Jeff Gelb (ed.) - Shock Rock

[dem bones]

Jeff Gelb (ed.) - Shock Rock: The New sound Of Horror(Pocket Books, Jan. 1992)

Mark Watts

Foreword - Alice Cooper
Introduction - Jeff Gelb

Stephen King - You Know They've Got a Hell Of A Band
F. Paul Wilson - Bob Dylan, Troy Jonson, and The Speed Queen
David J. Schow - Odeed
Nancy A. Collins - Vargr Rule
Ronald Kelly - Blood Suede Shoes
Don D'Ammassa - The Dead Beat Society
Graham Masterton - Voodoo Child
Paul Dale Anderson - Rites Of Spring
Michael E. Garrett - Dedicated To The One I Loathe
Brian J. Hodge - Requiem
R. Patrick Gates - Heavy Metal
Rex Miller - Bunky
Bill Mumy & Peter David - The Black '59
Richard Christian Matheson - Groupies
Michael Newton - Reunion
Mark Verheiden - Bootleg
Ray Garton - Weird Gig
John L. Byrne - Hide In Plain Sight
Thomas Tessier - Addicted To love
John Shirley - Flaming Telepaths

Contributor Biographies

Back cover blurb:

ROCK AND ROLL IS HERE TO SLAY ...

Stephen King... David J. Schow ... Thomas Tessier... F. Paul Wilson... Richard Christian Matheson ... Nancy A. Collins... Graham Masterton ... Pay Garton ... Rex Miller ... and ten other stars of today's shock fiction know what metalheads and moralists, punksters and preachers have known all along. Rock and roll. With its hot licks and raw glitter, has a dark side too - where the party stops and the terror begins.

Put on your headphones. Open this electrifying book. Rock to the world of horror where martyred musical super-legends return from the dead at 120 decibels... where radio stations sponsor ghastly giveaways that no living soul could want ... where other-earthly pirates bootleg not records, but human souls... where people are strange ... and the devil rocks all night.

THE NEW SOUND OF HORROR

I've blabbed about Thomas Tessier's classic Addicted To Love so many times that were I to add much more there'd be no point anybody reading it. Suffice to say that Tessier was living in London at the time and obviously picked up a fondness for punk and the darker new wave bands - PIL, Joy Division & Co. - and above all, The Adverts (Bobby Ives, the damaged protagonist of Tessier's classic modern werewolf novel, Nightwalker (Macmillan, 1979, Pan 1980), even gets to attend one of their gigs at the Roxy in Covent Garden) and T. V. Smith's Explorers. As to the story itself: a quiet rock obsessive is driven to distraction by a girl who shuns everything in his (quite frankly, impeccable) record collection in favour of the despised CD his mum bought him. Loneliness, an obsessive hatred of Robert Palmer's record, necrophilia ... It's brilliant.

To pick on a few other ghouls before impending re-read ... R. Patrick Gates' and his Edgar Allan Poe pisstake which also features a staple from the Roadrunner cartoons to bring an end to somebody playing AC/DC at full volume on their Ghetto Blaster. Nancy A. Collins' Vargr Rule, a 'nineties equivalent of S. J. Bounds' Young Blood except this time it's not the lead singer who gets the gal - it's more like the other way around.

Tons of imaginary bands to add to the list, including Grendel from Brian Hodges Requiem who meet a suitably unhappy end, and plenty of real ones namechecked too, especially in the apocalyptic Flaming Telegraphs - a story for which the word 'unflinching' is barely adequate - whose dramatis personae include an affable goth girl who goes under a name that would probably cause proboards to collapse were I to type it in.

The 'Contributors Biographies' are interesting, as a few of the authors list their preferred listening material. Gelb should have insisted Alice Cooper wrote at least five pages for his foreword though. Two and a bit, you're just starting to enjoy it and ... done. That said, his remarks about Michael Jackson have something of the premonition about them, that's for sure.

I haven't done it any justice in this anti-review, but Shock Rock is a great little book and sit's nicely alongside 'Michael' Slade's classic Ghoul in the R & R horror Hall of Shame.

[andydecker]

I bought and read this back then, because of the unique writer compilation.

Where do you have writers as diverse as Schow, Verheiden and Newton in one book.

But I have zero recollection of any of these stories. Weird.

[sean]

Bill Mumy & Peter David - The Black '59


Bill Mumy was the chap who played the spooky kid in the famous 'It's A Good Life' Twilight Zone episode.

In the 80s he attempted to record material with Wild Man Fischer (probably most 'famous' for the album he recorded with Zappa in the late 60s).

[David A. Riley]

For someone who is not exactly a household name Bill Mumy has done an amazing amount of stuff.

Check out his own website:

www.billmumy.com/mumy/bio/index.htm

I remember him well from years ago when he was the annoying kid in Lost in Space - then years later the mystical Lennier in Babylon 5
, a series I always felt was underrated.

David

[dem bones]

sean said:

In the 80s he attempted to record material with Wild Man Fischer (probably most 'famous' for the album he recorded with Zappa in the late 60s).

What was that rather downbeat hippy movie that showcased Larry's Merry-Go-Round from the ultimately heartbreaking An Evening With ... album and various Mothers classics? Oh No got a look in and I'm sure there was a scene set in a disco with all the flower children grooving to Who Needs The Peace Corps?

Another man with a Mothers past in his wardrobe turns up in Nancy A. Collins & Edward E. Kramer's erotic horror anthology, Forbidden Acts (Avon, 1995) - former Turtle Howard Kaylan! His story The Energy Pals is something of an anomaly in that its light on sex scenes and multiple expletives - his children disappear into the TV while watching a Ninja Turtles/ Power Rangers type show - but it's very well written, works and I remember it above the likes of High Heels From Hell and Furies In Black Leather from the same collection.

But I digress, which is so often the case. Made a start on Shock Rock now and it's not at all bad!

Michael Newton - Reunion: Twenty years ago, Star Child were on the verge of joining contemporaries The Doors, Jefferson Airplane and Terry Dactyl & The Dinosaurs in the pantheon of counter-culture greats, but then the Paradise Festival happened, the band hired outlaw bikers the Mongols as security, a stoned stage-diver named Axel Grubb was beaten to death after foolishly pulling a gun ... Heavy bummer, maaaan.

Boone 'Freebie' Franklin was present at the terrible event - Grubb bled all over him - and he's eager to catch the anniversary reunion gig in the same field. He thumbs a lift from four stoned hippies in a psychedelic van, even cops off with one of the girls, but he's uneasy about the three motorcycles parked by the stage, owners as yet unseen. Then the Mongols show up - and there's Axel Grubb lurching out of the washroom! If Franklin can somehow prevent the hippie drawing his pistol this time and the event passes peacefully, will the post-Woodstock optimism be reborn?

Tracks include: Hell On Wheels, Flowers, Blue Steel Lullaby, Stone Cold Dreams

Outstanding contribution to music: Providing an Altamont for those who didn't catch the first one. Twice!

Paul Dale Anderson - Rites Of Spring: A real Pagan rock band get their audience to take their clothes off when they dance, and part the stage without their fans even realising they've just participated in a communal shag-fest. Same time, same place next year.

Tracks include: Dunno. Every-one's too busy bonking to worry about song titles.

Outstanding contribution to music: You won't get VFM like this at an Incubus Succubus gig.

David J. Schow - Odeed: Jawbone, Nazi Kurt, Hi Fi and their fellow speed metal axe-mutha's known collectively as GASM, crank the noise up and up and up ... until they really blow their audience away. How could the US Defence Council fail to appreciate the drool-some potential of a sonic neutron bomb?

Tracks include: Calling All Cops, Chainsaw, Too Big To Hide and a thrash cover of Hi-Heel Sneakers.

Outstanding contribution to music: Jawbone's skull and crossbones codpiece.

Richard Christian Matheson - Groupies: Q and A session with a fourteen year old starf*cker who's just sliced up another girl with a razor for the amusement of a coked-up rock-star - "You earn the right to be around them". The victim was not in the least unwilling. The narrator, who interviewed her for Time magazine, has procured the "autopsy grim" videotape of the murder and wonders how the guy could've got off on this butchery. He wonders about it a whole lot too much.

[dem bones]

another batch ...

John L. Byrne - Hide In Plain Site: Mediocre rock chancers the Werewolves receive an unexpected free publicity boost on the back of "the werewolf murders", fifteen upstanding citizens of LA torn to pieces by some psychotic ghoul. Lead singer Jax Ryker is delighted: the more punters the band draw to the clubs, the more teenybopper groupies for him! And then he sees the black-haired, flirtatious beauty stood watching him run through his Rock God cliches, twice the age of his usual conquests (making her all of about twenty-eight), but, what with a deranged killer on the loose, she'll surely be wanting a big strong Jax to escort her home ...

You know what's coming a mile off (doubly so if you're a Robert Bloch fan ... ), but there's something so Amicus circa Vault Of Horror about this that I can't help but love it.

Tracks include: None given. Presumably too busy molesting minors to worry about such niceties as naming their songs.

Outstanding contribution to music: Fashionably negligible.

Michael E. Garrett - Dedicated To The One I Loathe: A series of murders. Teenagers done in by assailant unknown, his calling card the classic 'sixties death discs - Last Kiss, Leader Of The Pack, Dead Man's Curve - he leaves behind at the scene of the crime. Police Sergeant Isbell and Lieutenant Bevins are certain there's a connection with the local K-99 radio station - but what?

Outstanding contribution to music: "The Big K-99 cash giveaway".

Mark Verheiden - Bootleg: Skase haunts the record fairs like us people malinger in charity shops, but, relax, he's not up for copies of Agro, The Ghoul and Pan Horror 27 or what have you. It's bootlegs with him. Official releases are shunned outright and even ultra-rare imports have lost their appeal. Then dealer 'Blackteeth' flogs him a copy of Ritual, a record so obscure even Skase has never heard of it. Listening to the album all but kills him, but we know nothing stands in the way of an obsession ....

[dem bones]

... and more ...

Ronald Kelly - Blood Suede Shoes: Elvis got drafted, leaving the way open for would-be bad boy rock n' rollers to keep his throne warm. One such is Rockabilly Reb and Ruby Paquette, by her own admission a "chubby wallflower" and speccy "fat cow", can't believe it when he offers her a lift home in his crimson '58 Cadillac after his triple-header at the Louisianna Hayride with Johnny Cash and Fats Domino. What would he want with her and why would he call her beautiful?

Reb explains the secret of his success, the dreadful price he paid to attain it. The much maligned Bible-Bashers had it right all along. Rock 'n Roll really is the Devil's music, and Reb has just acquired a fleshy new guitar ....

Outstanding contribution to music: Rock And Roll Anatomy Lesson is a big wow with the Hula Hula's and Mary Lou's while Forever Baby has soul - somebody else's.

Ray Garton - Weird Gig: "Now, I know your slump began when Johnny OD'd, that's a given, because we all know Johnny was everybody's favourite .... Then all those kids overdosed at that concert, and six months later a bunch of them were crushed to death against the stage at another. And what about that kid who blew his dad away with a shotgun because his dad was taking away his Jagged Edge albums, huh?"

Billy is telling it like it is to his aging charges, Jagged Edge, whose career has slumped of late. They've been offered a private, name-your-fee gig at the renovated Chase Coliseum (it burnt down during a riot at one of their performances) which puts them on course for a touching reunion with all the fans whose deaths they've been responsible for, a colorful, long stringy haired bunch swathed in beads, bell-bottoms, peace symbols, ankhs and ... maggots.

Tracks include: Purple Streak In A Night Sky, Wild Horse and a cover of the Who's Baba O'Riley

Nancy A. Collins - Vargyr Rule: "Varley looked forward to his weekends and the chance to exert his control with silk ties and bedposts. Now that control was being threatened by a bleached-blond slut in fuck-me shoes."

Well, she has got six tits.

Varley prowls the New Orleans rock clubs sizing up the lucky contenders for tonight's shag-mate. He hits on the mystery beauty of the unique mammary exuberance at a Vargyr gig (Mohawks in black leather jackets: music so mundane he doesn't notice when their set ends and a crew in spandex take over), and she's deadly keen to teach him what being a real predator is all about. The paragraphs detailing the gang-banging to death of a German Shepherd dog by the band in werewolf form is distressing, but otherwise, to this reader at least, Vargyr Rule is essentially Syd Bounds' camp classic Young Blood - the splatter edition.

Nancy Collins' 'Sonja Blue' vampire novel Sunglasses After Dark (Penguin, 1989) was afforded some kind of 'instant classic' status on publication and I seem to recall she even had to endure the dreaded "New Anne Rice" stigma. I really must get around to it again sometime ....

Graham Masterton - Voodoo Chile: "The dead have different needs from the living, different desires. The dead are more bloody desperate than we can even guess." Jimi Hendrix was merely an incredibly hot guitarist until he was introduced to the weird old girl in Georgia who gave him the voodoo, a monkey-like entity which he was required to keep fed in return for greatness. Jimi neglects the creature, hence his death in 1970, but twenty years on his zombified body returns. If he can only retrieve the voodoo and return it to the black sorceress his soul will be set free. Trouble is, after Jimi's OD, it was adopted by fellow axeman John Drummond, once hailed as the new Eric Clapton but now disappeared from the music scene and living as a recluse in Littlehampton, and it's bored its way under his skin .....

And now, thanks to narrator Charlie, Jimi knows where he lives ....

Don D'Ammassa - The Dead Beat Society: mark Walton was burnt to a crisp in a car crash over a year ago, and it was all his drug-dealing friend Jason's fault - so how comes he keeps seeing him in the Dead Beat Society's video for their chart-topper Payback - that spooky bit at the end with the lost souls wandering through Limbo -and is that really him on the disc whispering a sinister refrain to the catchy chorus?

Outstanding contribution to music: Band members manage to sustain an air of mystery and don't care about publicity on account of them being dead bastards from Hell.

Tracks include: Cold Love, Motionless Emotion, Paying The Dues, Payback. Current album: Melody Drama.

I didn't realise this before, but there was a second volume of Shock Rockers, and if anyone has a copy perhaps they might to tell us how it shapes up against the debut?

Jeff Gelb (ed.) - Shock Rock II (Pocket, 1994)

Lonn Friend - Foreword
Jeff Gelb - Introduction

Mark Verheiden - Favorite Song
Michael Garrett - The Last Time
Tia Travis - The Sad Story of Billy Psych-Out And The Psyched-Out Encyclopedia Of Rock ’n’ Roll
Robert Weinberg & Tina L. Jens - Elvis Can’t Dance
Scott H. Urban - Better to Burn Out
Edo van Belkom - Scream String
Th. Metzger - Severin Hedz
Gary Brandner - Mr. Pants
Rick Hautala - Dead Legends
Nat Gertler - Rockin’ On Home
Bill Mumy & Peter David - The Undeadliest Game
Graham Watkins - The Red Sax
A. R. Morlan - He’s Hot, He’s Sexy, He’s...
Mike Baron - Oi Boy
John F. D. Taff - Track Eight
Jeff Gelb - Graveyard Shift
Don D’Ammassa - Inspiration
Rex Miller - Shock Rock Jock
Jesse Sublett - The Songwriter
Max Allan Collins - Rock ’n’ Roll Will Never Die
Kevin J. Anderson & Neil Peart - Drumbeats

The Contributors

[pulphack]

Thanks to Dem, I now have a copy of this, and it looks a cracker - on the 'to read very soon' pile...

[dem bones]

F. Paul Wilson - Bob Dylan, Troy Jonson, and The Speed Queen: It is the tail end of the 21st Century. Time travel, albeit heavily regulated, is a reality. Troy Jonson, bored of the day's antiseptic, push-button musak, ingratiates himself with the temperal sequencing technicians to blag a one-way trip back to 1964 determined to carve his own niche in rock history. With an encyclopaedic knowledge of the decade's popular music to rival that of Whispering Bob Harris, he can instigate every trend by ripping off the 'classics' before they've even been written.

He'll have to play smart. To significantly alter the past is to alert the reclamation squad and probably cost him his life. If only he could tweak history just enough to avoid causing ripples.

Troy's passion is his downfall. He can't resist bringing several of his favourite albums along for the ride, no matter that, where he's going, they've yet to be recorded.

At first, everything goes to plan. Dylan gets wind of this guy playing the Eighth Wonder who's performing electrified versions of his songs, checks out his set and requests an audience with. But Sally, hooked on meth-amphetamine and prominent among Bob's entourage, is the catalyst for disaster. Sally and Troy get it on, she crashes at his apartment and can't resist a look in his secret music room. Word spreads around Greenwich Village that Troy has all this freaky vinyl by groups nobody ever heard of with, like, copyright dates that just can't be right. Some dudes called The Byrds even cover some of Bob's stuff that he's not finished writing yet.

Troy's only hope is to bump Sally off and pray that the reclamation vigilance committee are having an off day.

Decent story, if stingy on the 'horror,' but I much prefer this next, a heavy metal take on The Hands Of Orlac.

Bill Mumy & Peter David - The Black '59: Legendary rock guitarist Vernon 'Psycho' Stampede - "The Rocker most likely to take a life" (Billboard poll) - rides a motor-sickle into a school bus, leaving behind a formidable legacy and a junkie widow. John Helmy, a particularly ghastly drug dealer, takes full advantage of Christine's habit to bag Stampede's iconic Gibson Les Paul in exchange for a bag of bad dope. He soon realises that she got the better of the deal.

Helmy has a score to settle with former band-mate Neil, so maliciously gifts him the black '59, knowing it will destroy him. The Neil Kalnick Band are an overnight sensation, but the trio's success coincides with the brutal murders of persons associated with the woman-hating Mr. Stampede. Their leader's increasingly erratic behaviour is further cause for concern, especially for his partner, Pam. What's got into him lately? From the day he came home with that dead creep's black guitar, he just ain't been the same guy.

[dem bones]

Brian Hodge - Requiem: On a word of a war-damaged hermit, female narrator, a fading folk musician with no name, accompanies Doug, a super-bootlegger, to a valley in the Colorado Mountains to record a unique private gig. On 25th August 1983, the four members of Grendel were killed when their plane crashed en route to a gig on the Scourge Across America tour. According to their source, each anniversary the band leave the grave to perform their Vlad the Impaler-inspired concept album. Doug gets his tape, but the band - whose dispute with their record company contributed to the tragedy - have no intention of being bled dry a second time.

Discography: Here There By Dragons (1980); Sympathy For The Beast (1981); Odyssey (1982); Scourge (1983).

Outstanding contribution to music: Gory forest-of-stakes stage set sounds impressive.

[Dr Strange]

May 10, 2018 21:17:12 GMT dem bones said:

Brian Hodge - Requiem: On a word of a war-damaged hermit, female narrator, a fading folk musician with no name, accompanies Doug, a super-bootlegger, to a valley in the Colorado Mountains to record a unique private gig. On 25th August 1983, the four members of Grendel were killed when their plane crashed en route to a gig on the Scourge Across America tour. According to their source, each anniversary the band leave the grave to perform their Vlad the Impaler-inspired concept album. Doug gets his tape, but the band - whose dispute with their record company contributed to the tragedy - have no intention of being bled dry a second time.

Read by Joan Jett here - www.brianhodge.net/audio-stories/

[Jojo Lapin X]

May 11, 2018 16:06:15 GMT Dr Strange said:

Read by Joan Jett here - www.brianhodge.net/audio-stories/

The obvious choice! Here Marie Osmond performs Dadaist classic "Karawane" by Hugo Ball:

[dem bones]

Jeff Gelb [ed.] - Shock Rock II (Pocket, Feb. 1994)

Gerber Studio

Lonn Friend - Foreword
Jeff Gelb - Introduction


Mark Verheiden - Favorite Song
Michael Garrett - The Last Time
Tia Travis - The Sad Story of Billy Psych-Out and the Psyched-Out Encyclopedia of Rock ’n’ Roll
Robert Weinberg & Tina L. Jens - Elvis Can’t Dance
Scott H. Urban - Better to Burn Out
Edo van Belkom - Scream String
Th. Metzger - Severin Hedz
Gary Brandner - Mr. Pants
Rick Hautala - Dead Legends
Nat Gertler - Rockin’ On Home
Bill Mumy & Peter David - The Undeadliest Game
Graham Watkins - The Red Sax
A. R. Morlan - He’s Hot, He’s Sexy, He’s...
Mike Baron - Oi Boy
John F. D. Taff - Track Eight
Jeff Gelb - Graveyard Shift
Don D’Ammassa - Inspiration
Rex Miller - Shock Rock Jock
Jesse Sublett - The Songwriter
Max Allan Collins - Rock ’n’ Roll Will Never Die
Kevin J. Anderson & Neil Peart - Drumbeats

The Contributors

Blurb:

HOT LICKS, FRESH BLOOD
Rick Hautala ... Max Allan Collins ... Jesse Sublett ... Rex Miller ... Kevin J. Anderson ... Neil Peart .... Peter David ... Gary Brander ... Th. Metzger ... and a slammin' ensemble of today's shock fiction headliners show you why rock and roll strikes chords of fear into both fans and foes. SHOCK ROCK II is a heavy-metal marathon of musical mayhem - featuring the living legends and the rising stars in horror writing today. Pump up the volume and rock with a drifter as roadstand jukeboxes play his song to a murderous melody ... step with a drummer forced to keep the beat because his life depends on it ... tune into a radio shock jock who gets the jolt of his life. live and on the air ... thrill when a guitar idol makes his instrument scream in tones of icy homicide ... and much, much more - because rock and roll will never die.

Mark Verheiden - Favorite Song: Green, a drifter, takes dish washing work where he finds it, just so long as there's music to get him through his shift. Trouble is, he refuses to share whatever happens to be his current favourite song with anyone else. Screech-a-long to his jukebox selection at your peril ...

Robert Weinberg & Tina L. Jens - Elvis Can’t Dance: The rotting remains of Elvis leave his secret Memphis mausoleum for Madison Square Gardens to settle a beef with controversial rappers, K.I.D. Stupid (The King is Dead, Stupid) whose hit album, Elvis Can't Dance (Cause He's Dead), promotes drug-dealing and cop killing.

Mike Baron - Oi Boy: A gypsy curse transforms the murdering lead singer of a White supremacist Oi band into Boy George mid-gig. His band. White Heat, are playing a Seattle National Front club at the time. As you might imagine, audience really want to hurt him.

Jeff Gelb - Graveyard Shift: Rusty Nails (nee Leisenberger), is bored to tears hosting the midnight to five show on Classic Rock WMCK until the night he takes a call from Kendall Lake, a woman trapped in an abusive relationship. Romance blossoms over the airwaves. They finally arrange to meet .... in a cemetery. We leave Rusty seeking a new job having been sacked for playing Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights on heavy rotation.

[Swampirella]

For those interested (like me) II (only) is available at archive.org. Looking forward greatly to reading "Elvis Can't Dance" and "Oi Boy".

Edit: Just read the excellent "Favorite Song" and won't forget it in a hurry.

[dem bones]

Bill Mumy & Peter David - The Undeadliest Game: Way back in the 'fifties, Jimmy and the Generators struck a pact with Satan which has seen the five band members repeatedly killed off and resurrected in different guises to remain at the top of the rock & roll tree. When bassist Val is pounded into the tarmac beneath the wheels of a truck, ageing hippie Connie, a former groupie, and her daughter, Wind, are the candidates to fill the vacancy. A duel to the death with immortality the prize.

Gary Brander - Mr. Pants: Farley Zmecksis and the spangly skin-tight trousers from Hell. See Fashion victims.

Nat Gertler - Rockin’ On Home: Jason Caldwell meets and falls for a fellow songwriter, Sherley of Death By Kisses, at a performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Sherley, it transpires, hails from an alternative world where Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band are massive, but no-one has ever heard of any 'David Bowie' or (lucky them) 'The Be*tl*s.' In an attempt to return Sherley home, Jason records a song about her for his new album.

Graveyard Shift my favourite to date.