The Misfits

I’ll begin by briefly weighing in on five of the most prominent pieces of the 2023 zeitgeist, at least from where I was sitting. Some cynical vibes ahead, so feel free to skip past this part if you’re not in the mood for negative energy:

• Taylor Swift: Gen Z’s version of Beatlemania is a bit of a head-scratcher for me, since I find Taylor Swift’s music to be entirely unremarkable, but that didn’t stop her… See more →

For most of their existence, and especially since the market for recorded music collapsed, the Misfits have been more of a fashion brand than anything, their logo adorning virtually any object that could conceivably accessorize with a shade of Manic Panic or a pair of Doc Martens. The unlikelihood of a proper Misfits reunion stemmed from the decades-long feud between founding members Glenn Danzig and Jerry Only over how those sweet merch profits should be… See more →

Barbara Crampton on Stuart Gordon, Chopping Mall, and the new wave of indie horror

For fans of 1980s B-horror, here’s a good AV Club interview with the delightful Barbara Crampton.

Anti-Christ in a custom van: The churchy cheap thrills of A Thief In The Night

It may seem impossible to not think of the end of the world in poetic terms, but never underestimate the premillennialists.

Why Punching Down Will Never Be Funny

Watters and… See more →

Tonight I saw the actual Misfits play a whole bunch of Misfits songs. My voice may never come back from this one.

A Final Visit With Prince: Rolling Stone’s Lost Cover Story

“All of us need to be able to reach out and just fix stuff. There's nothing that's unforgivable.”

The Contributions of Others: A Session with Jeremy Keith

“I’ve found that on the web, it’s best to assume nothing. That might sound like a scary prospect, but it’s actually quite liberating. Giving up on “pixel-perfect” control doesn’t mean giving up on quality. Quite the opposite: it… See more →

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 →

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 →

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 →

I would have omitted the Misfits logo, made the eyes completely black, and dialed the date back thirty years, but still, this is pretty rad.

!!!

A musical baton has been passed to me by Stan and Ethan. Who am I to refuse them?

Total Volume of Music Files on My Computer

• 74.79 Gb

The Last CD I Bought Was

• Big Bear: Big Bear
  Throat-shredding shrieks and mathy metal guitar chugging that somehow owes more to Slint than the Dillinger Escape Plan. Amidst all the starts and stops and time changes, it still manages to swing. Refreshing stuff.

(See an up-to-date… See more →