Wednesday, October 08, 2008

ROCKIN' WITH THE GHASTLY ONES By Harriet Von Lupin

Hey, you guys, this is Harriet Von Lupin, and I'm so excited to be doing The MonsterGrrls' 31 Days Of Halloween with all my friends! I'm not really used to computers much, but I've been taking some typing lessons and I think I've got the hang of it now, so I'm gonna do my first post about The Ghastly Ones, a band that makes really cool monster-party music!

The Ghastly Ones are Sir Go Go Ghostly (bass), Dr. Lehos (guitar), Baron Shivers (drums/leader), Captain Clegg (keyboards) and Necrobella (go-go dancer). These swingin' spooksters hail from Van Nuys, California, and have been rockin' the California surf/garage rock scene since 1996. They first scored some national attention because of a guy named, uh, Rob Zombie (oh, I know who this is--he used to be a musician but now he makes those weird horror movies that the Mad Doctor doesn't like--pretty sucky) who released their first album, A-Haunting We-Will-Go-Go, on a record label called Geffen/Zombie Au Go Go. (Pretty good name 'cause this band really go-goes!) That record's now out of print, but the Ghastlies' groovy surf sound got them a lot of cool shows, playing with guys like Brian Setzer and Los Straitjackets (which are some other guys that the Mad Doctor likes, and I do too!) and earning them the title of "Slayer" of surf. (Okay, Slayer is that evil Devil band but these guys are not an evil Devil band so they must have been talking about something else.) They broke up for awhile after all that, but they got back together and have been making super-cool-groovy music ever since!

The Ghastlies' latest albums are Target Draculon, which has all new original songs on it, and Unearthed, which has a bunch of their old stuff from the first album re-recorded with Captain Clegg on organ. (Hey, he's an organ donor! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!) Unearthed is especially special to us, since it contains a groovy charged-up version of the song that we consider the official MonsterGrrls theme song--"Robot Atomico!" If you want to get these cool records for yourself, just go straight to www.ghastlyones.com to order 'em. And if you're planning a Halloween party, this is like the perfect music!

Well, that's all for that, but I'll be back soon 'cause we're all doing cool Halloween stuff all month, so stay tuned to our 31 Days Of HOWL-O-WEEN! OW-WOOOOOO!!!

Harriet Von Lupin

POST-MORTEM: The Mad Doc wants me to mention that Baron Shivers, the Ghastlies' drummer (whose real name is Norman Cabrera) has a great day job where he does all kinds of cool monster designs and sculptures for TV, movies and music videos, and recently did some stuff for the movie Hellboy II: The Golden Army. His website is at http://www.shadowmillproductions.com, so make sure you stop in and visit.

Also, me and all the Grrls wanna say HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Mr. Gary K. Lee of St. Louis, Missouri, who is an F.O.T.M. (Friend Of The MonsterGrrls) and a cool cello rocker! --H.V.L.