Misfits Samhain Danzig Tribute – Part One – Initium

Misfits Samhain Danzig tribute with an emphasis on Samhain. You can say what you like about Glenn Danzig.

No matter what you think of him, the impact Danzig (and the people he has shared bands with) has on punk rock is undeniable.

At the time the Misfits were born until Danzig’s solo album he is a mad genius. I don’t think I’m fit to speak about much of his work after Danzig II. I have listened but not extensively.

As a result, that is better left to a metal fan or a super fan like my friend, Bill aka Fanboy (he who reviewed the Samhain Box set in MeatSheet 4 and is fairly thorough and comprehensive about most if not all things Danzig related). His words will be in part II. Pwwelcome him !!

Secondly, just to be clear I rarely listen to post Danzig Misfits. It’s basically a different thing in my mind. Misfits/Samhain Danzig vinyl. No interest. There is too little supply versus high demand. On the other hand, I love the music and the artwork from beginning of the Misfits to about Danzig III maybe IV.

Eerie Von and Danzig have some killer instrumentals.

For example, Uneasy Listening by Eerie Von and Mike Morance ( look up Mourning Noise if you don’t know them and are into side projects) is a great Halloween album and for me feels more like Misfits/ Samhain than the Michael Graves era.

Danzig Sings Elvis is a fun novelty record. Read about that and a Black Aria (Danzig instrumental / classical LP) mention here https://meatsheetfanzine.com/danzig-danzig-sings-elvis-cleopatra-records/

In addition, due to the above factors and writing about Misfits / Samhain I am running out of material. So, unless I get a chance to ask members like Danzig , Jerry Only, Steve Zing, etc some questions, I’ll have to get pretty creative to come up with stuff for tributes to these bands. Hopefully what I have here is a good read. I will leave future tributes to collectors and people who have access to more comprehensive archives. Most importantly, after all this time, I still love the original Misfits and Samhain discography.

Certainly autumn and Halloween are not complete without Samhain or Misfits.

The way the Misfits go through changes. The obvious differences between Cough Cool, Legacy of Brutality, and Earth A.D. will always be special for me. I’ll never forget picking up Earth A.D. on cassette first. The speed and rawness. It was intense. After that I went back into the catalog and was fan ever since. The simple three chord progressions.

Visually some of the best punk artwork (IMO). The simple, graphic, imagery works well and presents their image strongly. Unsure if it was simplicity or budget (maybe both) but the two color Bullet and Who Killed Marilyn is super impressive to me. Simple solid shapes and strong typeface. Expressive line art. Therefore, they achieve in two colors what many bands cannot do using high resolution and / or full color artwork. Iconic is an understatement.

Additionally, the band looked like rogue greasers. So in 1989 it gave me an immediate feeling that the Misfits were referencing some vintage ’50’s and 60’s culture. It seemed they were tapped into something that fit skate and punk culture perfectly. To clarify I mean the old school skate and punk culture in case that is not obvious. It was about finding your own thing and not going to Hot Topic.

They look like they were the horror version of the Lords Of Flatbush and/ or Squiggy and Fonzarelli from Happy Days.

In other words, I mean this sincerely, badass. Of course their image filtered through the greater metro New York area’s lens. Specifically Lodi, NJ area from where they are from.

I related with this band on so many levels. Feeling like a misfit, skateboarding, and growing up in NJ.

The feeling of looking for something but not knowing what it is. The whole satanic thing didn’t faze me. I had already discovered metal that referenced that ad infinitum. Most of all so many good memories of skate sessions and riding through the cool fall nights listening to Theme for a Jackal or any of their material on a walkman or discman. The sense of macabre mood is thick. Meanwhile seeing heroes like Steve Caballero rock Misfits shirts. Ogling the Plan 9 decks in Thrasher.

Even though the Misfits vinyl can crack over 10K, these autumn impressions are simply priceless. I wouldn’t trade them for test presses, acetates, or Samhain’s colored wax.

Subsequently, during the time Tumblr was more popular, I came up with this Danzig related to do list. Some slight tweaks for 2020 were added.

Misfits / Samhain Agenda for the rest of the month –

1) Prime directive. Exterminate the whole human race.

2) Land in barren fields, with UFO’s , (inseminate little girls optional)

3) Find out who killed Kennedy and Marilyn

4) Walk the night

5) Salt the dead (if time permits laugh at death)

6) Ask Mother / Mommy permission to go kill at night

7) Try not to be a god damned son of a bitch (because I ain’t one)

8) Collect skulls , Wanted and Needed

9) Remember Halloween

10) Get the 20 eyes out of my fucking head … they are all the same !

Moving along, back in 2013 ish for Meatsheet’s Tumblr I sought out some people to talk about Misfits and Samhain. The assignment for my legions of fans : “Tell me your favorite Misfits and Samhain song and Why ”

First to complete this All Hallows Eve task was Alex Franklin of Brooklyn Ink. If you are in the metro NYC area support his tattoo shop. If my praise doesn’t suffice he has won awards for best tattoo shop.

Instagram: oldschoolalex https://www.instagram.com/oldschoolalex/?hl=en

Without a doubt he is a long time fan of both bands. Firstly, one of my earliest memories of him was seeing him in a jean jacket that custom hand painted Samhain artwork on the back. Certainly true 80’s punk thrash style. I wish there were photos of it, cause he would prime the back and just do another badass painting over the existing art. 

JM: Favorite Misfits song ? 

Alex: Hybrid Moments. 

JM: Why ?  

Alex:- Just a catchy punk song

JM: Favorite Samhain song  

Alex : – To Walk the Night.

Why ?  

Alex : – Sets an incredible mood, great lyrics.

http://www.facebook.com/BrooklynInk?ref=ts http://www.brooklyninktattoo.com/

Next, moving along we have Matt Molnar. Matt has been in some great bands. For instance, I shall list some, Pagan Rituals, Dead Nation, Kissing Is A Crime (maybe my favorite of his bands) As of late he had a killer song with Jeremy Bastard under the name DISOLVE. Look upon it,listen, read about it here https://meatsheetfanzine.com/jeremy-bastard-everyone-is-history-there-is-no-memory/.

To me, Samhain have only two true Samhain releases : Unholy Passion, & November’s Coming Fire.

Initium, though littered with highlights, is still too close in sound to the Misfits most of the time to really necessitate a name change.

Final Descent, a warm up for Danzig the band, that wasn’t even completed until after Samhain was defunct.

That being said, All Murder All Guts All Fun, is in my all time top Samhain tracks. it could have easily been on Walk Among Us, or 3 Hits from Hell, and its a shame that its not matched with Googey’s sympathetic thump. but alas, somethings weren’t meant to be, and this song is just that good. Just top quality, catchy punk song writing, who’s lyrics have murderous intentions.

It’s not re-writing the book on Misfits style song writing, its just perfecting it. 

Mother Of Mercy: The sound of pagans gathered around a bonfire at Stonehenge, & I mean that as a total compliment. The glittering torches of celebrants in a bizarre occult holiday display, light the crevices of this track. It could have been perfect on either of the first Danzig albums, but in this iteration, it’s pure November Coming Fire gothic goodness, and it can elicit even the most righteous among us to demand their time in hell. 

Matt also wrote a bit about Misfits. Although I have my own opinions. I don’t think I can say what he said better.

Misfits are hands down, without a doubt one of my most favorite bands of all time. Picking just one song is too hard, each era, with each line up and recording sessions, is unique to itself in sound and style. 

Static Age LP as a whole could be my favorite, I almost consider it just one song. It really is a complete thought. Since it is my favorite, we are getting two off that album.

First: Last Caress. let’s face it, most of us of a certain era first heard that track via Metallica’s cover of it, and that’s our first exposure to their music in anyway.

In a pre Collection II, Pre Box set, Pre Static Age LP, Pre internet world, this song, in Misfits form was the Holy Grail of recorded sound.

For all the young Fiends. This was a song not in print on any format for years, and was only released on an import only 12″ EP, who’s pressing quantity was limited at most.

My quest for it was long, and took me to many used record stores, flea markets, and vendors of bootleg music products, all through North Jersey.

The thrill of the chase was nearly half the fun, and the aura of mystery surrounding BEWARE, ‘Last Caress‘ the song,  and the other studio versions of songs not widely re-released.

This made the final moment of listening impact that much more potent.

I shed a tiny tear of sorrow for those who don’t get to experience such thrills, but life goes on, and I’m sure you all will be fine. Beware finally came to me via a bootleg cassette copy . Which also had the “cough/cool” single on it, and a complete recording of their show at the Ritz, which most of the Evillive LP came from.

No one, especially not Dave Ackerman’s older brother Bill, believed me that I was the one to score the first captured sounds of the Misfits performing Last Caress. (Look for Dave Ackerman from Tear It Up / Pagan Rituals / Obedience comments in part II)

Finally hearing the Misfits version of Last Caress, on shaky, bootleg cassette, was a transcendent experience that mere words cant do justice to.

The Glory of Glenn’s baritone ringing sweetly over the first guitar chord, as they both battle for who strikes the first sound, was like peeking into the kingdom of heaven through a crack in the pearly gates. The utter profanity of the lyrics, juxtaposed with such melody and 1950’s teen drive in chord changes, blew a hole into my skull, not unlike the one depicted on the cover of the Bullet single.

This bootleg tape was passed around so many times, so everyone, the county over, could hear for themselves what Last Caress was really about, when in the hands of the glorious 1978 Misfits lineup.

This inexpensive magnetic tape could not withstand the fervor upon which this song was re-played and re-played. It was a sad afternoon, when the sound of strange backwards music replaced Last Caress on the tape.

After so many repeated listens, that tape flipped over for the length of the song, and that one song only, playing a backwards bootleg live performance in its place. 

Second: Theme for a Jackal, this is where the Morrison, of the Elvis-Morrison persona of Danzig comes in for the first time. Beat Poetry, about dead daughters in rivers, livers (as in the bodily organ, ya know, the one you might remove from someone’s body after murdering them).  

It’s a ghost story, and a tale of horror, bathed in pure hues of dread. A vamping drone on C-minor, only one chord for the entire song, like the Beatles  ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, or most Indian ragas.

So, a cryptic murderous beat poem, with noise guitar, a piano coda, in raga form recorded in January 1978 ??

No wonder this guy’s been pissed off his whole fucking life and has a chip on his shoulder he cant ever get over. This man was an unheralded musical genius, far ahead of his time, long due the recognition that insistently evaded him til a full decade later with the release of Danzig I . 

(Editor note: To clarify and at the risk of being called a suck up to Danzig, in which I really don’t care.. I agree with this last statement 100%)

Spook City USA : An air of mystery is the stuff the Misfits are made of, and this song, a Glenn Danzig solo b-side, and a gem on offer in the Misfits box set, fills this niche nicely.

A total throwaway tale of Ghosts in the good ol’ USA written in that awkward growing pains period between the Horror Business EP, and the first Walk Among Us songs. due to the sterile, proto – Samhain quality to the Danzig solo version leaving something to be desired, there was a real ghoulish joy upon discovering a newly unearthed Misfits song, having evaded capture on official release or widespread bootleg.

It’s pure B-movie camp fun, and the Johnny Thunder’s & the Heartbreakers Live at Max’s rush of the full Fits delivery is as fun to listen to as it musta been for them to play it.

Though he may be Glenn’s bitter enemy, a part of me cheers for the underdog Bobby Steele, hearing him in zero in on his hero, Johnny Thunders, and give a full scale imitation of his guitar style and licks on this one. Had it made it to album form, I think this song woulda been what Braineaters was to the official Walk Among Us, or what American Nightmare was to the Plan 9 Walk Among Us. : A fun genre exercise where the Misfits get to imitate other styles of music, and put their own stamp on it with the twisted lyrical mind of the one and only Glenn Danzig. 

Bloodfeast: The mood of this song is haunting and haunted. In other words, it’s as beautiful as any love ballad, but it’s full of blood and guts.

It’s a sort of “love me tender” of cult movie moments. The horror in this song isn’t camp, or funny, or schtick.

This is not Plan 9 from outer space, this is some truly morbid and sadistic stuff.

Glenn always mentioned in interviews how this song was written for Samhain, but used it in the Misfits cuz they needed more songs for the record. It’s lyrics and vibe are 100% Samhain. It would have fit beautifully on November’s Coming Fire, in fact, it would have been it’s centerpiece, instead of To Walk The Night.

Glenn Danzig has a true gift for expressing the sensual and doomed within one moody framework.

It’s out of it’s element in the Earth A.D. cesspool of thrash and noise and feedback but it lends that batch of murky tunes, a much needed moment of grace and respite. Bloodfeast is in a lineage of Misfits songs, stretching from Cough/Cool, to Theme for a Jackal, that grips with mood, suspense and atmosphere, all in a vocal performance.

Maybe it is because they are all the few times, the Misfits shifted from their upbeat barrage of major key Ramones-like riff rampage, to reflect in the waters of a minor key. 

Skulls:  This is the first ever music of the Misfits I heard. A friend recorded it off college radio, and flashed it like the rare gemstone that it was on a long, traffic snarled drive from north Jersey to the shore one hot July afternoon. “Wanna hear the Misfits?”, he asked.

After being seduced by their graphic design on album covers in record stores, and on tee shirts of older metal head types, their allure was growing more golden by the day.

As a result by the time I finally heard them, I probably couldn’t have cared WHAT they sounded like. They probably still would have been my favorite band in the world. But the sound they made, like Frankenstein coming to life after the kiss of a lightening bolt. It was not only palatable, it was extremely pleasurable. A surge of whirlwind energy and unlike the 7 plus minute opuses most metal bands I favored at the time adhered to, this song was over soon as it began.

Two minutes flat of pure ghoulish energy. I experienced the sense of exhilaration a corpse might when it first comes to life Halloween night. After a long year of deep, graveyard sleep.

Remembering the hours spent trying to figure out the lyrics to the song, and what our pre teen selves guessed the lyrics to be make me cringe with embarrassment all these years later. As a result he crumbled paper lay on my friends bedroom floor for months after, and when Bill Ackerman got an LP copy of Walk Among Us, lyrics included, it was hilarious comparing our feeble attempts at deciphering the syllables of Glenn’s bloody musings.

Walk Among Us is a really wild record. Glenn’s overdubbed guitars battling it out with Doyle on separate stereo channels. Googey’s drumming, a thuggish thump of a brain hungry zombie, that is constantly subduing itself as not to overpower the force of vocal melody. The balance of power and restraint on display is like watching the Incredible Hulk petting a cat. One gruff movement, and a delicate being is crushed. Hammering behind all this, is the distorted mass of Jerry Only’s bass playing. It’s sophomoric non-dynamics is the lifeblood keeping this corpse together. Essentially a low end guitar that brings each song full beast.

Skulls is the zenith of this album’s madness. It’s the ‘Fits doing what they do best: ripping out your spine to a backbeat. 

Further we go, next up, without going in to a big to do and backstory, I had a chance to ask a punk legend who came up in the same era as Danzig about the Misfits. Tesco Vee of Meatmen, Blight, Hate Police was gracious enough to mention a story about Bullet 7″ artwork on a shirt he has or had at the time. In short, Tesco Vee and cohorts really carve their niche into punk with a spin that is part gag gifts, blistering riffs, and riddled with adolescent sex angst. What’s not to like?

“I used to work in a record store in Georgetown and go to a little grocery store for lunch. Around 1983… I was wearing my Misfits Bullet shirt. An older guy with a beard was glaring at me..as I checked out he said ‘JFK used to shop here and was a friend of mine” and kicked me out of the store! “

Consequently, Dave Speed of Truckers on Speed happens to have a favorite song by Misfits. He has a band in Phoenix area that have been going a long time. They play raw rock with a bit of twang however they grew up with punk classics. Check em here. https://www.reverbnation.com/truckersonspeed#:~:text=TRUCKERS%20ON%20SPEED%20have%20been,in%20person%20to%20be%20believed.

Meat : Favorite Misfits song?

Dave:  Where Eagles Dare 

Why ?  Because I ain’t no goddamned son of a bitch

Meat: Great answer

Dave : You better think about it baby.

Photo : Tired Of Tomorrow tour – photo blur courtesy of me

Kyle Kimball is the drummer of a band called Nothing. This band is clearly one of my favorite modern bands. I’ve seen a few of their gigs and found out Kyle is a Samhain fan. He was gracious enough to answer this query regarding the darker, moodier evolution of Danzig’s songs. Moreover , the new Nothing LP is out any minute, most likely by the time you read this. Get it here https://store.relapse.com/item/93207

JM : The Misfits get lots of attention. What did you like about Samhain or what was it that made you a fan of them?

Kyle: I think I was 12 or 13 when I got into the Misfits. My good friend Chris gave me his Collection II CD and I immediately loved it.  I remember eventually looking at some primitive fan websites and seeing the word Samhain. It was confusing as to what it was but eventually figured out that it was the band Glenn did after the Misfits and before Danzig.

I saw the cover of Initium and was instantly hooked.

Glenn, Eerie and Steve all covered in blood. To a young kid what was there not to like? It was like a more mature misfits to the nth degree with better musicianship and even darker imagery somehow.  I remember buying Unholy Passion on CD at a record store in Jersey and the rest was history.

In conclusion of Part I, stay tuned for Part II. I have tried to capitalize, bold, and italicize all LP’s. EP’s and song titles. Due to the amount of them used, please bear with me as I want this out before October 31st. At least Part I by Halloween. Likewise, Part II features more friends and more high praise for Misfits and Samhain. Also a special guest commentary.