Let's Look at the Show

Seeing a pipe organ in action is almost as much fun as hearing one in person. Same with a Wurlitzer theatre organ.

Where the latter is often designed to give a bit of a show, the former is simply a wonder to behold and even better if you can see the player in action. Aside from a drummer on a trap kit, we can't think of another musical instrument that actively requires all four limbs if the performer wants to make as much sound as possible.

The sheer mechanical spectacle of a "Mighty" Wurlitzer theatre organ still has the power to amaze -- for us, anyway.

Pipe organ virtuoso Cameron Carpenter lays waste to "Sleigh Ride" by Leroy Andreson in this video from his Youtube channel. He plays it almost too fast to keep up with himself, but dang if he doesn't look like a cartoon octopus while covering all the orchestral parts of the winter tune:


Less manic and more hypnotic is David Dunlap playing the same tune on a Wersi Scala organ -- basicaly a Wurlitzer with a motherboard instead of bellows, pipes and levers. Prepare to be mesmerized:


Then enjoy falling down a rabbit hole of organ performance videos, because that's what happens. Either that or you go ice skating.

Happy Halloween, punkins

Ooh baby. This song gets a lot of play at TMI headquarters, but it's never more appropriate than on Halloween. The vintage radio-drama organ stabs and shocks, eerie sirens call in the distance as the drums clap thunder to keep you awake long after dark. And Mr. Cave spins a deep baritone tale of Southern Gothic dread, dropping Robert E. Howard horror into the modern age. Ice. Cold.

I Love You Anyhow

This live performance of "I Put a Spell On You" by Screamin' Jay Hawkins jettisons the baritone sax that filths up the 1956 studio recording replacing it with a carnival-esque organ and Duane Eddy guitar.

That change takes away the nudie-mag bomp of the original but cranks up the song's late show histrionics.

Hawkins' woody baritone sounds great and his stage performance -- how we wish we'd been around to see the man at full power.

Now get yer creep on:

[courtesy of nedalivzjatmojnik]

Why didn't he ever host The Muppet Show?

Don Post Mask Not Included

VERNE LANGDON
Music for Zombies: Grave Music for Brave People
The Phantom of the Organ/The Vampyre at the Harpsichord
(Electric Lemon)
If a well-intentioned adult played Music for Zombies at a children's Halloween party today, kids likely wouldn't respond to its vintage radio-drama sound. They might laugh and ask if they can watch Hostel 2 instead, or simply wonder why minor chords on a theater pipe organ are supposed to induce shivers. [Also: If that Frisbee lands in my yard again, it's mine. -- ed.] We call those kids chumps.

Verne Langdon -- a hidden treasure of mid-20th century Hollywood -- plays piano, calliope, and Hammond and pipe organs on these nine tracks he composed. The music is bookended by the sound of a crypt door opening and closing.

"Zombie Sonata" taps a Beethoven vein, if Ludwig had been listening to broadcasts of Inner Sanctum, and ends with a man's agonized screams. "Flowers of Evil" is all classic pipe-organ moodiness, and a guaranteed way to end a bad first date. The three part "Zombie Suite" feels a little too lush, but you do get a calliope-mad recording of Langdon's "Carnival of Souls" -- a tune he liked so much he recorded it on nearly every keyboard available to him at various points in his career.

Barely cresting the 30-minute mark, Zombies is just long enough to get you through a dramatic reading of W.W. Jacobs' The Monkey's Paw. (Hint: Program the tracks so "Tombs Egyptian" syncs up with Sergeant Major Morris' visit.)

Now, if you want to send the kids crying into mom's apron, Langdon's double-shot The Phantom of the Organ/The Vampyre at the Harpsichord will do.

Phantom has Langdon helming a genuine theater pipe organ, extracting the iciest chords he can. Really, there's not much more to it than that. The listener's appreciation for pipe organ and being serenaded by a disfigured obsessive who lives in the sewers below the Paris opera house will dictate how much you get from this disc. ("Sound Trip through the Catacombs" has some nice sound effects, including sicko giggling and terrified ingénue screams.)

Likewise, Vampyre features Langdon going solo on the harpsichord. It starts out at a dirge pace, and even drifts into a pleasant, almost Bach-like place for "Eternal Life Suite." "Carnival of Souls" appears again, far spookier on the plucked strings of the harpsichord, followed by the short, dizzying "Flight of the Vampyre." If Daniel Ash of Bauhaus didn't learn some of his guitar vamps from this album, then we're returning our black nail polish.

This music will at least scare the kids by virtue of the fact that you own it. Point your speakers out the windows on the big night, turn out the lights and dramatically decrease the odds of having to give away any candy.

Reference materials: If you like the incidental music from old horror shows on television and radio, or have a jones for odd organ LPs found at thrift stores, these records will make you quite happy.

Bonus fun fact: Phantom and Vampyre were played for years in haunted-house attractions at various theme parks in Southern California, and all three of these albums were originally available to order from the back pages of Famous Monsters magazine. FM founder/editor Forrest J. Ackerman wrote the hilariously purple liner notes for Phantom and Vampyre. Read them aloud and you'll sound like a villain from the Batman TV series:

"That doomed avatar of evil, brother-in-blood ... the Count: Draculon!"