The next track Black Dream reverts, somewhat, back to the Misfits formula, at least in terms of speed. It probably could have fit in on Walk Among Us okay. It’s good but, it’s not great. The next song is All Murder All Guts All Fun which is a full return to the Misfits sound, stylistically, and lyrically. I think this is worth noting because at least at this juncture, Danzig is still best writing Misfits songs. He tries to cover it up with more heavy metal style drums and vocal over dubs, but it’s obvious the song could have been a Misfits track. It’s also maybe the best track on the album. Succubus follows and is, in my estimation, the first total misfire on the record. Plodding pseudo metal riff, stupid vocal and keyboard fx, and hardly a song under all the muck that’s trying to hide the fact that there’s no song. It’s obvious Glenn was trying to find a new voice, but it’s also obvious he doesn’t know how, and he hasn’t found a way to break out of the box he’s in yet. Conversely we take on He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named next and it’s a perfect example of what made Glenn’s creative voice so good  to begin with. It’s heavy and tuneful, and sticks in your head. Another would-be Misfits track. Shame on the Harry Potter film franchise for not using this track yet.

B-side opens with another low, but for different reasons than before. It’s a remake of the Misfits’ classic “Horror Business”, billed as “Horror Biz”. Glenn tries to add more precision to the proceedings, and adjust the lyrics, but it comes off like a crappy heavy metal cover version. Like those Metallica Misfits covers. So unnecessary and inferior. Luckily the rest of the side (the last third of the lp) takes an upswing, starting with “The Shift”. This song is almost calm in its delivery, and the slowly descending guitar riff has a hypnotic quality. Danzig is crooning something about changing into a werewolf, it’s the first successful attempt on the lp to write a non-Misfits song that’s good. It segues nicely into The Howl, which is of similar content but a little faster clip. Again though a little more subdued and hypnotic which works well with Danzig’s croon. The closer, Archangel, is ironically an unused Misfits song, that sounds very little like the songs they’re known for, and instead continues in the line the previous two songs are. Its got a great, if crude melody, and segues out of the album pretty well. It’s definitely one of Samhain’s signature tracks.

So of course, what would a Misfits related auction be if it wasn’t some uber rare mispressing of the record. Probably like 20 of these or something.

Yeesh, it’s been a while so here’s a whole stack of misfits rarities. In bullet (haha!) form:

• Bullet 7″ red vinyl w/ Better Dead On Red sleeve
• Halloween 7″ w/ insert
• 3 Hits From Hell 7″ 1st press w/ red label
• Walk Among Us lp w/ pink sleeve on Ruby/Slash (1st press)
• Die Die My Darling 12″ purple vinyl
• Evil Live 12″ w/ OG sleeve
• Wolf’s Blood 12″ w/ full-color sleeve
• Static Age lp purple vinyl
• Collection II lp clear vinyl
• Samhain - November Coming Fire lp orange vinyl

More or less… that adds up to a couple (a few) grand. Even though I feel Misfits collectors take part in creating and overhyping stupid things like pressing errors, and trivial variations, these are all pretty cool variations of these records to own, and there’s no denying Misfits records are awesome, and have a cool common aesthetic. I think I’ll be kicking myself for the rest of my life over a few of the deals I’ve passed up on some of this stuff, but I can’t take it to heart too much because of the ammount of time and money it would cost to track down all this stuff. I actually have to say, I’m sort of shocked that Caroline doesn’t keep reissuing this stuff in new collectible variants. I’m sure all the members of the group still need the money it would net, and I just can’t really fathom that it’s out of some “respect for the fans”. Also - is there a worse sounding live record than Evil Live? Oh wait here it is! (FROM THE SAME SELLER).

Seriously though, shouldn’t there be some kind of definitive Misfits Re-Re-Re-Issue series on vinyl and CD. I’m not even sure how it could be done, the original singles have been chopped up and re-mixed onto the Collection lps, the Static Age, 12 Hits From Hell, and other such things. Maybe keep the Static Age disc as is, get a definitive issue of 12 Hits (if you mix Bobby Steele off this record I’m coming for you Glenn Danzig!), some kind of Collections Redux that removes the tracks from the Earth A.D. session, but adds stuff like the original Cough Cool and Night Of The Living Dead tracks, as well as other session outtakes like Who Killed Marilyn and Spook City. It hurts my head to think about, and it’s clearly more thought than probably even the songwriting here took, but at some point it has to happen. They’re a classic American Rock (Punk) band with one of the messiest back catalogs of all time.

Well you know what “they” say - zines are the life’s blood of “our” “scene”. Seriously though, here’s a few EARLY issues of Flipside my friend Rob Base is selling. These are from back when 1) Flipside was cool 2) They wrote about bands you would care about. Wait do they still publish Flipside? I seriously don’t even know. I have one of those Flipside videos of 7 Seconds and Youth Brigade, there’s at elast 20 7 Seconds songs, all terrible recording quality, all sounding identicle… So these zines…there’s tons of photos of all your (my) favorite bands in these that aren’t widely circulated, Misfits, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, The Germs, GBH… plenty of good usable material for the entrepeneuring bootlegger, or archivist. Hey it’d be a crime not to make t-shirts from some of these photos, and that says nothing of the written content, which is pretty good in the early Flipsides. My favorite is the review section. Also: please check out the rather irreverent Wasted Youth ad below; it probably did not move many units in Texas at the time. I suppose some doofy “shock-me” 82-core band circa now will try and appropriate this as a JPG graphic for their stupid myspace profile. Expect the green-taped copies of Reagan’s In to be sent straight to the dumpster if those folks in Berkely see this. Well it’s not like anyone can really expect taste from a band with the name Wasted Youth I guess. Anyhow, all these mags are in good looking shape , which is pretty surprising considering the age, and the quality of the paper they’re printed on.

HERE’S ONE FOR ALL YOU FIENDS… ahem.

Here’s my vote for “stupidest thing to pay money for on ebay this week”. A Misfits tape w/ hand-written sleeve (by Danzig!!!!) that has alternate mixes of a bunch of songs you’ve heard a crap load of alternate mixes of already. Ryan Richardson is selling this and he is a hustler - RESPECT.  He is the man, because he is the kind of guy that gets to unearth this stuff, but I’m shaking my head at the fools bidding hundreds of American dollars on this thing. Also contains Horror Business outtakes. Great, just what we need. “Alright this is Moon Ghouls Of The Grave take 6 and a half”.  Some doof is going to make a bootleg of this that I’m going to have to flip by in the M section for the next 10 years called like… “The Ghouliest Hits From The Grave Vol. 2″. Most likely the front will feature Bela Legosi fighting a werewolf driving a hotrod, for the rights to a Frankenstein babe surfing on a flying saucer in her bikini. The artwork will of course be very pixilated, and the sleeve of the flimsy European variety. The Misfts are the best shitty band of all time (as in they play shitty, and sound best), but their super-fans are just dorks.
 

Greetings… 2 picks for you today.

• First of all, if you’re a Misfits collector this Horror Business 7″ is probably one of your most sought after items. This has an a-side label on both sides, and as you can see the opening bid of $2000 has already been met. If someone’s got some Xmas money on their side this could maybe get up to $3000 but probably won’t. This is one of the stupider pieces of Misfits minutia, IMO, but I’ve bought things nearly as stupid I guess. You’re probably not going to buy this but you might as well have a look anyway. This one is my 2nd fav misfits single and layout btw (3-Hits is numero uno). I guess I should bust out the Misfits Xmas-day ‘79 boot, next week so I can have a Ghooooul Yule. Maybe not.
• Also seller kiitollinen_kansalainen has a fine spread of dirty hardcore picks. A few worth mentioning: Neanderthal’s life changing “Fighting Music” 7″ , as well as their split with Rorschach, which is where the song Fighting Music is actually found (”let’s fight!”). Outo’s “No Way Out” E.P., is a personal favorite and a great sleeve on it too. A Totalitar/Disclose split LP a true “d-beat” classic, and the best of a number of listend genre items. The Crucifix lp is not a first press so don’t bother, I’m not sure what the deal is with the Battalion of Saints 7″ either. What I wanna know is how this Floorpunch EP made it into the collection? It looks so lonely as the only record without a large ammount of black on the cover. I guess when it comes to genre boundries Mark Porter is just trancendent. In my mind though I’m imagining this crust punker heard Division 1 Champs, took a shower, went straight edge, and then bought 5 more copies of the 7″. Now he’s just selling off the remains of his punk collection, and throwing in an extra FP 7″ for good measure. I think he sings in a band called SobrietyXPoint that sounds like a harder Turning Point 7″ mixed with the Invasion demo, and are playing a show in fantasy land this weekend (see you there).