Things always weird in SF, California, dontcha know ... but ain't no day of the week is this Mac Dre:



Mister Sexx himself/herself, oh, who cares!?!? That is a costume without a safe word, honey.

Um, Jimmy baby, that aint no costume: you just been working that info booth too much, right next to the reggae section:



Just shows ya, Concord got nothing on ya, SF! Or wait, is it the other way around? I'm confused!


Noelle-A-Saurus!!!










Okay, that explains why all the white men ran screaming out the side door. Ain't no play in that costume!
Trick or treat? SCALP!




Corr-Courtney, baby, I just LOVE your .... well, everything! Except, well ... if I have 4 drinks in me, and mind you, I DO, you kinda look like my mom here.  *faint




                                                                            The Invisible Lance!!

When the giant inflatable green-and-purple Frankenstein arises from the center of the store to welcome all visitors, you know it's... Halloween at Amoeba L.A.!!!

The store looked spooky for weeks... cobwebs, bats and pumpkins everywhere, skeletons dancing... even a skeleton with a handlebar moustache over the info counter!  Hmmm... also an old-timey gentleman skeleton in a top hat lounging above the opera CDs in the Jazz Room.  A spectre from beyond the tomb hung over our eerie Halloween section, filled with spooky sound effects, every compilation ever made with "Dead Man's Party" by Oingo Boingo on it, and some Jennifer Lopez movies.  Creepy!

Halloween dawned bright and sunny (as it sometimes does in L.A.) but we kept it appropriate in the store with some Cramps blasting on the stereo and candy bowls everywhere for trick-or-treaters.   Many folks arrived in costume... I was particularly startled by a co-worker dressed as Richard D. James a.k.a the Aphex Twin!  Pretty scary... and a really good cardboard robot (the Bot-O-Tron) and a girl with her head in a milk carton that said "Missing", and many more... Minnie Mouse, a mime, an evil clown, a melancholy bumblebee even!

At 3 we kicked the party off with our Halloween DJ, DJ Heebie Jeebies (real name Mike Dehlin, frontman for local psychobilly outfit The Goddamn Gallows).  He kept it real (scary) with lots of good old evil tunes from "She's My Witch" by the Sonics to "Run To the Hills" by Iron Maiden, interspersed with amazing horror movie trailers (the one for the transgender "Dr. Jeckyll and Sister Hyde" was my favorite!).  Around 5 the excitement was building... it was almost time for our annual Halloween costume contest!

As the many spooky contestants gathered round the stage, I donned my giant silver head with the monocle and purple moustache (no catchy name for this costume... I called it the Old Time Space Gentleman, others thought it looked like Mr. Peanut or the Monopoly Man, but all in aluminum foil).  Like Ed McMahon to Johnny Carson, I introduced our host and handed off the mike -- it was our old friend Lance Rock!

    HAPPY    ALL    HALLOWS    EVE


OK, so the day has finally arrived...All Hallows Eve...Devils Night...So my final three suggestions for listening pleasures this wicked evening are here as well...

First, I'll break ranks and suggest a compact disc.  Not just a compact disc but a compact disc single, CD5, whatever...In 1997, the visionaries @ K-Tel came up with the idea to release a novelty single for the Halloween season by none other than Chubby Checker...Maybe they had seen his half-time extravaganza with the Rockettes back in '88 and, that being pretty scary, they thought he could pull of the Halloween thing. The tracks- Doin' The Zombie, House of Horror, The Twist, & Screams From Beyond rival the Fat Boys collaboration on the scare-o-meter (of course none of these tracks come close to the Fat Boys collaboration that the Beach Boys did, or worse yet Mike Love's "Rock n Roll Again" LP where he helps butcher some older songs...check out "Walk Away Renee" by the Association, Midi/Yamaha DX7 frights from hell...anyhow I digress)

I can state with ease, and it is a well established fact, I am something of a record geek. I prefer the term ‘record collector’ or even ‘music buff,’ but I can live with the ‘geek’ moniker.  Now I also know as a matter of fact, my wife wishes wholeheartedly I wasn’t such a collector/geek. See, there’s a particular and peculiar trait in people like me, and it’s called “the completist syndrome.” The definition: “somebody who collects a particular kind of thing and wants to obtain an example of everything available, even of inferior items.” I can’t just buy a CD of one of my favorite artists and be content, I feel compelled to collect everything in their discography … everything.

Let’s say I’m a Paula Abdul fan. I would have to collect, not just all her full length CD’s and Albums, but I would find it compulsory to track down every single variant of "Straight Up" or "Opposites Attract" in its many forms: 7” singles, CD singles, 12 inch singles, remix here, remix there…

side note: I ‘m not a Paula Abdul fan at all. In fact I can easily state, again as fact, I think she erred in not fulfilling her destiny as a Lakers Cheerleader. In fact, I believe her going into the music industry caused some kind of “butterfly effect,”  which might explain the personality of our chaotic American lives since the eighties. And to think, I always blamed everything on Ronald Wilson Reagan, (here’s one reason, just add up the letters, he’s President 666. Coincidence? There are no coincidences! Know what I mean ...)

 

The second installment in my October favorites series starts with an opera LP from Brazil, it's a single LP of excerpts from Johann Strauss' "O Morcego" or "Der Fledermaus" or "the Bat" if you must.  Issued on the Copacabana label, the sound quality is radio broadcast level and the performance by the Zurich Radio Orchestra is fine, but it's the cover art that makes this a Halloween treat. Cool record store sticker from the Loja Gomes store on Av. Afonso Pena. It appears that the store was once in the center of Belo Horizonte-a huge city about 300 miles above Rio...





Up next...a classic American mix



Folkways and Edgar Allen Poe...Folkways records released this version of the Pit & the Pendulum in 1967, the orator is David Kurlan.  I was abe to dig up a little about  his Broadway work, mostly roles in musicals. He also did a couple of other Folkways voice overs. His reading is straight forward and very effective, kind of like the polar opposite of the Lou Reeds double CD nightmare based on Edgar Allan Poe. The LP comes with a small pamphlet containing instructions for teachers as well a sheet of transparency images for the old mimeograph...