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Jacob,
I assume that Satan's Pilgrims is one of the "Portland bands" you
speak of-. Speaking for SP, bands like the Ghouls were an influence
(especially in our dress code)as were Frank E. Stein and the Ghouls
(not surf, but monster-themed instrumentals). Check out this link for
more on them and to see how we paid tribute (ripped them off) for our
Creature Feature album.
I always think of the Ghastly Ones as taking a cue from the Deadly
Ones, who were obviously the monster-themed parody of the Lively Ones.
I've posted this before, but there were also individual songs, like
Satan's Theme (the first song we ever learned as a band), and Devil
Surfer that weren't by bands that had any kind of horror or monster
theme, but influenced us in the direction we wanted to go.
When we started MOAM was doing the space/sci-fi thing, the Untamed
Youth and Phantom Surfers were doing the surf band thing, so we just
sort of went for the vampire thing, and the Ghastlys followed
soonafter and one-upped us with their background in Hollywood mask
making and special effects.
As far as SP and the Ghastly Ones go, if I may speak for them, what's
really going on here is that we were/are not only fanatic about surf
and other early 60s music, bit we were/are fanatical about early 60s
pop culture in general. Just as Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, Mooneyes, Honda
Bikes, and early skateboarding are peripherally tied to the surf
culture of the early 60s, so was the huge explosion of interest in
monsters and horror movies.
The classic Universal Monsters created from the 30s through the 50s
(Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, Wolfman, Creature From the Black
Lagoon, Bride of Frankenstein, etc) enjoyed their height in popularity
during this time thanks to drive-ins recycling the films and the
popularity of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Thus, you get
"Monster Mash" and its copy cats, the Munsters, the Addams Family, the
Haunted Mansion opening at Disneyland etc.
To the mind of a pre to early-teen male, monsters were just as cool as
surfing and hot rods. Aurora introduced the Frankenstein model in 1962
, it sold like hotcakes, and soon all of the Universal Monsters were
available as hugely popular models. Then,in the mid-60s, Aurora
combined two big sellers, monsters and hot rods and came up with
models like Dracula's Dragster and Mummy's Chariot, while Grandpa
Munster's Dragula car was wowing everyone along with the Batmobile.
Drag Nut, Surf Fink, etc. by Ed Roth were all basically monsters
surfing and dragging, and they were copycatted to create the
"Weird-Oh" series of models, which had its own "surfy" companion album
by the Silly Surfers.
I was born in '67, so I don't remember any of the "first wave" monster
stuff (ha ha) but I clearly remember it still being popular through
the mid-70s along with the hot rod stuff (at least for young boys).
Maybe someone who was around for the first wave might shed more light
on this and validate it or not...
Maybe we we're using a form of revisionist history, like modern
rockabillies with all of their tattoos-did Carl Perkins have a tattoo?
Maybe he did....I don't know. Anyway, we have fun with it and while we
didn't stick to the genre as closely as say, the Ghastly Ones (we've
never been able to stick to anything) it gave us an identity.
Sorry, I'll stop now.
Ted Pilgrim
--- In , "Jacob Dobner"
<jacobdobner@y...> wrote:
>
> Something I have always been curious about is the obvious sub-genre of
> surf music that is the so-called horror music. How did all of this
> start? There are the Portland band's who are really into the whole
> thing and then there are the Ghastly One's. And all the way back we
> have the Ghouls. There are many more modern bands that have this sound
> as well. How did this whole idea start and evolve?
>
> And do we think of the horror sound because of the image of the band
> or do we associate the actual melodies with creepy music we have heard
> in our youth.
>
> Are the Ghouls really the start of it all? In other words were they a
> popular enough band to influence the bands that came.
>
