CLIP OF THE MOMENT: THE RED SPECTRE (1907)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN TO EVERYONE!

And to those of you affected by Hurricane Sandy,.... HANG IN THERE!

TUNE OF THE MOMENT: "CHICKENS FOR CHRISTMAS" by THE UBANGIS

"Chickens for Christmas" is the Xmas side of The Ubangis amazing holiday 7" single from 1993 on DeCeased / Brutarian Records split label. The b-side is "(She's A) Yamakah Mama (At Hanukkah Time)". "Chickens..." also appeared on a local Xmas CD comp called "It's A Rockin' Christmas" on the Run Wild Records label.

Appearing on this Rockabilly track are yers truly (Brian Horrorwitz) on lead vocals and drums and "Saucy" Randy Manos on guitars, bass and backup vocals. (UMF had yet to join the band but came along soon sfter.) The single was recorded in 1 take on 1/4 inch reel-to-reel tape by Carl Merson at his Beware Of Dog studios in Silver Spring, Maryland. Yes, 1/4 inch reel-to-reel! This is what all Rockabilly should sound like you twerps! Look, even the chicken liked it! Ah... whaddoiknow...

The dancing chicken footage was "borrowed" from the Werner Herzog movie "Stroszek".

And now, the lovely lyrics:

Well I gotta drop that old Kris Kringle a line
My heart's all a-tingle, got a Christmas wish so fine
It's kind of fowl but with a little luck
He'll bring me some brand new friends who go cluck
Come on Santa Claus
I'm asking ya please....
Give me chickens for Christmas

You know I'm gonna love each hen that old Saint Nick sends
I won't eat none of them, not my fine feathered friends
I'll love them so, this is my Christmas wish
I promise Santa they won't end up on a dish
Come on Santa Claus
All I'm askin' is please...
Give me some chickens for Christmas

AAAAW, YEAH!!

(I ain't cluckin' around! etc.)

And when we're out caroling together
In that snowy weather
I'll make each one a Christmas sweater
So they don't get snow on their feathers

Come on Santa Claus
I'm beggin' ya, please...
Send me chickens for Christmas

On Christmas Day we'll have a Jingle Bell wing-ding sing-a-long
Drinkin' egg nog a-pluckin' and a-cluckin' to a Christmas song
They'll be happy as can be
And on New Year's Eve I'm gonna set 'em free
Oh, please, Santa Claus
Won't you hear my plea

And give me chickens for Christmas (x3)

BLUES ON THE BEACH! THIS WEEKEND!

Saturday & Sunday, June 25th & 26th, 2011, 12 noon, it's the very first "Blues on the Beach" show - The Colonial Beach Blues Festival presented by the lovely folks from Brutarian / Populuxe! A weekend festival featuring The Nighthawks, Bill Kirchen & Too Much Fun and MANY others! (SEE POSTER ABOVE) AND our own in-house cave-stompers THE UBANGIS will be performing Sunday afternoon right before Bill Kirchen (who is not to be missed)! This is a benefit show for the Organization for Autism Research (OAR) . CHECK OUT THE COLONIAL BEACH BLUES FESTIVAL FACEBOOK PAGE FOR MORE DETAILS!

HORRORWITZ'S 8 NIGHTS OF HAPPENIN' HANUKKAH HITS! #3: "Yamaka Mama" by The Ubangis

This next track comes from our in-house band The Ubangis. The complete title is actually "(She's A) Yamaka Mama (At Chanukah Time)"Originally released as a 7" holiday 45 in 1994 (a split by both Brutarian and DeCeased Records) and given away free with the then newest issue of Brutarian magazine as a split Christmas / Hanukkah record. Both tracks were also featured on the first volume of the CD compilation series "It's A Rockin' Christmas" (on the Run Wild Records label). I thought the idea was pretty funny at the time but I guess a couple of people found it slightly offensive. Luckily most of us Jews have a sense of humor. The Xmas side, incidentally, was a swingin' little rockabilly number called "chickens For Christmas". Enjoy!

HALLOWEEN BURLESQUE SPOOKTACULAR!

This Sat. October 30th Trash Palace will be providing the monster wallpaper videos at this wild upcoming event which also features a live performance by our in-house cave-stompers The Ubangis! If you are anywhere in or near Washington, DC this Halloween weekend you could do worse then to attend...

Saturday, October 30th: It's the Voodoo Nights Halloween bash! Doors 8pm; Show 9pm Price: $15.00 . Mayhem, Music and Ghoulesque! Featuring: The Ubangis live in concert! Plus: Live Sideshow & Burlesque hosted by Jonny Porkpie with Rev. Valentine, DC's sideshow girl Mab Just Mab, Baltimore's Kay Sera and the High Priestess of Burlesque Jo Boooobs!! Don't miss the Costume Contest with cool Prizes! *Post show DJ & Band Dance Party with live Go-Go Dancing by Candy Del Rio! This show is for ages 21 and over. Advance tickets are available at www.redandblackbar.com .

UBANGIS GIG IN MD THIS SUNDAY!

This Sunday, July 18th, our in-house band The Ubangis perform at another ALL AGES Sunday matinee at The Quarry House Tavern in lovely Silver Spring, Maryland (8401 Georgia Avenue)! And looky here: Our good buddies The Midnight Creeps are back in town making their de-butt appearance at Quarry House! Come check them out for some fur-ocious female lead old school punk rawk, baby! Also on the bill are the Casio-tastic stylings of The Sweet Sixteens (from Indiana) and the amazing Poppetes all the way from Sweden! You don't wanna miss this one! The show starts at 2pm and ends promptly at 5pm. (When we said 'matinee' we f'ing meant it!) And it's ALL AGES so bring yer foetus!

ROCKIN' RELIEF THIS SATURDAY!

If you happen to be in the Baltimore, Maryland area (or like to drive) please consider attending this event faeturing Trash Palace's in-house band The Ubangis:

For more info please check out www.trashpalace.com/UbangisGigs.htm

HALLOWEEN GIG TOMB-ORROW

If you happen to be in the Maryland or DC area (or like to travel) we urge you to proceed with caution if attending this event:

VAMPYROS COMPLETOS

My close friend Dr. Penis has recently posted a blog about the 1996 "3 Films By Jess Franco" CD release, it's original 1969 source LPs and the subsequent re-releases under the "Vampyros Lesbos" title. Unfortunately the complete version of the CD featuring all of the music has been out of circulation for many years now. But if you check out the article over at his Purple Zombie DJ blog you can download it there for free! This psyche-pop music composed and released on 2 LPs in Germany circa 1969 by Manfred Hübler and Siegfried Schwab was a surprise indie hit when re-released on LP and CD in 1996 and pretty much then jump-started the entire Euro-trash soundtrack / pop / lounge music craze! I myself remember being given a cassette of this back then by my buddy Joe Johnson (creator of the ahead-of-it's-time way-cool fanzine "3:AM"). At first listen I didn't really know how to take it. It had rock elements but wasn't really rock. There was a psychedelic / experimental side to it but then it had a pop sound as well. After 2 or 3 listenings I was hooked! It became one of my fave soundtracks ever and I never get tired of listening to it. I remember tracking down fuzzy looking VHS bootlegs of the 3 Jess Franco German movies that the music was used for ("She Killed in Ecstasy", "Vampyros Lesbos" and "The Devil Came From Akasava"). None of these movies were subtitled and despite my lack of understanding most of the German dialogue I probably watched those tapes 10 times each! A big part of the appeal was finally seeing / hearing how the music was used in each film. Franco was always pretty progressive when it came to sometimes mixing in modern music with his movie scores. Somehow using these prog-ish and at the time modern sounds worked for those movies and set a whole new flavor to the way Euro-exploitation movies sounded. Franco had already used music by Manfred Mann in his "Venus In Furs" (aka "Paroxismus", 1970) and would go on to direct "Killer Barbys" (1996), a gothic horror flick featuring music by and starring the titular Spanish garage punkers of the same name, as well as "Tender Flesh" (1997) which featured music by the heavily under rated Spanish rock band Sexy Sadie. Not to mention "Vampire Blues" which was scored by my band The Ubangis. "Vampire Blues", like "Vampyros Lesbos", was another lesbian re-telling of the Dracula story. Only Jess Franco could have come up with the idea of telling these kinds of stories using rock music as a sonic backdrop!

If you have any interest in movie soundtracks, psychedelia, strange pop music, Jess Franco or Euro-trash films then the original complete "3 Films by Jess Franco" CD is required listening folks! GO GET IT NOW while you can!

LINKS:
The Purple Zombie DJ blog is at http://purplezombiedj.blogspot.com/
The "3 Films by Jess Franco" ("Vampyros Lesbos") article is at http://purplezombiedj.blogspot.com/2009/02/3-films-by-jess-franco-vampyros-lesbos.html

HAVE A TRASHY HALLOWEEN!

And if you happen to be in the Maryland / DC area tonight, you could do worse then attend this event:

RUDY RAY MOORE: A BLACK LEGEND PASSES ON

Last Saturday night, just after midnight, I received a phone call from my buddy Bill Baker, a friend and fan of Rudy Ray Moore and his family. Bill told me that Rudy's daughter had called him saying that Mr. Moore's health was rapidly declining and he was not expected to make it through the weekend. Sadly, hours later on Sunday, Rudy Ray Moore, an entertainment icon, passed away. A few of you that know me know what a huge fan of his I am. Indeed, he has been one of my idols for several decades and I will miss him dearly.

In the early days of home video rentals the Wizard Video label released a trailer collection called "The Best of Sex and Violence" (1985). And it was on this VHS tape that I first discovered Rudy Ray Moore. Amongst the seventies exploitation trailers compiled on there were several Blaxploitation titles including the 3 complete trailers for "Dolemite", "The Human Tornado" and "The Disco Godfather". I remember laughing my ass off at such classic lines as "Bitch! Are you for real!?" and "If you crave satisfaction, this is the place to find that action! Coming to this theater as it's next attraction!". Moore's delivery was really over-the-top and reminded me of a lot of guys that I had gone to school with back in the seventies; kids that were always going around trying to out-badass each other! It wasn't until later that I realized part of his style was an intentional sort-of self-parody. Rudy was having a laugh with his movies and that's part of what makes them great! I remember turning my friends on to the Moore movies and it's funny now to think of a bunch of young white kids in the suburbs running around quoting Dolemite (which we did for years).

Eventually I was able to track down copies of his movies and later I was lucky to find some of his records. A lot of the classic Black "party records" (XXX humor) were only ever sold to adults in urban liquor stores and inner-city record shops so, needless to say, I had never seen any of them before! What always cracked me up was what I call the Rudy Ray Logic of his humor. As Dolemite: "And tell him I want him out of here in 24 hours. And 23 of them are already gone!" A lot of his jokes were much more x-rated then Richard Pryor or anyone else I had heard, but there was this intentional goofiness to them that made it all in fun. Like on his LP called "The Second Rudy Ray Moore Album" (pictured below), a live recording (or, more likely, pseudo-live), Moore is admiring a female member of his audience: "Woman, I sure would like to get in your pants!" "Why?" "'cause I done shit in mine!". Rudy was not just another guttermouth comic but a real genius!

And talk about a do-it-all entertainer, Moore has done live stand-up comedy, released over 22 comedy albums and movie soundtracks on 8-trak, LP, cassette and CD, sang and released records of his rhythm and blues music, written for the movies, acted in his and others' films, directed movies and somehow held onto the rights for most of his stuff. AND he even ran for president! My good friend Chuck Jeffreys, an entertainer and stunt coordinator in the Hollywood industry as well as founder of the martial arts exercise and training company Combatitude, told me that in the seventies Rudy was the first Black actor he ever saw performing Kung Fu in the movies. Already practicing martial arts, Chuck told me that seeing Moore perform in his movies bolstered his want to do the same! Chuck says "Most of the time it was Chinese actors we'd see in the kung fu flicks. Then came Rudy and his over the top performances. This wasn't Bill Cosby in 'I-Spy' This was kinda out there and I wanted to do, THAT.". Mr. Moore has made many appearances at horror and movie conventions and I feel lucky to have gotten to meet him several times. How surreal it was to go to breakfast one weary convention morning and find Dolemite himself pouring the orange juice at the breakfast bar! Some of you might remember in the older printed Trash Palace catalogues I had a "Rudy Ray Moore" section, which was kind of a joke at the time, the idea that he was his own genre of sorts. (I had a "Poster" section, a "Videocassette" section, "a "Record and CD" section and a "Rudy Ray Moore" section.) This was just before Xenon Home Video re-issued his movies for the sell-through market which brought about a new Rudy Ray / Dolemite revival of sorts exposing his work to a slew of new young fans. If any of you are long time Trash Palace customers you may remember getting a Christmas card from me in the mail in 1997 with this photo on it.: (No, we were NOT stoned in that picture!) That was from the second time I met Mr. Moore at the Chiller Theatre convention in New jersey. I remember just after this photo was taken Rudy tried to teach me the Disco Godfather neck move. ("Put your weight on it!") I never did quite pull it off but it was nice of him to try to teach me anyways. (My chiropractor didn't think it was too nice though.) Around this time Something Weird Video released the excellent Blaxploitation trailer collection called "Afros, Macks and Zodiacs" hosted by Rudy and he was set up at their table helping them promote it. In 1998 Rudy appeared at Creature Feature Video's excellent movie convention in Terrytown, New York. What made this show so special was that Moore performed his live act that Saturday night in a full-blown unexpurgated XXX style! Rudy's manager came out and warned the crowd in advance that the language was raw and, holy shit, he was not kidding! The crowed roared from start to finish. There were several celebrities of the seventies screen in the audience that night plus fans and collectible dealers and, dare I say, by the end there was not an un-blushed face in the house! I felt lucky that I was able to track down some of Moore's singing 45's, a few of which have shown up on Norton Records excellent compilation of his RnB tunes called "Hully Gully Fever". But I never would've thought that in 2004 I'd have to opportunity to get him to sing with my band The Ubangis. To say this short appearance was unrehearsed is kind of like saying the Hindenburg was a little balloon accident. Basically, I walked up to Rudy at a Chiller convention a couple of hours before we were scheduled to go on stage and asked him if he wanted to sing and perform with us. He said "Sure!" and although we discussed trying to play his blues song "Easy, Easy Baby" a tiny bit beforehand we never actually had the chance to quite work it out properly. He just showed up at the show, came onstage, and...

As you can hear things were a bit loose, but for me personally it was a dream come true! Rudy hadn't really planned on doing any particular jokes that night, he just pulled them out onstage. He told me afterwords that he noticed a few younger children in the crowd and tried to tone it down. Even I was shocked!:

Yes, Rudy Ray Moore is Dolemite! He put his finger in the ground and turned the whole world around! To this day I am in awe of the man and I can't help but think that as time goes on his popularity will continue to grow and grow. And in closing let me say this: Rudy Ray Moore, he may be gone... but THE LEGEND OF MUTHAFUCKIN' DOLEMITE LIVES ON!

MY FAVE RUDY RAY LINE: "I got a dong as big as King Kong!"
MY FAVE RUDY RAY MOVIE: A tie between "The Human Tornado" and "Petey Wheatstraw, the Devil's Son-In-Law"
MY FAVE RUDY RAY LP: "Eat Out Moore Often" (a classic!)
MY FAVE RUDY RAY SONGS: "Easy, Easy Baby" and "Theme from The Human Tornado" - amazing!

Thanx to Bill Baker for shooting the Rudy / Ubangis video!

LINKS:
The Dolemite.com website is at http://www.dolemite.com/
Rudy Ray Moore website at Shocking Videos http://www.rudyraymoore.com/
Rudy Ray Moore filmography on the Internet Movie Database is at http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0601834/
Chuck Jeffrey's Combatitude is at http://www.combattitude.com/

JOHN PHILLIP LAW meets THE UBANGIS!

Actually, this should be called "John Phillip Law Upstages The Ubangis"! After the recent and unexpected passing of John Phillip Law, I had mentioned this video in a prior post ("Diabolik Says Goodbye") of Mr. Law goofing around during a Ubangis soundcheck. I then had many requests (well, at least one bloke asked for it!) to post the clip and, so, here it is! This was recorded live late one intoxicated Saturday night over Halloween weekend in 1998 at the Chiller Theatre horror convention in New Jersey. Things were very hectic and I was running around totally focused on getting the band gear setup and completely oblivious to the facts that 1. there was a man sitting right in front of me at the edge of the stage doing wacky things and 2. said man was John Phillip Law! And I especially should have noticed because I had just gotten his autograph that weekend! In fact I had no idea any of this was going on until I saw a videotape of the gig a week later. Not having seen the tape for many years until today it was a bit different then I had remembered when describing it in the previous JPL post. The giant plastic bones you see him messing with incidentally were prop drumticks that I played with at the start of the gig. Later on in the clip Law can be seen watching our act as we perform the instrumental number "Microphonic Nightmare". The band members at the time were myself, Saucy Randy Manos, Kevin "Sexual Chocolate" Hall (who played a handful of gigs on bass with us around that time), and Jill Grable Barnett who had left the band 5 years prior to start a family but returned for this special gig. Sadly, Jill too has also passed on. Back then, during those surreal and wonderful moments, I couldn't ever imagine those people ever leaving this place. I feel very lucky this was all caught on tape at least so I can look back on what seems now like some far-out dream. The cameras that night were operated by Stephen Blickenstaff, Eric Pugliese and Adam Strausner.

Wild times!

DIABOLIK SAYS GOODBYE

I was just heading to bed and jumped online for a minute and was shocked to read about the death last Tuesday of actor John Phillip Law. A lot of you probably know him as the star of Mario Bava's "Danger: Diabolik!"and Pygar the blind winged angel-man in "Barbarella". Law acted in a lot of other cool films as well including "Eyes Behind the Wall", a pretty twisted Italian thriller from 1977, and "Blood Delirium" from 1982, an over-the-top Italian horror trip. He was also memorable in "Skidoo" and "Death Rides A Horse", but for me I'll always think of him as Diabolik and that unusual character Pygar. I had the pleasure of meeting Law at a horror convention in 1998. My band The Ubangis was playing there on Saturday night. Things were a bit chaotic at the show and it took awhile to set up the band equipment. When the convention was over and I was back home in Maryland the following week I viewed a videotape of the performance. Much to my surprise there was John Phillip Law sitting in front of us on the edge of the stage during our long setup, hamming things up for the crowd. He seemed slightly intoxicated (a lot of people were that night!) and was goofing around for the audience. He had taken one of my big plastic bones that I occasionally drum with and was trying to use it as a sort of baseball bat to keep a balloon up in the air with it, volleying it above his head over and over. I was so focused on getting everything set up that I was totally oblivious to this. At one point he missed the balloon and it went to the floor. He placed the bone down next to him for a second and stood up so he could bend down for the balloon. Right about that time we were getting ready to start so I grabbed the bone off the stage not realising he was using it for his little impromptu comic skit. He returned to his seat back on the stage edge and looked around to find the bone missing. Then he looked up at the crowd and made this sad little boy face. Everyone laughed it up but I was off in another world apparently! In fact I had absolutely no idea any of this happened so seeing the tape was quite a shock! He stuck around for the concert and I could see him in the videotape watching the band and just laughing and laughing, really enjoying himself. Needless to say I went from being a fan of his to a HUGE fan!

Law and I spoke for a few minutes at the convention. He talked about Marisa Mell, his co-star in "Diabolik" and what a beautiful and sweet woman she was. (Mell had died a few years earlier an untimely death at only 53 years old of cancer.) The fun thing about these conventions is that sometimes you really get to feel that you touch with a "celebrities" personal side, and Law was one of the first for me that I had met. You could tell what a personable and down-to-earth fellow he was really was despite seeming larger then life flying through the sky with Jane Fonda in "Barbarella". Law still looked great the last time I saw him and so it's hard to imagine he's gone. Having made so many fans over the years, from his cult movie roles as well as his convention appearances, he will be missed by many!