HAPPY HALLOWEEN FROM... Southern Culture on the Skids
Oct 31, 2011
Rick Miller & Co. are getting Zombiefied all over again: Miller examines his life-long horror fetish, with a cameo from The Editor.
BY RANDY HARWARD
Rick Miller's sittin' in his Kudzu Ranch studio trying to fix a fuzz pedal that, when it's workin', "sounds like a 60-pound bee." The reference betrays Miller's fascination with old horror films, an affinity well-known by fans of eclectic hillbilly-rockers Southern Culture on the Skids.
"I always loved Halloween because I could just watch endless streams of horror films," he recalls. "Every Saturday morning there was a double feature of Roger Corman films, some sort of indie 50's sci-fi, or Universal horror films from the 30's. I used to just live for that stuff."
That's one reason SCOTS often draws from the horror/sci-fi well, as on Zombified, a limited-edition horror-themed collection the band self-released in 1998. The eight-song EP featured songs about vampires, zombie babes, the devil, undertakers and more, and fans lusted after it like the shufflin' undead crave guts. It quickly went out of print and was fetchin' big bones on eBay and Amazon until now.
Several years ago SCOTS was asked to soundtrack horror legend Herschell Gordon Lewis's Blood Feast 2: All You Can Eat. It was a huge honor, natch, but the band dragged their feet getting songs to the filmmakers. "When I finally [sent them], the guy said, "It's already done - it's gone straight to video," laughs Miller. "So I was like, ‘Oh, shit.'"
Rather than allow the tunes to rot, he pumped up Zombified (SCOTS.com/skidmart) for reissue. Now it sports a wicked 13 tracks, including "Eyeball You Later," a Link Wray-style instro called "The Creeper" and "Bats Are Sleeping," a solo number from little Jack Miller. Papa Miller says he and his five-year-old boy are bonding over some of the same stuff he liked when he was a kid. "We love cartoons, man. That's our thing. We watch all the Looney Toons and Ren & Stimpy - all that stuff, man. We have the best time together. Mom doesn't understand."
***
BLURT: It's good to see you're reissuing Zombified. I remember picking up the original release in Salt Lake City, like 12 years ago.
RICK MILLER: Oh my gosh. Salt Lake City. What a crazy place, man. We always had fights at Salt Lake City, we - and things got stolen. Go figure, the city of Mormons. [laughs]
If you're not Mormon, you're really bad. [laughs] Nah, I mean - we always had a great time there, but I remember there was these guys there that made an incredible neon piece that said "Southern Culture on the Skids." Some guy tried to grab it and run with it from our merch table. They tackled him and I think he got the crap beat out of him in the parking lot, you know, before the police came.
That's Southern Culture fans. [laughs]
Yeah, exactly. But they made, the brothers made us another one and they covered it barbed wire so it wouldn't happen again. I said, well, that's a tough one to ship, you know. And I mean I don't know if I can have that in my house. (Laughs.)
Yup. That night I actually, uh, that was when I bought the original Zombified.
Oh, man!
I always loved horror films and monsters. I didn't know I could love you guys anymore, then I saw that.
Oh, yeah, and that's like my favorite one. I really love Zombified, and it was just, you know, it never available in stores.
It came out on, on an Australian label, and then we just said, well we'll sell it at shows ‘cause we didn't have a label or we didn't have anyone interested in putting it out at the time or we were with Geffen and we weren't gonna give it to them. So we just started selling it ourselves at our live shows. And once we ran out, we ran out, and we haven't had any for so long.
Then we got contacted to do this soundtrack for this movie called Blood Feast 2: Buffet of Blood. They were very nice guys, but they didn't stay in touch very good. We're very good communicators, and we were quite busy, so we wrote some songs but when I finally got ‘em to ‘em, the guy said the film was already done, it had gone straight to video. [laughs] So I was like, oh shit.
So, we've had a few kind of Halloween songs sitting around in a can for awhile, we thought, "Well, let's reissue Zombified and put five new songs on it. And some of ‘em are from Blood Feast and then some of them were relatively recent recordings so, anyway, now it's a full LP.
I remember the first time I watched the original Blood Feast. There's something special about Herschell Gordon Lewis gore. I've seen some gory films - these are some of the craziest, but the blood is clearly red paint. I wound up seeking them all out in my Psychotronic Video Guide-
Oh yeah, man, that's an awesome book. I've got that, too, man. I've got a first edition. I have sticky notes on all the pages and stuff - you know, stickin' out where I can go right to it and find stuff. It's a great book. I keep wondering if there's like an updated version. I'm sure there must be, but I haven't seen it if there is one.
Do you have The Gore Score?
No, I don't. What's that?
Uh, Chas Balun, who put out Deep Red magazine and wrote for Fangoria, rates a bunch of films according to general quality and also the amount of gore. It's basically like a fun book to get into. But I wonder if you're less about gore then you are camp and schlock.
Well, you know, I like, I'm not, I like some gore films, and I mean some of ‘em that are really creative like, I thought Re-Animator was awesome. You know, and what are some of the other ones? Oh God, the guy that did The Hobbit, he had -
Oh yeah! Dead Alive and Bad Taste.
Yeah, those were awesome, too. I mean, I kinda like the creative ones. I really love that movie that was out a little while ago that was called Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer...I like a blend of humor with the gore and stuff and I like things that I've never seen before, like in Re-Animator, that guy holdin' his [decapitated] head, you know - performing oral sex on the chick? I mean, that's a cinematic first!
You know what I mean? I'm not so into the just kind of the repetitive slasher films, like the Halloween films. I do like them, but not where it's just kind of the same formula repeated over and over and over again without any variations, you know what I mean? I do kind of like the schlocky stuff a lot too, ‘cause I like the humor whether it's intended or not. That's why I love Herschel Gordon Lewis movies. Or Russ Meyer. And I like Mario Bava, just ‘cause I love the look of his movies. And of course Barbara Jewel was in a lot of them. She was pretty great. [laughs]
That's cool. Have you by any chance heard of the film Hobo with a Shotgun?
No, huh-uh. Is that like a Troma film or something?
It sounds like it, but it's not. You know that film Grindhouse, where it was a double feature with Death Proof and Planet Terror?
Mm-hmm.
This was one of the fake trailers, like Machete. It came out on DVD in July and it's beautiful. It looks just like one of those 1970's exploitation films. But it's a little more vivid. And it's one of the sickest, goriest films I've ever seen, really disturbing, but it's also got this dark humor.
Yeah, remember that movie Man Bites Dog?
Oh, yeah, that's the serial killer, the French guy, right?
That was kind of that way to me. It was funny at times, and then it was so disturbing, too, you know. Honeymoon Killers is another one that was kind of like that when I first saw it. Have you ever seen that one?
I haven't.
Oh, check out the Honeymoon Killers. It's not necessarily a horror movie, but it's about this couple that, uh, a lonely-hearts thing where the guy would get involved with like older women that had some money and stuff, and then his wife would uh, do away with them. It's pretty good, and it's filmed in black and white and it's from the 1970's or maybe the 80's. It's really good.
Anyway, so yeah, [Hobo] sounds really good. I'll have to check that out. Recently, I haven't been able to do a lot of that stuff because I have a young child and I just have been really busy with music and making a living.
He just turned 5. He's in kindergarten this year. It's great to hang out with him, too. We love cartoons, man. They're our thing. We watch all the, all the Looney Toons and Ren & Stimpy - all that stuff, man. We have the best time together, watching that. Mom doesn't understand.
Getting back to Blood Feast and Zombified, I remember hearing some of the songs from Zombified in the film, but aren't there some songs in the movie that aren't on Zombified?
Yeah, there were some from a single we did called Santo Swings on Zontar Records. And then there was some that was just some instrumental incidental music that we just fed him early on ‘cause we couldn't use anything from Geffen. They wanted too much money, so we said there's some that we could re-record, and then we've got old singles and a bunch of - I just sat out here one day and just did a bunch of incidental music that I thought might work for it. And, you know, we did try to do our take on kind of the tracks with kettle drums and stuff like that, you know, from, uh, from some of those movies and stuff.
Wasn't there like a, a slow creepy version of "8 Piece Box"?
There was, yeah. It was kind of an instrumental - But we might've given him some outtakes. There could be something like that on there that are like close to that, you know what I mean? That we just said, "Use this, don't worry about contacting Geffen." I've gotta be honest with you, I haven't looked at that in about four years.
So I forget. But I will tell you one thing, though, you know that one scene where the guy gets, gouges the eyeball out with the spoon? We wrote that song on Zombified, that's on a the new comp. It's called "Eyeball You Later, Baby." That was supposed to go over that scene, but it didn't make it. The film got put out before we could get the song to ‘em. [laughs]
Is there ever gonna be, do you think there's a possibility-I know some of these songs are on other releases, but would there be like an EP with that rare version of "8 Piece" and -
Yeah, well we were thinking about doing Zombified the re-release of Zombified like an old paperback, like an old pulp paperback, where one side of the album would be, uh, Zombified and the other side would be Blood Feast. We just didn't have time to do it and I couldn't get in touch with the guys from Blood Feast. I don't know where they're at now. I know the one guy had a heart attack or something. So I just have lost touch with them all. We just decided to reissue the Zombified because we just didn't want to get in any problems.
Alright, now, uh, is it me or are werewolves kind of criminally underrepresented on Zombified?
Very underrepresented. But we did do a song called, "Werewolf."
Yeah, I think it's on Halloween Hootenanny isn't it?
That's right. It's that Halloween compilation that Rob Zombie put together. But again because Geffen... We couldn't use it for anything and we didn't want to re-record it ‘cause it's already out there. And we were already re-issuing stuff that's on Zombified, so anyway, yes, they are very underrepresented on Zombified. And I agree they should be more - maybe we'll do a "Werewolf" single.
Yes, please. That'd be great.
I think we should put out a single every Halloween. Don't you think?
Oh yeah, certainly! For stuff like that, you know, I think you guys would just rake in the dough-not that that's the important thing but I mean the, the fans would appreciate it, too.
Well, we'll do that, man. We'll do a single for next Halloween. It'll be a werewolf single.
Now let's do kind of a memory-lane thing - can you tell me your first like trick-or-treating memory? Or your wildest Halloween story.
Well I think my wildest Halloween was where you, you know, got thrown in like juvenile detention because you were caught like, you know, vandalizing public property or somebody's house, you know. I think I mean we all went through those stages at 12, 13, 14 years old. But I think my, my, uh -
Sounds like you got caught, man. I never got caught.
Yeah. I got caught man. You know why? Because we used, this liquid snow to write all this stuff on things and we left a trail of it going away from the guy's house. And we were all over at our buddy's house's staging garage, you know, and his mom came out and she said the police had called and we were all supposed to stay put. [laughs]
Well, they took us in their patrol car and delivered us to our homes and had long talks with our parents. I think they gave us a citation, and we had to go to court with our parents and of course we had to clean everything up and pay for anything we damaged, you know. Stuff like that. We didn't go to juvenile hall. I'm kind of glad we didn't actually.
As far as, uh, Halloween - well, I remember stringing firecrackers - you used to be able to buy firecrackers that you could pull and they would pop, they were called poppers and they were, but they were like, they were more like firecrackers than just little- We used to string them, like, we'd get like 30 of ‘em all together, and we'd string them across the road on Halloween. People thought they'd got a flat tire, things like that.
We were jerks. Somebody probably could've gotten really hurt. Pranks was our big Halloween fun, you know.
But I always loved Halloween because I could just watch endless streams of horror films. Television, too. I mean. I grew up in a little town called Henderson, North Carolina and, uh, uh...every Saturday morning, there was a double feature of a, uh, like a Roger Corman, like some sort of indie 1950's sci-fi and some serious Universal horror films from the 1930's, you know. So, uh, I used to just live for that stuff. Matter fact, I remember when we got our first color TV, I got up just to watch the fuzz.
But that was, I think, probably my favorite memory was just watching all those great movies, like the whole month of October was so great, you know.
Alright. What is your first memory of being terrified in a film and your first memory of being grossed out?
Well man, probably the first terrifying moment, really - I'm sure this is true for lots of people, was when you watched that house land on that witch in The Wizard of Oz. And those flying monkeys freaked me out.
I couldn't turn away from it. I, you know, I'd cover my eyes, then I'd look right back - you know what I mean, it's like one of those things. And I remember getting really scared - I loved Famous Monsters of Film magazine.
I'd just learned how to read, and I got my mom to buy me one and I remember I'd read it and then I'd just be frightened. I couldn't sleep for weeks. And I remember doing the old, uh, I love the old Aurora models. I built like every one of them, uh, Wolfman, Dracula, Phantom of the Opera. As far as being terrified, that was probably it.
One movie that really scared me the most - I saw it at my grandma's house; she had a big house and we were upstairs - was the original Haunting. You know, with Claire Bloom and Julie Harris and Russ Tamblyn. That's a really scary movie. I remember watching that when I was probably about the same age as the Famous Monsters thing, man. I had to sleep on the floor; I couldn't sleep upstairs because it was too spooky.
But yeah, that was probably the most terrifying, was that. Starting with Wizard of Oz, but The Haunting stuck with me for a really long time.
And then as far as grossed out, let me think, man... I think probably Night of the Living Dead. I saw that when I was in junior high. It was the first time I'd seen people eating body parts, like pullin' intestines out and stuff.
Yeah, they don't have a ton of gore in NOLD, but there's the one scene where you can see that floppy flesh like chicken skin.
Yeah. I think that was it. The first time I'd seen anything that graphic. You'd see lots of severed heads and stuff like that, kinda fakey and stuff, but that one was kinda grisly, you know? I just remember in junior high it was abuzz with it: ‘Have you seen Night of the Living Dead?' And if not, ‘You gotta get your mom to take ya.' That was the hardest thing. [laughs]
Yeah, my mom took me to see An American Werewolf in London when I was eight, so I had it pretty easy.
Those transformation scenes were really great. That was somethin' that really grabbed my attention, too. Alien, the first time that thing pops out of that pod? That was a good shocker. Oh, you know some of the Fulci movies really disturbed me, too.
Yeah, City of the Living Dead!
Oh yeah, and god what was the-I think there was one where there was a rainstorm of maggots.
You know, in COTLD, when she pukes up her intestines? That's the only time I've ever almost puked in a movie.
Yeah.
Fulci's zombie movies are some of my favorites. Speakin' of zombies, I've always been curious as to your favorite type. In "Zombified," you're talking about the classic voodoo zombie. Then you have the Romero shufflers and the viral 28 Days Later runners. There's some controversy over which is better and whether the viral ones are zombies at all. Where do you stand?
Well, lemme think here, man. Really The Mummy was a zombie, too, if you think about it. Raised from the dead by a high priestess or a witch doctor or hoodoo guy. I don't know, man. I think the virus kinda stuff is the scariest to me ‘cause it's kinda plausible. That's the cool thing about zombies.
Some of my favorite zombies to watch are the ones from outer space. My favorite zombie/sci-fi was one where they lived in a cave and they planted a little thing in people's heads and all of a sudden it would be - God, what was it? And there are two movies. In one, there was a little kid whose parents got turned into zombies. There was a sand pit and you'd disappear into the sand and come back totally zombied out. And the guy that ran the whole thing was from outerspace and was just like a head in kind of a turban with little octopus hands that floated in a bubble. Yeah.
That's another example of totally cheesy effects that were really disturbing in its own way, you know? Golly, man. Oh! Something Invaders. Invisible Invaders! That's it.
And there was another one where there was a ray from outer space that made people who'd only been dead about 48 hours, become alive again and crawl out of their graves. That was a good one, too. And those were 1950s one, and they all had the outer space/sci-fi thing goin' on. And of course there's the 1970 thing with kinda of the possession, the demonic zombies. You know what I mean? I guess that's more like possession, with the demons.
And the Fulci zombies were sort of both the voodoo/demonic variety.
Yeah, and those Italian guys - the Church always seems to enter into it, somehow, or their Catholicism. Which kinda makes it creepy, too.
Yeah, like the (Argento-produced) Michele Soavi film The Church.
There's always a priest that ends up workin' for Satan or somethin'. That's pretty scary stuff, too. And then the virus stuff. But that can be kinda dumb, too, because a lot of it's big-budget stuff, which is so-so.
But I love all the Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, all that stuff. That's great, too. Speakin' of gore and zombies, I love the scene in FILM where the zombie gets too close to the helicopter blade and it slices the top of his head off like baloney, man! [laughs]
How about the zombie vs. shark scene in Fulci's Zombie?
Yeah! That's right, that's right, that's right. That was another cinematic first. All that stuff's great, man.
So what about shufflers vs. runners? Got a preference?
The fast zombies remind me too much of MTV. I'm not sure I like them. It's shocking, they're so fast, but I kinda like the shuffling zombies, myself. They've got a nice rhythm to them. You get some really nice shots of exploding heads.
I agree. It's all about building terror, and this mounting dread that leads toward this shocking, grisly end.
They're gonna get ya. They just keep comin'.
And the runners -
You don't have time to think about it! It's an immediate release of action, and then it's over with. It's a let-down. The slow building of the zombies - I like it.
You know our editor, Fred Mills, and he said to ask you about some of the Halloween shows you've done in the past.
I think the weirdest Halloween show we ever did, Fred was at. It was in maybe the 1980s at the Milestone in Charlotte. It's an old house and the first time we played there, we got down there and it was locked up. It was run by an old Vietnam vet named Bill Flowers and, while we were diggin' around, tryin' to find another entrance to the club or at least see if anyone was there, we found this guy sleepin' in a sleeping bag. The place looked deserted, like it had been condemned. Boards on the windows. We thought it was a homeless guy, but it turned out to be Bill.
The opening bands, he used to send them to get beer with a shopping cart, down to the Foodland. And he'd sell them later to make a profit. It was part of the gig if you were an opening band, for a while.
But we played there on Halloween and somebody was givin' out tabs of acid at the door. It was pre-Ecstasy days, you know. [laughs] So it was really strange. Fred might have a picture from that night of this one guy who had his arms stretched out, staring at the ground. He looked like he was reaching for something, like he could feel the music coming from my amp. We must've been doin' some feedback stuff or somethin'. [Ed. Note: oh man. I remember that particular SCOTS-fueled Halloween very well.... ]
Fred says your sax player dressed up as a werewolf?
Yep, uh-huh.
Were you in costume?
I think I was, but I don't remember. We were wonderin' why the crowd was actin' so strange. And it was Fred Mills that told me what happened. But it wasn't Fred givin' out the acid. [Ed. Note: I'll take the 5th on all that.] The Milestone, the shows back then, was legendary.
It might've been the show where we had to scrounge up a PA. We ended up using a broken custom amp head and ... we found a broken monitor somebody had put under the stage to hold it up. We had to go down the street and steal some old retread tires to replace it, then set the amp and the blown monitor speaker up onstage on some beer cartons and that was our PA.
We kept gettin' shocked, so somebody took their sock off and put it on the microphone. It smelled so bad. Those were the types of shows we had there. You never knew what you were showin' up for.
An edited version of this story also appears in issue #11 of BLURT.
blog comments powered by Disqus
More Photos
