Children Of the night ....

[dem bones]

.... what bloody awful music they make.

Apologies in advance. You've The Book Of Lists: Horror to blame for this ....

Type O Negative - Suspended In Dusk: Spoilt for choice with sadly missed Pete Steele's incendiary beat combo. Black #1 is a twisted love song to a predatory Goth chick, Bloody Kisses is sad, sad, sad, Suspended In Dust, a beautiful ugly dirge. "I am forced to dwell in grey Autumnal twilight/ I am suspended in dusk ... Father, please forgive him, For he knows not what to do ..." Take your pick, they're all class.

Birthday Party - Release The Bats: The original 4AD single is pop smash gold, but check also the ritual trashing they afford it on the live It's Still Living semi-bootleg. "This is the song you love the most and we hate the most ....."

Lee Harvey Oswald Band - Vampires: Runaway train of a non-riff, lyrics unintelligible but for the storming "I'm just gettin' wasted with the vampires" refrain.

Slaughter and the Dogs - Victims of the Vampire: Special effects, this was your finest hour! Wayne Barrett would introduce this glam-punk classic by swirling his cloak, bursting a bag of flour over himself, run around shrieking and cackling in the "mist". "One of you victim's are gonna be dead!"

Radiorama - Vampires: Absolutely brill 80's italian Synth Disco pop!

Bauhaus - Bela Lugosi's Dead: Glam rock for the morose and it still sounds like the most fun you can have without actually being dead.

Lestat - Passing: Criminally under-rated, sample-heavy industrial-goth gloomsters. I was gonna go with Dark Trick but Passing wins out as for once we get to hear a vampire hunter's perspective. Could be that the dialogue is ripped from a movie but I've no idea which one.

Peter Hammill - Energy Vampires: "This guy says he wrote all my songs/ This girl says she's having my baby/ Me, I don't know them from Adam & Eve/ sometimes I really believe I'm going crazy/ Excuse me while I suck your blood/ excuse me when I phone you/ I've got every one of your records, man/ doesn't that mean that I own you?" So upset a sizeable proportion of his fan base that the dark prince of Gothic gloom used a page in the World Record tour programme to reassure it was only the soul-draining psychic sponges he had in his sites. Another of his vampire episodes, Van Der Graaf Generator's When She Comes, is also recommended listening.

Xmal Deutschland – Incubus Succubus II: Arguably the Hamburg-based Goth Goddesses' finest five minutes. No idea what Anja's singing about, but chances are we'd not be far off the mark in including it.

Rocket From The Crypt - I Drink Blood: The direct approach. Not quite up there with the mighty On A Rope, but teddy boys on Dexys and the Clash make for an exciting din. "Ahhhhhh!!!! Whoo! Man. Oh. I drink blood on a Halloween/ yeah what I need/ It make me feel alive", etc.

The Meteors - My Daddy Is A Vampire: "My mother is a mummy and she needs plasma too ...." Psychobilly kid realises his family aren't like other families. And he's complaining?

Nerf Herder - Theme From Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Whether by accident or design doesn't matter. This short, sharp, punk pop thrash is perfect for the job at hand.

Nosferatu - Vampires Cry: "Most people have a miserable time of it. They get depressed often and try to put on a brave front. We say forget that. Enjoy the depression. Feast on the emotional turmoil." For all Louis DeWray's unhappy-go-lucky demeanour, Nosferatu never sound quite miserable enough to these ears - not singling them out: Goth bands don't as a rule - and the overwrought Vampyres Cry is typically too jolly by half.

Meco - Love Me, Dracula: Perhaps the apex of jaunty, infuriatingly catchy Euro-disco.

The Legendary Pink Dots - Casting The Runes: MRJ fans needn't trouble themselves unduly. Not a slide projector or demon in sight, just the beautiful Madeleine, doomed to an eternity of solitude because she's a vampire or goth or both.

The Inca Babies - Big Jugular: You've got one, they want it, and they've recorded an all-out sonic attack in best Birthday Party cod swampland blues tradition to prove it.

Theatres des Vampires - Carmilla: Radiorama, Bruno 'Dracula ChaChaCha' Martino, Sabrina if she'd only shoved a pair of plastic fangs in her mouth - the Italians are brilliant at being vampires and these mean Goth metal muthas, fronted by ice queen Sonja Scarlet, are no exception.

Wire - Feed me: This probably isn't about vampires. Knowing Wire, it probably isn't about anything at all, but Graham Lewis sure has a voracious appetite for something. "How Fast can you run?

The Only Ones - The Beast: "Out in the street the modern vampire prowls/ He's been spreading disease all around/ It's an epidemic, if you don't believe me/ You oughta take a look at the eyes of your friends..... There's no cure!"

Rory Erikson - Night Of The Vampire: The great psychedelic punk warrior got himself as together as his precarious mental health would allow to warn us of impending attack. Later covered - reverentially - by Entombed.

Siouxsie & The Banshees - Trust In Me: The self-penned We Hunger and Night Shift qualify, but it's their cover of the snake's song from Disney's The Jungle Book gives off an authentic vampire vibe.

T. Rex - Jeepster: "I said girl i'm just a vampire for your lu-uh-hu-uv ...." Bit cheeky to include it on the strength of one line when bands like Warfare were knocking out entire concept albums celebrating Hammer Horror but, strangely, I feel no guilt.

Daisy Chainsaw - Dog With Sharper Teeth: There was a dog in Zoltan, Hound Of Dracula. Good enough for me.

3D Invisibles - I Wanna Dig Up Bela Lugosi: Creepy Rick sets agenda for bands forthcoming vacation in Hollywood.

The Damned - Plan 9 Channel 7: Vanian's tribute to 'fifties horror hostess Maila Nurmi, the wasp-waisted, designer-shroud modeling star of Plan 9 From Outer Space. As is ....

Misfits - Vampira. Mini-masterpiece from a band whose entire repertoire was built around similar horror-themed blasts of short duration. We Bite and Horror Hotel likewise fit the bill.

Concrete Blonde - Bloodletting: Ms. Napolitano comes to grief down in New Orleans. Best line. "You were a vampire and now I am nothing at all ...."

Girlschool - Love At First Bite: When they weren't busy perpetuating a Valentine's Day Massacre with Motorhead, the girls found time to bash out a pop metal celebration of vampire luv.

The Cycle Sluts from Hell - Soultaker: Venus Penis-Crusher and the gals escape their S&M dungeon to record .... a soft-metal torch ballad!

Don Hinson & The Rigormorticians - Riboflavin-Flavored, Non-Carbonated, Polyunsaturated Blood: As enthusiastically covered by 45 Grave. Don and his ghouls were a Boris Pickett derivative Monster Dance Party act whose songbook includes Robbin Graves, Little Ol' Graverobber Me, The Monster Jerk and Werewolf Watusi.

----------------------------------------
Subs bench. The first four - make that five (snigger) - are from the novelty end of the spectrum. Finnish goth rockers Two Witches also include Dracula Rising Bites And Bloody Kisses and Like Christopher Lee - all nine minutes of it - in their repertoire. They're very serious about this stuff. Red Lipstique were a Bollock Brothers disco offshoot. Night Of The Vampire is a twangy, Joe Meek enhanced instrumental. Meek sacked the bands vocalist, Rod Stewart, to give them a better chance of conquering the charts. When that somehow failed to happen, the scream was promptly recycled to Sutch for My Big Black Coffin. Dracula's Tango, and the skyscraper-haired cannibal eaters invent The Saturdays. Dark Theater. Might come back to them, but in the meantime give their Gypsy Girl a miss if you know what's good for you .....

John Zacherley - Dinner With Drac
Bruno Martino - Dracula ChaChaCha
Allan Sherman - My Son, The Vampire
Screaming Lord Sutch - Dracula's Daughter
Warfare - Prince Of Darkness
Alice Cooper - Fresh Blood
Two Witches - Mircalla
Dark Theater - Undead
Moontreckers - Night Of The Vampire
Toto Coelo - Dracula's Tango
Red Lipstique - Drac's Back
Kings Of The Sun - Vampire
Marilyn Manson - No Reflection
Dreamboys - Bela Lugosi's Birthday

.... and three I despise so much it's almost love (but isn't even close).

B. A, Robertson - Sucker For Your Love: Everything on The Monster Club soundtrack brings me out in hives, but this is worse than even the Viewers' theme song. Saw him live once, pre-hits, supporting VDGG. He introduced himself as "the new wave Pam Ayres." And then, God help me, he went on to prove it.

Sting - Moon Over Bourbon Street: It's Sting. Enough said.

Annie Lennox - Love Song For A Vampire: Don't even go there ....
----------------------------

[cauldronbrewer]

My favorite of these is undoubtedly Bela Lugosi's Dead.

A few others:

Neil Young - Vampire Blues

Blue Öyster Cult - Nosferatu

Smashing Pumpkins - Bullet with Butterfly Wings (not really about vampires, but it does begin with the line "The world is a vampire . . . ")

Then there's the band Vampire Weekend, though I don't know if they've ever actually sung about vampires.

Do I lose all credibility here if I admit to liking Sting?

[dem bones]

Jul 10, 2012 13:04:48 GMT cauldronbrewer said:

Do I lose all credibility here if I admit to liking Sting?

Moving on ...

"Did you see TDT's ad in the Sept/ Oct. issue of REFLEX magazine?
Did you also see the EXTREMELY unfair 'staking' TDT's album took in OPTIONS magazine #40 ? They likened our music to Christian music !!!? Slow your support for TDT against this "prejudiced" review - flood OPTIONS with scalding rebuttals & GO FOR BLOOD!" - Screem In The Dark #2 (Screem Jams Productions, Sept. 1991)

Actually, to these ears Matters Of Life And Undeath sounds like AOR with some vague "industrial" tarting up, but i'm told they were (are?) essentially a live experience and Vlad delivered a mean cover of Bela Lugosi's Dead.

Dark Theater were formed in Chicago in 1988, the brainchild of Vlad, a self-confessed blood-drinker who claimed ancestry from the Impaler and, for all I know or care, had reams of documentary evidence to prove it. Prior to the release of their debut album, the band achieved some welcome publicity when it was announced that their frontman was to appear on the cover of Carol Page's Blood Lust: Conversations With Real Vampires (HarperCollins, 1991: Dell, Oct. 1992). Understandably delighted, Vlad-and-the-other-ones profusely thanked 'Blood Lusty' in the debut issue of their fanzine Screem In The Dark. All went swimmingly - until HarperCollins ruined everything by publishing a book which managed to alienate the interviewees, who complained as one that they'd been misquoted, misrepresented, and otherwise misused by Miss Page who "only ever wants to write about sex!"

Anyway, here's that nice Sonja Scarlet of Theater des Vampires in action .....

.... and as a special treat, selected highlights of Toto Coelo's grudge match versus Dracula.

[Shrink Proof]

Thanks for reminding me of "The Beast" by The Only Ones. Terrific guitar on that one.

Apparently the great Peter Perrett has stopped turning his royalty cheques into white powders, emerged from his Syd Barrett-like reclusiveness & has got himself together enough to start making good music again...

[H_P_Saucecraft]

one that's not been mentioned.

Arthur Brown - Vampire

[franklinmarsh]

Red Lipstique = The Bollock Brothers, who also recorded Count Dracula Where's Ya Troosers?

For Glampunk! (Who knows already...)

www.janalanhenderson.com/Articles/Bobby_Boris_Pickett.html

I've just obtained Bobby's album - be back with more when I've listened to it...

[helrunar]

Great thread!

I know the music is desperately naff on a certain level, but I have to admit to a great fondness for the songs Lori Yates recorded for the Canadian series Forever Knight (one of my eternal fave raves). This is a lovely video for "The Night Calls my Name."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks9OCagNxUY

H.

[dem bones]

Jul 10, 2012 8:27:24 GMT dem bones said:

Lestat - Passing: Criminally under-rated, sample-heavy industrial-goth gloomsters. I was gonna go with Dark Trick but Passing wins out as for once we get to hear a vampire hunter's perspective. Could be that the dialogue is ripped from a movie but I've no idea which one.

Bad form to quote own posts, but have since learned that Passing samples dialogue from the Harlan Ellison scripted Twilight Zone episode, Demon with a Glass Hand. The extended version of The Damned's Shadow of Love lifts the howl from mid-eighties fang flick, Vamp.

[dem bones]

Haddaway fails to fend off glam vampire and her obscenely energetic backing dancers in the What is Love? video.

The Girl Scouts - I Don't Want To Be A Zombie. Chanteuse demands dreamboat lover bites her neck to prove he's the real deal. Also contains immortal couplet, "Rigor mortis makes me blue/ I don't feel like a spastic/ except when I'm with you."

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

Oct 21, 2021 17:45:03 GMT dem bones said:

Jul 10, 2012 8:27:24 GMT dem bones said:

Bad form to quote own posts, but have since learned that Passing samples dialogue from the Harlan Ellison scripted Twilight Zone episode, Demon with a Glass Hand. The extended version of The Damned's Shadow of Love lifts the howl from mid-eighties fang flick, Vamp.

I do it all the time. But I'm allowed to.
As I'm a princess.