I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: PHISH-“The Unsafe Bridge” (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 Unsafe Bridge” was Phish’s version of a Spaghetti Western soundtrack with elements of Genesis and The Beatles worked in. While the band played these songs, lasers and other effects not usually seen at a Phish show were added to the insane spectacle.

This song definitely a spaghetti western vibe from Mike and some appropriate piano from Page.  Trey plays some simple guitar melodies.  And then a pretty solo.

This piece is nicely catchy but also really short at only 3 minutes.  I could have listened to this one for longer.

[READ: October 16, 2017] “The Late Shift”

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 started in an amusing way–kids returning from a 2 AM screening of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre stop at a convenience store to but some alcohol.  It’s Macklin and his friend Whitey (who is Native American–real name is White Feather).  At the store, the clerk is acting really weird, just repeating “Please, thank you, sorry” and seeming to be really out of it.

They recognize him as Juano, a guy they know from another store, but he seems to have really hit the skids as they say.

I was amused by a few details that the author included in an odd way.  Like, “a radio in the store was playing an old ’60s song “Light My Fire,” Mackin thought.  The Doors.  Who would call a Doors song an “old 60s song?”  In 1980.

Another thing that dated the story to me was this line: “Somehow the clerk managed to ring it up; the electronic register and UPC code lines helped him a lot.”  I assume UPC codes had just come into fashion.

Anyhow, as they leave, thoroughly annoyed by Juano, they catch a sickly sweet smell off of him.

They drive back to Macklin’s for the night.  Later, Macklin gets a call from the hospital.  Whitey is in there.  He was in a car accident, totally drunk on alcohol.  But Macklin is really puzzled.  Whitey was there, they didn’t have anything stronger than beer.  In fact, Whitey never drank anything stronger than beer: “It was supposed to have something to do with his liver, as it did with other Amerinds.  He just didn’t have the right enzymes.”

When Macklin gets to the hospital, the cops don’t believe him, of course.  Whitey is covered in war paint, which the nurse has been trying to remove.  Macklin shakes him.  Whitey says, “Call me by my name. It’s White Feather.”  Macklin asks what’s up with the war paint.  Whitey says he saw the death angel last night.

The nurse says that Whitey is going in for an operation that isn’t supposed to be critical so Macklin decided to leave and see what was going on with Juano.  At the convenience store he sees the owner and asks whats up.  The guy says “they” bring in these guys–he’s got nothing to do with it.

And that night he watched as the blue van pulled up.  They pushed Juano out the door and did something to his chest.  Macklin decided to leave and come back at six.

At six he saw the van come back and put Juano in it.  So he followed. But soon enough they had pulled over and opened his door.  He tried to fight back but they knocked him out and threw him into the van.  It is full of a whole bunch of people just like Juano.

At this point in the story things got confusing for me. We hear the bad guys talking and it sounds like they are using these zombie folks as stunt men in movies.  But it’s glossed over too quickly.  Maybe they are just being used in all different jobs.

The story has a great spookiness to it but I was unsatisfied that I the story either didn’t say what the whole point was or that I just couldn’t figure it out.