Salem's Lot

Holy shit. I. Love. Salem's Lot. I really love a lot of horror films, too many to count. I love the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, Hellraiser movies and the Friday the 13th movies. But what tops them all for me is Salem's Lot (1979). I literally have been watching it every night now since about October. Now, I'm not sitting and paying attention to it every night because I put it on when I go to bed. An adult night-light if you will. I've read the book and its also one of my favorites. Salem's Lot is becoming increasingly ingrained into my head every day.

I cannot recall when I first saw Salem's Lot. But as with many movies I saw as a kid I loved the feeling of being scared. And Salem's Lot scared the living shit out of me for sure. The scene that always left me awake at night was the window scene where Ralphie Glick scratches his brothers window while floating outside. Yea, that was super damn scary as a kid. I read the book when I was going to Northern around my sophomore year.

When reading the book I was again finding myself scared at night because of how well written the horror aspects were. I mostly read at night and in bed which didn't help my sleeping habits. The book was amazing; I'm a big Stephen King fan anyway which enticed me before I even turned the first page.

If you haven't seen Salem's Lot or read the book the story is simply this: A vampire slowly takes over a small town in Maine. That's the beauty with the story, the first half of either the book or TV movie is just character building. Anyone never knowing what the story was about would never suspect a vampire horror story. Once you do realize a vampire is slowly taking over the town the story becomes a roller-coaster ride. You go from one vampire to dodging vampires left and right.

Tobe Hooper directed Salem's Lot, and for any n00bs out there TH directed the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Harry Sukman wrote the score and Salem's Lot was actually his final film. I was able to get a copy of the soundtrack which is only available in bootleg copies since there was never an actual soundtrack produced. David Soul is the movie's biggest actor besides English great James Mason (of Stanley Kubrick's Lolita fame). The movie starts out two years after the main story begins in Ximico, Guatemala. Soul comments that "They've found us again" and that "We have to go further". Bam. Roll credits, you get a full moon and lights up on some creepy looking house with some awesome horror music. Tell me you wouldn't watch it.

One thing I notice while the movie plays 2-3 times are all the parts of the movie that make it so precious to me when I wake up in the night and catch them. I love Halloween and Salem's Lot is the best Halloween movie, in my opinion. A scene I awoke to a week ago was when a side character catches his wife with another man and then threatens that man with a shotgun in his face. It has nothing to do with vampires and these characters don't contribute to the main plot. But the scene is such a trick or treat type of scene, being like a trick where no one get's hurt. I was half awake when I realized this movie has the perfect Halloween feel.

The vampires in this movie are different than most others I've seen. They all have shiny eyes and some are able to float. Barlow aka The Master looks a little cheesy by today's makeup standards but his appearances command attention. Barlow is blue and scary as hell; he never speaks, kills a priest, and bends a cross with his hands. There are so many memorable scenes in the movie and David Soul is a Class A bad-ass throughout. Another reason I have continually enjoyed the film as I age is how horribly pessimistic the ending is. I won't spoil anything for anybody out there who may see this and watch the movie for the first time but it is amazing. Its a great horror movie and a great book; when I get full of doubt by how vampires are being twisted into not-scary glittery Hollywood abominations I just hit this movie up and see what vampires once were: blood suckers not suckers of..well you get me. Check out the trailer here. Amazing.

Gettin' Sentimental

My junior year at NIU was one of the best times for me. I changed as a person quite a lot. The year was 2008 and man oh man did I start listening to good music that fall. Little did I know however was how much the music I listened to then would conjure so much emotion and good memories for me years later.

This was a time where I was by myself a lot, my brother and two other roommates all were dating and gone all the time. I had a blast by myself playing video games and watching movies but when I hit lows in the absence of my friends I decided to listen to music that I had been meaning to. At that time I had been a veteran of my other favorite bands like Creedence Clearwater Revival, Steely Dan, and Chicago; I felt an urge to broaden my musical library from The Electric Light Orchestra (Known to me as ELO) and Iron Butterfly.

Now, last week I talked about some classical music that I have listened to a lot throughout the past year or so. That music is great however I grew up listening to classic rock and that genre of music makes up the bulk of what I listen to. I had been a fan of ELO ever since I was a child watching DTV's Monster Hits every Halloween which played Evil Woman.  For Iron Butterfly I had their self titled album in my truck in high school and I listened to that frequently. I rather enjoyed the spooky type sound of that album and was overjoyed to discover in the fall of 2008 that Iron Butterfly had multiple albums.

One day as I was alone I finally cranked up ELO 2 and the song Momma hit me. I thought the song was cool as hell and had a sound that I really hadn't heard before. At this point as I listened to songs written by Jeff Lynne who is on the right in the photo to the right I knew I loved this band a lot. To the left of Lynne is the drummer of ELO, Bev Bevan. I was smitten by their  awesomeness. These songs flowed through my head while in my apartment and through my commuting to and from class at the DeKalb campus.

I changed it up throughout the semester by expanding my mind with the acid heads known as Iron Butterfly. Like I said before I listened to the self titled album with a song that everybody knows IB by: In-a-gadda-da-vida. I feel like IB gets a bad rap because people really only know that song. I know they didn't have a string of hits or anything but still. I listened to two albums for the most part during this period. Heavy is from 1968 and Ball from 1969. Ball to me is the better of those two albums but there are some songs that still stick with me today from Heavy such as So-Lo and Fields of Sun. Top to bottom I love Ball. The feelings that that album creates for me is different than basically anything else I listen to. I'm not sure if anybody in the band knew what type of sound they were projecting or not but it has such a Halloween-y type sound. Halloween being my favorite day of the year influences this idea heavily. Songs like Real Fright are a testament to that Halloween sound. It helps that I listened to Ball a lot in October of 2008.

A lot of sentimental feelings hit me about a year ago. For the longest time I finally re-listened to both ELO and Iron Butterfly post college. When the song Belda Beast came on I was taken right back to that lonely apartment with myself for company. What hit me the most was how nostalgic I felt about that time in my life. I don't look back and feel bad about myself for being alone because shortly after that I would get out a whole hell of a lot more. It was a time in my life unlike any other, and maybe that's why I felt such srong nostalgia. All I had was class and that music then, I realized that as I laid in my bed and went through all my memories last year. Belda Beast is definitely one of those songs that will always take me back to the innocence of my life in 2008. To this day my favorite bands are still ELO and Iron Butterfly. I listen to them frequently along with CCR, Steely Dan and Led Zeppelin.

I'm not sure what the music that people listen to says about them; Iron Butterfly suggests I do acid and burn incense while wearing flowers in my hair and tie-die shirts. I don't so who knows. This music is the soundtrack of my life. I think about how I ended up listening to this music by being alone I realize that I really had to be alone in order to ever have listened to it. I wouldn't have listened while hanging with my roommates. I'm so glad because no matter what I do, whenever I hear these tunes I fall right back into pleasant memories tarnished by nothing.

Howard Hanson

If you pay attention to the music that plays at the end of the 1979 horror film Alien you will notice that it isn't the same as the rest of the film's score. When I first got the soundtrack to Alien which was written by Sci-Fi  movie great Jerry Goldsmith I noticed that the song at the end of the movie was absent. For years all I knew of the song I heard was from when Ripley blows the Alien out of the Narcisuss lifeboat and its subsequent reprisal during the end credits. I have enjoyed that song and finally over a year ago did somewhat harder research and found out that Jerry Goldsmith did not write the song. Oops. Turns out it was Howard Hanson, an American composer who wrote his symphonies from nineteen-twenty all the way through the nineteen-seventies. The symphony in question here is of course Symphony No. 2 in D-Flat Major Op.30, "Romantic". I will offer links to this along with another selection I love of Howard Hanson. 

Howard Hanson was of Swedish descent and played Trombone as I have. I feel the "of Swedish descent" was important to mention because Norse qualities were influential in his writing of his first two symphonies. The first symphony being the "Nordic" symphony. His music called to me somehow. When I found out the song from Alien was the Romantic symphony I quickly downloaded anything of his I could so as to continue exploring his beautiful music. 

Music for me is not just something to listen to. Music is almost like a drug for me; it can take me miles away or simply make a run painless. Classical music has always been something that raises my mood and elevates my soul. I think cinematically whilst listening to certain songs and other times I can laugh, become angered or agitated, and even feel immense sadness. I feel like I'm floating when I hear some of these symphonies by Howard Hanson. Listening to him gives me a high that isn't like anything else I've ever experienced.  

While I haven't listened to a wide variety of classical music I feel like I have listened to enough between Mahler, Grofé, Dvořák, Ravel, Wagner, and Handel to know and feel that Howard Hanson is by far my favorite. If I ever feel sad or need a pick me up I usually just lay back and hit these symphonies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkxBAaME-ag http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfh_pt4JcGo 

For that first link check out all three movements, the first link is of the first movement of the second symphony which is the most popular but I find the final movement to be my favorite of the three. For the second movement of symphony three I just wanted to offer another taste of some awe-inspiring beautiful music. If you feel down just crank these up and relax. Maybe someone else will enjoy this great American conductor/composer.