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Rob Weychert

Skulls

Celebrating Halloween with my first Misfits cover.

Skulls single cover

It is no secret that Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. Is there any other event celebrated on a mass scale whose very purpose is to challenge the tenuous divide between pain and pleasure? Halloween encourages us to enjoy our fear, to find mirth in the macabre, to recognize how death enriches life. On every other day, fear holds us back; on Halloween, it propels us forward. What’s not to love?

And so it is no coincidence that Halloween is the raison d’être of one of my favorite bands of all time: The Misfits. By turns melodic, aggressive, campy, and menacing, The Misfits traded in punk anthems that often made an effortlessly joyful celebration of horrific imagery. Every year, those anthems are the soundtrack to my October.

I’ve always wanted to take a stab at my own version of a Misfits tune, and this year, I finally did. Since Leah, my partner in crime, has her birthday just a few days after Halloween, I started with her favorite, “Skulls.” My version’s aesthetic goal is best described as a “Leonard Cohen spaghetti western.” I don’t think it quite got there, but the results are listenable enough. I hope you enjoy it. Happy Halloween!

Download “Skulls” (5.5 MB MP3)

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Skulls

Celebrating Halloween with my first Misfits cover.

It is no secret that Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. Is there any other event celebrated on a mass scale whose very purpose is to challenge the tenuous divide between pain and pleasure? Halloween encourages us to enjoy our fear, to find mirth in the macabre, to recognize how death enriches life. On every other day, fear holds us back; on Halloween, it propels us forward. What’s not to love?

And so it… See more →

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Devilock

My second annual Halloween Misfits cover, including a treatise on what makes punk rock great.

With all manner of unnecessary vitriol flying to and fro, social media can be a nasty thing during an election year like this one, but the most unfortunate thing I’ve seen in my social graph lately had little to do with politics. It had to do with punk rock, and a friend’s expressed preference for The Misfits’ post-Danzig era; that is, the seminal horror punk band’s mercenary reformation without its creative mastermind, Glenn Danzig, more… See more →

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Astro-Zombies

My third annual Halloween Misfits cover, along with some thoughts on nostalgia.

When it comes to aging, there is nothing I am more wary of than nostalgia. There’s a fine line between basking in fond memories and believing your best days are behind you, and getting older presents ever more opportunity to cross it. For many people, and certainly for myself, nostalgia’s gauzy glow is most acute in music. After all, it’s the soundtrack to our lives, and for whatever reason, most of us tend to engage… See more →

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