I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: PHISH-“The Very Long Fuse” (MGM Grand Garden Arena, Friday 10, 31, 2014).

In honor of Halloween, these Ghost Box stories will be attached to a recent Phish Halloween show [with quoted material from various reviews]. 

Known for dawning musical costumes to celebrate [Halloween], Phish broke with tradition last year to offer a set of original music.  The Phish Bill read that Phish’s musical costume would be a 1964 Disney album of sound effects – Chilling, Thrilling Sounds Of The Haunted House.  But it wasn’t a cover set. Phish played original music set amongst an incredibly psychedelic, theatrical graveyard stage accentuated by zombie dancers and a ghoulish MC.  At the start of the set, the stage was cleared before a graveyard came to the foreground.  Smoke filled the air, zombie dancers appeared, and music filled the venue. A haunted house was brought to the front of the stage, which eventually exploded, and all four-band members appeared, dressed in white like zombies. 

That same creaking door leads to a more upbeat major-key section on “The Very Long Fuse.”  I love that on the original, the whole track is just the sound of the fuse going off.

For their version, it’s primarily a synth jam.  It’s a rather upbeat jam with a kind of staccato guitar riff and a groovy melody.

You can see a fuse lit and crackling across the front of the building.

Midway through the “narrator” says it’s almost gone out and she’ll blow it to life.  The end says “You though there was going to be a huge explosion, didn’t you.”  And then there is one (although it’s pretty quiet).

Then the top half of  walls crash down and the band is suddenly visible.  That’s a pretty cool live moment.

[READ: October 16, 2017] “Born of Man and Woman

Just in time for Halloween. from the people who brought me The Short Story Advent Calendar comes The Ghost Box.

This is a nifty little box (with a magnetic opening) that contains 11 stories for Halloween.  It is lovingly described thusly:

A collection of chilly, spooky, hair-raising-y stories to get you in that Hallowe’en spirit, edited and introduced by comedian and horror aficionado Patton Oswalt.

There is no explicit “order” to these books; however, on the inside cover, one “window” of the 11 boxes is “folded.”  I am taking that as a suggested order.

This story was quite a change from the other two.

It is written as a diary.  But instead of dates there are just xs for the day.  One x for day one 2 xs for day two, etc.

And the writing is poor “The day when it had light mother called me retch.”  It soon transpires that the author of this diary is chained in the basement of a house and is ignorant of so much of the world.

It continues: “This day it had water falling from upstairs.”

Here’s what else we know.  Mother is pretty and father is decent enough but the narrator “didn’t have the nice face.”

The next day he pulled the chain out of the wall and went upstairs to where he heard the laughter.  But he was caught before anyone saw him.  And he was punished until the green stuff dripped from him.

Another day he hears voices outside of the house.  He sees little mothers and fathers.  But they see him too and come running to investigate.  Mother is furious that he drew attention to himself.  And even more that he pulled the chain out oft he wall again.

The last entry does not follow the sequential xs.  This single x is “another time.”  And it seems perhaps the narrator might be bigger and stronger than he used to be.  And he doesn’t seem like he wants to find out why he is treated like this.

This story wasn’t scary, but it was definitely creepy.