Misfits discography horror business
The original drummer left, they changed guitarists like some people change underwear, and found themselves frequently scrambling to get people to fill in for shows. Just as soon as they were a band, they started to shed members. Add in Danzig’s booming deep voice, unusual for punk, and they were incredibly eye-catching and attention-grabbing. The Misfits painted skeleton bones on their stage clothes, adopted Halloween monster face paint, and Only slicked his hair forward between his eyes in a style he called a “devil lock” that would eventually be copied by other horror punk bands. The Misfits immediately stood apart from the local punk scene, still mainly influenced by the cool of nearby New York City’s CBGB and the bands that haunted it, like The Ramones, Patti Smith, and Television. Like I said, they just shouldn’t work as a band, and yet… These songs would go on to become their album The Static Age, which wouldn’t see the light of day until almost thirty years later and yet contains some of their most iconic work. They quickly began recording, the songs barely formed and the instruments inexpertly played. Only and Danzig bonded over a love of shlocky, terrible horror movies and flung that passion into the band, gleefully pouring corn syrup blood all over their lyrics and writing odes to aliens, Halloween, zombies, slasher flicks, and the Kennedy assassination (I mean, I guess that counts?). (The old punk adage of “here are three chords, now go form a band” isn’t actually wrong!). Jerry Only, who had received the bass a few days earlier and never actually played it before, accepted. One day, walking home from work, Manny spotted a neighbor taking a bass guitar out of his car and asked if he wanted to be in a band. He roped in Manny Martinez who was a friend from his from a former band to play drums but was unable to find anyone else for the new group. Glenn Danzig, taciturn asshole that he is, started the band in the 70s after short stints in other local groups. Horror Business (1979), featuring the Crimson Ghost So what makes these dipshits special? We can lay that at the feet of the Misfits’ masterminds, singer Glenn Danzig and bassist Jerry Only. I know most people think punk rock is incomprehensible noise (they’re wrong, mostly) but the Misfits are truly the most incomprehensible of them all. They sound like complete dogshit, which is part of the hilarious appeal of them, really. One of their seminal albums was recorded in 1978 and didn’t get released until 1997! They straight up shouldn’t have worked as a band. Hailing from a town called Lodi, they can charitiably be called “troubled” as a band and the fact we have any music from them at all is a minor miracle. I mean, what else are you going to do in New Jersey? But while other bands certainly used horror to great effect in their work, but no one did it with such utterly batshit, grinning zeal as The Misfits. Their lead singer, Dave Vanian, also has the distinction of being the first person we can pinpoint as what we now consider “goth.” He stalked around the stage in white face paint and black Victorian frock coats all the way back in 1976. The Damned have the honor of being the first punk album out there, beating the Sex Pistols by several months. The Cramps famously lent a song to The Return of the Living Dead soundtrack. Many punk groups over the years have flirted with horror. It’s political, feminist, and yes, it’s also spooky. But punk is so much bigger than the Sex Pistols and encompases so many different themes and tropes. Ask people to name a punk band and most will say the Sex Pistols, the sneering jerks who became the poster boys for the movement despite only releasing a single album. It was a catalyst, striking like lightning in England in the 70s and created several brand new subcultures like a match set to dry kindling.
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We’ve got the Jersey Devil, we’ve got the Shore, and we’ve also got one of punk’s weirdest bands, the Misfits. There’s just something in the water here. We even have a long running magazine that’s literally called Weird New Jersey dedicated to chronicling the crazy shit in this place. I’ve lived here for over twenty years and it still manages to confound me by just how much strange can be packed into one state.