Music: Gruesome twosome (plus one).

So, like two trillion years ago I wrote up the Canadian retro-garage outfit the Gruesomes and posted their low-budget video for "Hey." In that post, I lamented that videos for their more horror-blog appropriate tunes didn't seem to exist. Well, like long-haired twangy zombies rising from the grave, here's a trio of Gruesomes' videos.

Now much the same way gimmicky surf groups are required by law to cover the "Theme to the Munsters," horror garage groups are legally bound to produce a cover of Screamin' Lord Sutch's "Jack the Ripper." Because they stand for law and order, here's the conscientious Gruesomes rocking a live version of said tune:



And here's a Gruesomes ditty about the ultimate horror icon: the Devil himself. The video seems to have been lifted from a videotape of a local music show, so forgive some tracking artifacts. Here's the Gruesomes' "Way Down Below":



Finally, in a nod to their garage rock roots, here's Montreal's fine garage revivalists doing a live cover of the Sonics' classic "The Witch":

Music: The Gruesomes for yousomes.

As regular readers already know, I’m a sucker for garage bands with any sort of gimmick. One of my favorites are the off-again, on-again Gruesomes, a garage revival outfit from Montreal. Taking the name of the Addam’s Family-like neighbors who appeared in The Flinstones, the band formed in 1985 and managed to build a fan base and crank out two EPs all in their first year. Their very first, titled Jack the Ripper, included an excellent cover Screaming Lord Sutch’s signature tune.

The Canadian music ‘zine What Wave interviewed the group in the pages of their eighth issue, scans of which are available online.

The band brought out three more LPs before packing it up in 1990. During their glory days, The Gruesomes only put out two videos: one for their wonderfully creepy “Way Down Below” and another for their more goofy Monkees-inspired “Hey!” I wanted to hit you with this Gruesomes twosome, but sadly I can only find footage of “Hey!” This means we're doing more silly than scary today, but lighten up Maurice, it's my blog and I'll roll like I feel.



If I ever find “Way Down Below,” I’ll post it.

The Gruesomes reunited in 2000, putting out a new album and touring in Canada. Garage archive label Sundazed Records has an amazing anthology of the Gruesomes that collects pretty much everything they did before the reunion. It is good stuff.