Rob Zombie

Halloween 2015: Living Dead Girl

Halloween is 11 days away!  What the hell happened to September and October?  Ready or not, we leave for our annual Halloween trip to Orlando in 3 days, maybe 4 if we decide to put together some extra costume props.  Between costume anxiety, travel prep, a flu shot today, and a busy local Homecoming week for Landon, I feel like Rob Zombie’s “Living Dead Girl”.  So this will kind of be a Halloween free for all.  My brain is like a bag of crazy cats right now.  Or bag of crazy dicks.  Or whatever that saying is.  One of my three regular readers can let me know.

The kids and E revolted on me this year and said no makeup, they wanted “easy” costumes to wear to Disney World’s Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party, which we’ll attend the night of October 29th.  I don’t know what they all were bitching about because last year’s costumes were about as no fuss as you can get.

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Okay, 4 hours total of makeup and 7 inch monster boots might have been a bit much.  It still made the most epic Christmas card photo ever.

A few people know what we are dressing up as this year, most people don’t.  I’ll post a picture on Facebook and Twitter (again on October 29th), so be on the lookout for it.

I have extreme anxiety about this year’s costumes because I have gained some weight in the past year but it is what it is.  If you’re watching CNN late next week and hear about an arrest made at Walt Disney World, though, that will be me because if one little snot nosed Cheerio muncher asks “Mommy, why is (insert character name here) fat?”, I’m going to lose my shit.

I had to take my very form fitting costume into the Vietnamese tailors for a little fix last week.  You may recall how that went last year.  It went really well this year, meaning I didn’t get laughed at in a different language.  I guess “normal” costumes give you a lot more leeway with Vietnamese tailors than star spangled rock leotards do.

I’m trying to look past all the costume anxiety, frantic packing, and lack of sleep to just look forward to the events we’ll be attending.  This will be our 6th year attending both Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights (and it’s the 25th Anniversary, which will make it even more epic) and Disney World’s Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party.

Halloween in Orlando is like nothing else and I’m not the only one who thinks so.  Horror Nights Orlando has been named the best Halloween event in the world the past 7 years by the people over at The Golden Ticket Awards.  Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party is the perfect place to go if you have younger children.  It is also the only amusement park which allows costumes and that’s one of the reasons this party has become a tradition for us.  Here’s a little inside look at both of this year’s events.

I was telling E and Gracie that in the second room in the HHN 25 Years Of Mayhem And Monsters House, if you enter chanting “Bear! Bear! Bear!”, the infamous HHN bear would make an appearance.  Gracie thought for a moment and then said, “Like… a real bear?”  This is my National Honor Society student, y’all.  I told her, “Yeah, Universal got sick of crap being said about the house not being scary enough so they said ‘Oh, it isn’t scary enough?  Screw you, we’ll put a live bear in there.  See how you like that, suckers!’  Yes, I really said it like that because Gracie was in the room but y’all know what I really said in my head.

I hope your week is going well!  I’ll leave you with “Living Dead Girl”, which also happens to be one of my most favorite Halloween songs.

Spotify Survivor: New Music On My Starred Playlist

Some of you know I religiously check out the New Releases on Spotify every Tuesday night.  This sounds like a lot of work if you think about all the new releases from every genre that’s released every week but it’s pretty easy for me and really doesn’t take longer than around 30 minutes.

I’m a speed listener, if you will.  I know within a few seconds of listening to a song if I’m going to like it or not.  I listen to the first few seconds of a song then skip to somewhere around the middle and listen for a few seconds.  I then make a decision on whether or not that song deserves to be placed on my “Starred” playlist for further exploration later.

Don’t preach to me that I’m missing out on a lot or that I’m not a music purist because I don’t buy into the whole “album as a concept” philosophy.  There are a few exceptions where the whole album as a concept thing has worked and actually made sense and I’ve respected and liked those albums much more for it but those instances are few and far between.

Side rant or as my husband calls it, “Look!  Something Shiny”!:  I think music snobbery/bullying is at a peak right now.  I’ve actually been called narrow minded because I didn’t want to listen to some bearded dude’s wrist slasher of an album which he made all by himself in a secluded log cabin in Bumfuck, Idaho using only tin cans, string he made himself from squirrel innards, a blank cassette and a boombox.

Bad music is bad music and I don’t have time for it.  Listening to a song I instantly don’t like another dozen times will not warm me up to it.  Also, if a song title includes the words “truck”, “dog”, “trailer” or “badonkadonk”, I don’t even listen.  Trace Adkins is totally fucked based solely on that criteria.  And if you’ve ever written a song that included those words, I say to you, sir or madam:  Fuck you and stop making the collective South look like a bunch of stupid ass wipes.

I’m actually not in a bad mood.  I promise.

I realize that music is very personal.  That song you absolutely love, I may loathe with a level of hatred not known to man ever before and vice versa but I happen to think I have a pretty broad range of musical interests.  I have everything from Mozart to Slayer in my music library.  The concerts I have seen or will see this year range from St. Paul & The Broken Bones to Rob Zombie.  I love a very well made country song.  Well, ones that don’t include the words truck, dog, trailer or badonkadonk.

With all that said, when I add a new song to my Starred playlist, I give it a few days.  Most do not prove themselves worthy to become a regular fixture in my life so they are deleted and banished to my music graveyard forever, God rest their souls.

I listen to a lot of music.  A lot.  You would be shocked if I broke it down.  I thought it’d be fun to go back through the last few months of my Spotify listening records and make a playlist of new releases or at least recent releases that survived culling and were not voted off the island.

 

These songs won’t be for everyone but I’m betting if you’re friends with me, you’ll gain a few new favorites yourself.  Let me know in the comments if I introduced you to your new favorite or if I introduced you to an artist you’ve never heard before.  If you’re that crazy bearded dude with the squirrel innards, just go away.  I hear Trace Adkins is really lonely.

Sissies Stay Home! A Night With Rob Zombie

When Rob Zombie says “Jump!”, you jump.

We did a lot of that last Thursday night, even without being told, when he came through Birmingham, AL.  He and his band played to a sold out crowd at Iron City Birmingham, which holds 1300.

The crowd was not what we expected.  Way less goth and more what you envision when you think of Rob’s album “Hellbilly Deluxe”.  It was a completely different crowd than we saw at the Arctic Monkeys concert.  I’ll leave it at that.

E and I got there early but still didn’t get to grab a seat in the balcony area as we had the previous two concerts we attended at Iron City.  We resigned ourselves to the floor and grabbed a spot by the wall so we could at least lean like the old people we are.  There is no seating on the main floor unless you’re handicapped.  I was handicapped after this concert because after 4 hours of standing, jumping and stomping in the shoes below, I could barely walk out of the venue.  It’s been a week and I still can’t feel a few of my toes.  I’m not joking.

6 inch heels. I'm an ass hole.

6 inch heels. I’m an ass hole.

I could attempt to make out like I’m some music expert reviewer but I would fail miserably so I won’t. I will say that I know the difference between a shitty sounding live performance and one that’s exceptional. Rob Zombie was exceptional. They sounded awesome the entire time, which I imagine is pretty difficult given the material he sings. There was a brilliant drum solo by Ginger Fish (I know, I know, I can barely type that name with a straight face). John 5 gave us an epic guitar solo which included a bit of Eruption, the greatest single rock guitar solo of our time, in my opinion.

Here are just a couple of the performances captured from the concert we attended.  As you can see in the videos, Rob Zombie is surprisingly a very good dancer.  It’s almost hypnotic.  They should do a fitness video based on one of his concerts.  He’s 5 years older than I am yet he could kick the ass of just about any 25 year old lead singer out there today.  I don’t think he stood still during the whole concert.

“Dragula”, a Halloween staple at our house and also the encore song of the night.

Chew it up, spit it out, “Sick Bubblegum”

Right before singing “Pussy Liquor”, Rob told us to hold on to our pussies.  And I did.

And the darkest song of the night, Lords of Salem.

Rob told us after the opening song (a cover of “We’re An American Band“, which was amazing) that he hadn’t played in that small of a venue in well over a decade. This was evident by the fact that they were only able to use maybe half of their regular concert set which includes classic movie monsters.  Rob said his management thought he was crazy when he told them to book him a gig in Alabama because he didn’t want to skip our state and also didn’t want to “sit on his ass in a hotel room for two days” waiting for the next gig. He let us know that he made a point to stop in and see us but he wasn’t an ass hole about it. He thanked us for coming, interacted a lot with the crowd and even walked around the whole venue at one point.  I’m not sure if this has ever been said before but Rob Zombie is gracious. He threw Birmingham one hell of a party.

My litmus test for deeming a concert awesome is if I would pay to see the performer again.  Based on this concert, I will give Rob Zombie my money every single time I can in the future.  I highly recommend you go see him if he’s coming to a town near you.  And thanks for coming to see us, Rob.

Part 1: Partying Like a Rock Star. But With Phlegm.

I could tell you how weird of a week it has been but I think this picture will sum it up much better than I ever could.

Typical Monday night.

Alabama got severe weather and a few tornadoes Monday night.  During the worst of it, when we knew taking cover in the basement was imminent, I’d make the kids put on the motorcycle helmets so that was one less thing we’d have to worry about when the sirens started.  Allie, our dog, was on the leash so we could quickly get her downstairs with us.  Fun times.  Sadly, Allie does not have her own motorcycle helmet.  She also seems to have a small case of demon possession, judging by her eyes.  I may need to work on that.

We had already purchased tickets for two different concerts this week, so when my throat started hurting during all the tornado sirens, I knew it wasn’t good.  By Tuesday morning, it was a full on bad cold.  On Wednesday, I was an achy, snotty ball of pain and couldn’t hear much out of my stuffed up ears.  I had to dig deep and push through. And I did. Like a disease ridden Gwyneth Paltrow (but without the sleeping around) from the movie Contagion, I said “Fuck you” to my phlegm and plodded along all week, totally disregarding every healthy person in my germ infested path.

We saw Seether on Wednesday night.  This marked the second time we have seen them in concert.  To sum up:  They sound awesome live, they have some really kick ass songs but Shaun Morgan’s interaction with the crowd sucked.  It was nearly non-existent.  I think he said “Thank you” one time.  I can imagine, in a little tiny part of me, what it would be like to be a rock star.  I’d like to think that even in a jumble of cities, all looking the same, that before I went on stage I’d at least ask a crew member “Dude, where are we at?” so I could give a shout out to the fans who came out to see me.  He never once recognized where he was and that pisses me off.  They played at Iron City Birmingham, which has a capacity of 1300 people and it was sold out.  Give us a little respect.  I will not use my concert money to see Seether again.

Here are the few good pictures I have from the Seether concert.

I will do a review of the Rob Zombie concert in Part 2 because that concert deserves an entire blog post without the weight of my phlegm or Seether.  It was that damned good.  I guess that was a spoiler, wasn’t it?

Stay tuned this weekend for the Zombie review and also an update on my last WTF Wednesday.  Have a good weekend, y’all!