I went down a rabbit hole on Bandcamp last night, and to my surprise I found a band that performs spooky Halloween music called Fright Night Club. Being a huge fan of Nox Arcana I got really excited because I think it’s great that another band is creating unsettling music.
They perform both instrumental and original songs. Some albums are filled with instrumentals, while others are packed with original songs about monsters, horror movies,etc… There are even a few cover songs which is pretty cool! I am currently listening to their album called Creepshow: Re-Scared, which as you can guess from the title is full of sonic landscapes that flesh out the scenes in the film Creepshow. It’s seriously good stuff! I love listening to this kind of music while writing because it gets me in the mood so that I feel extra spooky!
This band has a ton of people contributing songs to the albums, so it is a collective; a spooky version of a band such as The Joy Thieves. I honestly don’t know who the people listed are, but I am betting that at least a few of them are goth or horror-punk musicians. They put out one album every year and also some separately themed albums . They take an obvious cue from John Carpenter, which can only be a good thing! There are lots of keyboards and guitar mixed together which makes for a spooky unsettling journey through a horror filled landscape.
I seriously love this band, as you can tell. Surprisingly all of their albums, save one, are free to download off of Bandcamp. Sit down, because this next part is a bit shocking. There are NINETEEN of them! Their newest one titled Sounds Of The Season Part II, which was released last year, is a name your price album.
So, get your spooky behind over to Bandcamp and check this band out! It’s great spooky music to listen to all year, and to scare the kiddies with during Halloween.
EDIT: Just noticed that I actually wrote about this film earlier so I guess this would be a part 2? That must mean I really like it.LOL
Before I get started talking about this film I want to let my new readers know that I don’t do strict film reviews. I like to talk about the social ramifications of films, what they can teach us and how they fit into our current dystopian hellscape. There will be SPOILERS.
I am a John Carpenter fangirl who loves his films and his music. With that being said this is my all time favourite film of his, because I feel like it actually ‘gets’ me. It takes a very sharp look at capitalistic consumer culture and what it does to a society who lets it take control of their lives.
This is not a very complex film, in either message or tone. A group of people living in poverty learns that the world around them is being controlled by Aliens who, through the use of subliminal messaging, bombard them with words such as obey, sleep and reproduce. When you think about it it’s an ingenious way for an alien species to invade Earth. Instead of having a military battle, in which many lives would be lost, they slowly tighten their grip upon society until people are so brainwashed they they really don’t care what is going on. If they can buy their new car, pop out a baby, and stuff themselves with food then everything is fine.
I was a teenager in the 80’s when this film came out and to say that the 80’s was a decade of conspicuous consumption is an understatement. If you were poor in any part of that decade you were made to feel like you were totally crap for not having the nice shiny things that everybody else had. Yes, this has happened throughout history, however it really peaked during that decade. I remember once wanting a pegged legged type of jeans and the only pair I could find were by Guess. As soon as I got home I ripped the label on the back pocket off. When I wore them to school people were asking me why I ripped the label off. No joke, people were befuddled as to why I didn’t want to wear clothes with blatant labels. I didn’t want to be in the part of society that worshipped brand names like they were gods.
A face that even a mother couldn’t love.
The downtrodden rebel group in the film start making sunglasses that allow people to see what is really going on around them. When worn you not only can see the subluminal messages, you can also see what the aliens really look like. The aliens have disguises that allow them to look human and they are everywhere; bank tellers, politicians, policemen,etc… They have infiltrated into every facet of life in a capitalistic consumerist based society, and their presence assures that things will stay exactly the same. People in the society are so conditioned not to question authority that when offered the sunglasses they will fight to the death rather than accept the chance to see what is really going on.
The themes in this film still hold true today. A whole segment of society will believe whatever they are told without question, and if somebody has a worse life than them it’s their own fault for not pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. Since these people don’t have the money to buy nice shiny things then they should be forgotten. In this film people actually sell out and turn on their fellow humans because the aliens promise to make them wealthy for doing so. Gaining wealth is so important in that society, and in this one, that people will do anything to achieve it.
The 80’s was a very wealth obsessed decade, but with the advent of the internet new ways to perpetuate this line of thinking have come to fruition. ‘Influencers’ on social media perpetuate all of this. They basically want to be famous for not having any sort of talent, other than getting others to buy the products that they are promoting. They are capitalist consumer conmen. They promote products to their wide eyed audience as if they too can be an influencer someday if they also buy the product. Aspiring to be an influencer is seen as an actual career path by some of these people. Why go to school when you can get cash and free shiny things while having no discernable talent? Remember folks, acquiring shiny things makes you a vital part of society and better than those who don’t have them. The aliens in this film would be very happy about this state of affairs.
John Carpenter has stated that he made They Live as a statement against Reaganomics. He saw the American middle class being harmed by economic policies that only helped the wealthy and felt that he had to say something against that. What he ended up making is now considered to be a cult classic, a film that is as relevant today as it was over thirty years ago.
EDIT: I wrote yet another post about this film because I had forgotten about this one. I’m going to keep both up because I make some different points in each.
Please remember that there will be SPOILERS in this article. Instead of reviewing films I am talking about how I connect to them and what they mean to me and society at large.
I am a John Carpenter fangirl! He will always be my favourite horror/sci-fi director, and I have seen most if not all of his films. Even when he makes a supposedly ‘bad’ film, such as Escape From L.A., it is still entertaining. Honestly, I don’t think he makes bad films. I just think that he makes great films and others that aren’t as great but are still fun to watch. I will be talking quite a bit about his films on this blog…because they are nifty!
The plot of They Live is pretty basic. Alien creatures from some far off planet have colonized Earth, and have gotten themselves into positions of power by successfully disguising themselves as humans. They subliminally influence and control the population by hiding words in programs, ads, books, etc.. How do they do this without people being aware of their evil machinations? What looks like a regular billboard adverting jeans actually says such things as ‘buy’ ‘consume’ and ‘conform’. The only way that humans can see what is really going on is by wearing some sunglasses that shows the world in black and white; the advertisement messages and the aliens out in the open. The sunglasses basically interrupt the signal that the aliens use to disguise themselves and their subliminal messaging. The good guys blow up the satellite that the signal comes from and then everybody sees life as it really is.
It is really obvious that They Live was meant to be a social-political statement against Reaganomics. Reaganomics was a ‘trickle down’ type political theory that stated the following; if the wealthy class of people are given tax breaks the money that they have saved will eventually reach the underclass. It was been proven wrong again and again. What the wealthy do with the extra money are things such as buying back company stock shares, and buying mansions around the world that they actually really don’t need.
How did Reagan, and his cronies, fool the middle class and underclass? They promoted conspicuous consumption as something good that everybody should do to help the economy. Want a new car but don’t have the cash to pay for it? That’s okay, just take out a loan with interest levels so high that you will never actually own the car. Who cares though! You are driving a newer car and people are noticing! That is what was so important in the 80’s, to be seen following trends no matter how ridiculous said trends were.
I am very proud to say that I never owned a neon piece of clothing in the 80’s.
What happened in the 80’s if you did not conform along with everybody else? You were thought of as strange, that something must be really wrong with you to not want to be like everybody else. So, if you looked different or listened to non-mainstream type music you would be confronted all the time. Other people listen to Wham and wear neon coloured clothes, why can’t you? No matter what answers you gave to these type of people they would never be satisfied because wanting to be different in a largely conformist society is just not done. You become the ‘other’, a type of person who doesn’t deserve to be treated well because how dare you flaunt your nonconformist ways. Often you would even be physically threatened or have things thrown at you when you are just minding you own business walking down a street. Quite often even in school you weren’t safe. I remember being sent to the ‘Student Responsibility Center’ one time in high school for verbally defending myself. The teacher who was in charge of watching us told me that I wouldn’t have so many issues if I just dressed normally. Yep, he victim blamed me.
For the record, in the 80’s conspicuous consumption and conformity was even done sometimes in the ‘alternative’ type communities. If you didn’t wear the right outfits or listen to the right bands you weren’t considered weird enough so you were banished to the bottom of the weirdo totem pole. So, not only did you get shit from the ‘normal’ people, you also got shit from others who thought they were better at being a ‘weirdo’ than you were. Instead of helping you learn about music,etc… they would hold the information out of your reach. You had to really be into ‘alternative’ type music and clothes back then to have survived all of that. I honestly don’t think that a lot of the younger folk into such music and clothes right now would have survived as a weirdo back then.
Does the society that They Live depicts seem eerily familiar even though it was made over thirty years ago? The lessons that John Carpenter wanted us to learn by watching the film have not been absorbed, and instead we are right back where we started from. Trump is yet another mentally deficient racist president who tells lies in order to hold onto the support of his fandom, who consist of mostly the white underclass. Trump is the greatest president that the world has ever known because they voted him into office and they could never be wrong, right?
What can you do to fight against such a society as the one we now live in? What has the film They Live taught us?
-Don’t buy crap you don’t need. You do not need to shop at certain stores or wear certain brands just because everybody else is. Also, we are in the midst of a global pandemic. Use some common sense and buy things that you actually need such as food.
-Question authority. Always question leaders and people that sit in a place of power as to why they do or say certain things. Just because they got voted in doesn’t mean that their opinion should be taken as the truth.
-In the wise words of the Subhumans, just think for yourself.
