I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: PHISH-“Shipwreck” (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. 

The story behind “Shipwreck” is that you are on a holiday cruise when you encounter a dense fog.

“Shipwreck” was similar to other songs performed during the set as it started with a spoken word soundtrack from the original album as the zombiefied actors danced around stage and led into original music. This time around, the quartet unveiled a dreamy progression.

The song is slow and trippy, like a slow sea journey.  And then the samples come in: “Are you too near the shore?” (played forwards and backwards).  Then repeats of “jagged rocks jagged rocks.”

Phish followed the spoken word section with a gorgeous piece of ambient music that was reminiscent of studio jams of the late ’90s.

There’s a kind of threatening low keyboard note while Trey was playing feedback noises.  Then page started a series of fast keyboard trills with many sound effects.

[READ: October 21, 2017] “Savory, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme”

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.

I though that this story took a really long time to get where it was going, but once it got there it was really interesting.

I’m not sure why I didn’t mind that George R.R. Martin’s story was long but this one bugged me.  I think it’s because his showed lots of different scenes, whereas this one seemed like a long slog with minute details–fine for a novel but a bit extraneous in a short story.

In the woods is The Herb Woman.  I have no idea how many stories had been written about a woman like this before this story (hundreds have since this story, that’s for sure).   Amy Macklin had heard of the Herb Woman but wasn’t sure she believed all the stories.

Amy was a smart girl who studied hard–much to the dismay of her parents who didn’t want their daughter going to the city thinking she was too good for them.

Then Jemmy Howard came into town and Amy fell for him hard.

He was a major flirt and she believed that he liked her.  Until she saw him kissing Georgina Taylor.  And then she spiraled hard.  She pouts for a while, trying to figure out how to get him back  And then she decides to head into the woods.  It seemed like it took a very long time (in paragraphs) for her to get to the Herb woman’s house.  But once she did, the story became really exciting.

The Herb Woman is kind to her even though Amy is frightened.  The Herb Woman helps to heal Amy’s twisted ankle. And then allows Amy to tell her what the problem is.

And that’s when she reveals that she recently helped Jemmy Howard to win over a girl–presumably Georgian Taylor.  And she can’t go back on that word, can she?

Amy is furious and says that none of that can possibly be true.  She storms off (with some advice from The Herb Woman) but finds it much easier going home

She gets back home, gets a beating from her pa for staying out all night and then prepares to confront Jemmy.  When she tells Jemmy what she did, she assumed he’ll think she was very brave.  But instead, he mocks her in front of Georgina.  They tease her that she went to that much trouble when obviously Georgia is superior.

And that’s when Amy decides to find out if what the Herb Woman said had any truth.

By the end this quickly became one of my favorite stories in the box.   And maybe re-reading it knowing how good the end is will make me appreciate the slow build more.