Candy Apples and Razor Blades…

Or, “The Misfits, Halloween, Sincere Irony™, the Neo-Kissian Commodification of Exploitation, and Me”

I. Night of the Living Dead
“This Ain’t No Love-In…Ok, Well, Maybe It Is”

The Misfits are the Official House Band of Halloween.

This is not a bold statement by any means. Everyone loves “The Monster Mash,”¹ but honestly, how many Slogophiles even remember any of Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers’ follow-up novelty hits, like “Monster’s Holiday” or the eco-themed “Climate Mash?”² I mean, I had to check his Wikipedia page to name one. And while other bands have songs about horror and Halloween, not too many of them have actually devoted pretty much their entire existence to the concepts. And most of the ones that do are really just ripping off the Misfits.

This being Halloween, and in keeping with the (coincidental) recent string of music-centered posts, I thought I’d reflect on the personal, cultural, and symbological³ significance of (I can only assume) the only band to write a song about a Tura Satana movie,⁴ and maybe explain why I still wear my ratty old “Crimson Ghost” shirt and listen to “Halloween” (both the original and the fake-y “exorcism” version) every October 31^st.

---

Notes to Section I (no need to scroll!)

1. Okay, I’m making an assumption here, but if you don’t love “The Monster Mash,” then I think the burden of proof is on you to explain why.
2. To be fair, how many “Slogophiles” can there possibly be anyway.
3. Not a real word, but an amazing facsimile of one.
4. I have no less than six different-but-not-by-much versions of “Astro-Zombies” on my iPod right now. I also have no more than six. Basically, I took no less or more than three sentences to tell you I have six versions of the song. Amazingly, only one version is live.

---

II. She Looked So Good in Red…
Or, “How I Learned to Stop Taking Ian Mackaye Too Seriously and Love the Sleaze”

I first heard the Misfits in High School, as part of my early education in punk music. I liked them well enough, though I wasn’t a fan of how thinly produced the first album I owned (“Legacy of Brutality”) sounded.⁵ I occasionally popped the tape into my “stereo,” if the existence of more than one speaker made a tape-deck earn the term, but never really paid it much mind.

Then, exactly 14 years ago today, I had a revelatory moment.

It was afternoon on Halloween day, my freshman year of college. I was on the tail end of a particularly rough stretch of my life which included a traumatic and sudden break from a circle of friends (one that made me retreat into several months of self-imposed exile) and a seriously life-changing family issue that I’d rather not go into here.⁶ I was bitter, sullen, and rejectionist about almost everything.

Musically, I still loved nothing more than punk from the 70s and 80s. I was getting deeply into Minor Threat⁷ and as I didn’t smoke, do drugs, or even drink (at the time) and my prospects for ever having casual sex again⁸ seemed slim-to-nil, I decided to “go Straight Edge.” And like most Straight-Edgers, I was humorless about it.

I was probably humorless about a lot of things. I mean, I was in an angry place – and moving out of the house wasn’t really helping like I’d hoped. So, I was walking around that afternoon, listening to music, and trying to find a costume for a party that night.

Although Charleston, SC is not a particularly cold climate in October, I remember that day being chilly and grey. I had grabbed a tape at random for my Walkman (I didn’t get a CD player until 1996, believe it or not). It was Legacy of Brutality. The pounding, rudimentary down-strummed chords were exactly what I needed that day. I ended up wandering aimlessly, having given up on finding a costume.⁹ Then, while I took a shortcut through the hatefully touristy Market, “Halloween” kicked in. Brutally, I might add.

I suppose the fact that it was Halloween helped. But it was at that moment that I actually started listening to the lyrics. Or at least, listening to what I could decipher. And I realized how hilariously silly the posturing was. And then I realized it was probably on purpose. And it is entirely possible that this is where Sincere Irony™ as a lifestyle first entered my mind.

Here was a band that loved the same crappy monster movies I did, and sang ridiculous lyrics about them with a straight face. They meant it, man. Only they didn’t, not really. Except that they did. Cosmic, huh?¹⁰

I was put in a much better mood by this. And I started to remember that life could be enjoyed, not just endured. I ended up leaving the party with an attractive redhead, and within a few hours of my Misfits epiphany, my brief flirtation with sexual asceticism ended rather abruptly.¹¹

---

Notes to Section II:

5. An opinion that would lately be rendered quaint as, over the years, I delved deeper into punk. Bands like Flux of Pink Indians or Oi Polloi make Legacy sound like it was produced by George Martin by comparison.
6. That sort of discussion is really best reserved for a Slog entry about The Goonies.
7. A band I still love, even if the lifestyle they espoused is not for me.
8. Honestly, even though most people do in this day and age, I am stunned that I actually managed to lose my virginity in High School. Heck, there are days I’m kind of amazed that I’m still not living a life of unwitting celibacy (see: Comic Books, My Love Of).
9. I ended up teasing my hair up and getting my roommate to loan me some eyeliner and black lipstick, and went as a pisstake parody of a Cure fan (a band I really don’t care for, despite liking most of their contemporaries).
10. Not really, but that isn’t the point.
11. That relationship ended horribly, by the way, and made me bitter again for some time. But that’s hardly the Misfits’ fault.

---

III. Too Much Horror Business
Danzig Needs To Lighten the Fuck Up and Jerry Only Needs To Just Stop

The Misfits are clearly Fellow Travelers on the Road to Sincere Irony™. However, as mighty as their original output is, there is strong evidence that the founding members either never truly grasped what made them great, or lost the plot so long ago that appreciation of their recent output is best left to everyday irony of the least sincere kind.

I’m going to speak only of Glenn Danzig and Jerry Only, and not the roughly 173 other people who can claim to be Misfits Alumni. They were there when it started, and there when it ended. And they were still there when it rose from the dead, collapsed, rose again, collapsed, and finally settled into a merchandising cash cow.

A. Danzig

Danzig, of course, has technically not been involved with the Misfits since at least a decade before my Halloween epiphany. Of course he moved on to make similar horror music, first with Samhain¹² and later his eponymous solo band. Of course, these things are “similar” to the Misfits in much the same way that Jim Belushi is “similar” to John Belushi – the former is an unfunny product that exists largely due to its relationship to the latter.

Don’t get me wrong. I like some of the post-Misfits Danzig oeuvre. And early Samhain isn’t appreciably different from the later Misfits’ relatively weak thrash songs on Wolf’s Blood/Earth A.D. But I think the difference between the Sincere Irony™ of the Misfits and the Earnest Sincerity™ that came afterward¹³ can be best appreciated by a comparison of two representative songs.

• Earnestly Sincere™: Danzig, “Mother.”


• Sincerely Ironic™: The Misfits, “Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?”

While the former is not a “bad” song, the latter shows the truly developed outlook of the Sincere Ironist™. “Mother” is a grim manifesto of a dark man warning others away from his darkness that never fails to make me chuckle. “Mommy…” is a slice of silly fun that sticks in the knife when we realize that we’re secretly celebrating a vengeful maniac who begs to be allowed to break curfew to commit his trophy-killings. Of course we still don't care, because it’s the fucking Misfits, and it’s not really fun and games until someone loses an eye (or twenty).

The Earnestly Sincere™ latter day Danzig seems blissfully unaware of the outright silliness of his pseudomacho shirtlessness, his wolf-laden videos that resemble nothing more than a direct-to-video adaptation of the Clan of the Cave Bear, and his pretentious revelation of his favorite occult books, which he apparently keeps by a kiddie pool.¹⁴

The Sincerely Ironic™ Misfits knew good and damn well that the main reason they were so badassed is that they looked comical, acted like cartoons, and sang about the ridiculous as if it were sublime. Well, actually they probably don’t, but self-awareness is the realm of the cynical ironist. And those guys are total douchebags.

B. Jerry Only

Of course, when I speak of the Misfits, I need to clarify: I mean the first incarnation of the band. While there’s nothing outright “awful” about the music of the second incarnation of the band, there is also none of the joy and fun. Jerry Only and his revolving cast of hired guns do not amuse me much. They come off as a pale imitator of the original, like a photo that has been Xeroxed until it is recognizable, but ugly. But I actually have no beef with “ugly, derivative crap qua ugly, derivative crap.”

I have a partial beef with the New Monkees…er…Misfits…on the issue of violating the 50% rule of Band Identity. This rule, commonly shattered by aging musicians clinging to their past successes at the expense of any growth or change, is a guideline I first postulated when I saw the “Beach Boys” a few years ago. Said “Beach Boys” consisted of original member Mike Love and mid-60s addition Bruce Johnston and a group of (admittedly competent) session men. While nothing was intrinsically wrong with the performance, it was beyond odd to think that one of the original five members could lay claim to being an equivalent experience of seeing the original band.

Essentially, I believe you have to have at least half of your original membership still in the band (rounded up for bands of 3, 5, or 7) to be able to use the original band name. Some exceptions may apply if a band didn’t really “gel” until a key member joined (case in point, the “classic” lineup of the Clash is actually the one with Topper Headon on drums, even though he did not appear on their still-legendary debut), or if only one member of the band provides nearly all of the music and lyrics to every song.¹⁵

The original Misfits were a revolving door outfit, to be sure, but as long as both Danzig AND Only stayed along for the ride, the name was fine. But once Glenn hit the bricks, the band was dead.

I am willing to let this quibble slide, as Doyle Von Frankenstein was part of the last several years of the original Misfits (though clearly he had not gained his German Barony until some time between 1983 and 1996, as he just went by "Doyle" then). However, there are some crimes that I cannot let slide – some actions are simply unpardonable. And the blame for that isn’t just on the reunited Misfits, but must also rest at least partially on some of their more oblivious fans.

“So Wolter,” you may ask. “What real crime did the post-Danzig Misfits (and the less-observant fans thereof) commit?”

Well, I’ll tell you, anonymous reader:

Forgetting that the world only needs one Kiss.

You’d think this would be evident. But you’d be wrong. The world already had a metal-tinged, not-altogether technically proficient, make-up-laden foursome of ostensible musicians that in actuality were a front for an enormous merchandising campaign. The Hot-Topic-ization of the punk world was one of the sad and ultimately inevitable side effects of mainstream acceptance of the genre. No use railing against prefab bands and pre-studded leather jackets. It’s just what happens in a commodity society.

However, when a band formed in the earliest days of punk that staggered through about 7 years in the legitimate underground, which had been defunct for over a decade suddenly reforms and immediately starts releasing a spate of merchandising, from skateboards, to bookbags, to lunchboxes, to sweatbands, to home pregnancy kits, on and on, ad infinitum…well, that just doesn’t sit well.

Especially when that band, which is admittedly aging rapidly, starts slathering on the clown white in a manner not seen in its original incarnation – sure they had a shock horror look, but it was far from the kabuki/clown hybrid that was displayed upon their rebirth – and attempt a FUCKING WRESTLING CAREER.

Sigh.

Honestly, if the Misfits Starship would just start covering “Strutter” and “Detroit Rock City,” instead of whizzing their legacy down their embossed bonded leather pants (on sale at Gadzooks for $199.99), I wouldn’t need to write this section.¹⁶

Instead, a band that made consistent effort to turn the trashy, dark, exploitive underbelly of American Pop Culture into redemptive anthems of noise and fun – a band that extolled the virtues of fringe culture heroes like Vampira, “Big Daddy” Roth, and Vincent Price, committed the one cardinal sin in punk: they exploited their own target audience.

It’s been a couple of years since I’ve heard anything new from The New Original Misfits. Please keep it this way, Jerry.

---

Notes to Section III

12. Per the redhead in the story above, this should be pronounced “SAW-ehn.” And who am I to question a practicing Wiccan about the pronunciation of obscure and ultimately stupid Celto-Pagan BS?
13. While not always an unnecessary mindset in daily life, Earnest Sincerity™ is responsible for most of the truly execrable “rock” music. Bands such as Counting Crows, Creed, and Live once ruled the airwaves because music fans mistakenly embraced them as representative of a “mature” outlook on life.
14. If none of this makes sense to you, search for Danzig on youtube. You’ll be glad you did.
15. John Lydon can claim that Public Image, Ltd is exempted for this reason, but the quality latter albums suggest that the moment Keith Levene left, PiL ceased being PiL, being down from 50% to 25% of the original lineup.
16. Okay, I guess I never needed to write any of this...you sure are picky, anonymous reader.

---

IV. Come Back
It’s Still Ghoul’s Night Out

Despite their best efforts at becoming a caricature of a caricature of a caricature, the Misfits are still a must-hear every October. Ultimately, their complexly overlapping and joyously redundant back catalogue still packs a wallop that merchandising and self-importance cannot dilute.

I urge every reader to put the Misfits album of your choice on the turntable, or the CD tray, or the tape deck, or your iTunes library and turn it up LOUD. As far as I’m concerned, it’s never Halloween until you’re shouting along with Glenn:

“I AIN’T NO GODDAMN SON OF A BITCH!
YOU BETTER THINK ABOUT IT, BABY!”¹⁷

Unpleasant dreams…

---

Notes to Section IV:

17. I have 6 versions of this one, too. Each is clearly essential and distinct...