I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: PHISH-“The Birds” (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. 

“Some people keep birds as pets in their home.  Not you.”

This is a groovy song with some cool pauses with staccato drums and a heavy riff.  The song is littered with lots of samples of “They attack!” a sample that has been used regularly since in various shows.

Mike’s got a nasty fuzzy sounding bass while Page plays the organ rhythm.  At the end Trey and Mike play each other a solo off (complete with bombastic drums from Fish).

The set’s penultimate song, “The Birds,” showed off what Phish meant in the Playbill when they called Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House one of the heaviest albums of all-time. They feasted on a groove that recalled the best of Traffic, Black Sabbath and Abbey Road era Beatles. All the while, a spoken word sample of “They Attack!!” was worked into the sound. It was on “The Birds” that Mike Gordon shined most as he connected with McConnell and Fish on a dark and dirty progression that Trey shredded over. The song continued with Gordon and Anastasio facing off against each other and dueling it out for a few glorious moments as Page hit his keys for more “They Attack!!” samples. Eventually, [they] hooked up on an intense progression they worked over with Anastasio unleashing a wave of riffs that would’ve made Jimi Hendrix proud.

The ending is some pounding staccato chords with samples of “They Attack!”  It’s a very strong ending.

[READ: October 16, 2017] “The Treader of the Dust”

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 opens with a quote from The Testaments of Carnamagos.

John Sebastian had had a debate and argument with himself.  He was typically a recluse but he was so upset, he had left his house for three days–an unheard of absence.

There had been some strange phenomena in his mansion which prompted him to leave.  It must have had something to do with those passages in The Testaments of Carnamagos.  But he dismissed them as relevant only to “the horrors evoked by mad sorcerers in bygone aeons.”

When he settled himself and arrived back home everything seemed in order.  He was pleased about that. Although it was strange that the lights were not on. Timmers, his manservant, hated being in the dark and would turn the lights on at dusk, which it was now.

There was no sign of the man either, another rare occurrence.  Sebastian walked around the house, even checking Timmers’ room, but there was no sign of him.

Finally he went into his study, where he had left the book.  Everything seemed normal, but he soon noticed that the room was really dusty.  Inordinately so.  Timmers cleaned meticulously and had certainly done so in the last three days.  But this dust was quite thick.

He reached out to touch the chair next to him and it instantly crumpled to dust.  He was surprised to realize that the lectern and the book were still intact.  His eyes were drawn to “The wizard volume before him, the writings of that evil sage and seer Carnamagos.”  We learn that the book had been discovered in a tomb, transcribed from Greek by a monk.  This was the only copy in existence.

And then:

he who readth, in the silence of his chamber, the formula given hereunder, must incur a grave risk if in his heart there abide openly or hidden the least desire of death and annihilation.  For it may be that Quachil Uttaus will come to him.

and then the title of the story makes sense.

This is very Lovecraftian.  You see what’s coming about five pages before the end, and the inevitability of it is what is so horrifying.  The final paragraph is wonderfully creepy.