Music: Is your name Mary Kelly?

I posted a short live clip of Screaming Lord Sutch doing his big hit "Jack the Ripper" before a wonderfully terrified crowd of young Brit girls. It was disappeared not long ago. Good news though: Here's a longer clip of the same performance with even more crowd discomfort.



And here, just for giggles, is the White Stripes cover of the same song:



You may well ask, "CRwM, why are the lyrics so different?"

Good question. I'm glad you asked.

Screaming Lord Sutch would incessantly re-record his one big hit. Sometimes he'd redo it just to play with some new instrumentation. On some occasions he'd get obsessed with a new musical genre and recontextualize his hit to fit the new mode.

Yes, Virginia, there is a disco version of "Jack the Ripper."



The upshot of this is that there is really no canonical "Jack the Ripper" and the result is a sort of "open source" garage tune that everybody picks up and makes their own.

Here's The Horrors' version:



How do they walk on legs that skinny?

Sutch wasn't the only dude to dabble in Jack the Ripper songs.

Here's Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Though their "Jack the Ripper" isn't a cover in any real sense, the acoustic intro alludes to a Sutch original:



Morrissey has a bit of a thing for English true-crime slashers. His tune "Spring-Heeled Jack" is more famous, but he did a "Jack the Ripper" too. [Commenter Glass corrects me: Mozzer's tune is "Spring-Heeled Jim," not Jack - CRwM] Here you go:



Here's a late-career Link Wray, the rockabilly legend, doing "Jack the Ripper."



Isn't neat that we live in a world where rockabilly is a word that my spell-checker recognizes?

Here's the too-brilliant for words Japanese metal outfit Seikima II doing their "Jack the Ripper." Japan is the most awesome place on Earth.



Oddly, Saucy Jack played a curious role in the Golden Age of Rap. When LL Cool J decided he needed to officially produce a diss track aimed at Kool Moe Dee, he created a track called "Jack the Ripper." I kid not. (Dee's LL diss track was called "Death Blow," the video for which started with J's mom telling a prostrate LL in a boxing ring that she told him not to mess with Dee.)

Art: A short announcement followed by the art of J. R. Williams.

All right, Screamers and Screamettes, I'm going on to "auto-post" for a few days. I've got to head out of town for a funeral and even I, perhaps the most low-rent personage you've ever had the displeasure of knowing, am not so bereft of class that I'd blog at a funeral.

So, in the mean time, through the wonders of technology™ - technology is a registered trademark of Globamark Corporation LLC: "Making your future brighter by owning it." – a couple of, hopefully, interesting post will get thrown up on to the site in my absence.

I'll be back on Friday. Stay classy, Screamers and Screamettes.

To start the ghost blog period off right, soak up a little cultcha why don't ya with the awesome post-pop art of J. R. Williams. Here's a collection of his most monstrous paintings, illustrations, and digital comic collages. Featuring guest appearances by the Addams Family, Screaming Lord Sutch, everybody's favorite resident of the Black Lagoon, and many more.

You can find more of his work on Flickr.

J. R. Williams originals are available at his page at the Comic Art Collective.

Music: 45 hard inches of groovy black love!

There's a curious subculture of YouTube posters that makes web films of their old record players spinning 45 singles. Sometimes they paste some montage of stills over the song. Sometimes they just show a static shot of the record info. The best, in you humble horror host's humble horror hopinion, actually show the record spinning. Regardless, they're awesome. While other folks are cutting anime flicks into rock videos, creating dance tunes from sound clips of Senators who think the Internet is a series of tubes, doing Internet karaoke, or pirating music videos off the ol' Philco, these retro-medium die-hards lovingly record the static-filled whirl of some (occasionally deservedly) forgotten gems. I find this mix of Internet distribution and purposefully low-fi music reproduction fascinating, especially given the fact that these vinyl loyalists post up some truly obscure and wonderful stuff. Such as Sutch . . .

The late, great Screaming Lord Sutch – proto-type of a million make-up besplattered shock/schlock rock acts and former MP candidate and founder of the UK's Official Monster Raving Loony Party – is not only the dude "all dressed up just like a Union Jack" in the Rolling Stone's classic "Get Off of My Cloud," he's also responsible for what a 1998 BBC poll listed as the single worst rock album of all time: 1970's Lord Sutch and Heavy Friends. Interestingly, Jimmy Page, John Bonham, Jeff Beck, Noel Redding, and Nicky Hopkins all appear on the album, meaning Sutch managed to drag some real rock royalty down with him.

Speaking of royalty, the "Lord" in Sutch's name wasn't just a stage gag. Exploiting a sort of loophole in English peerage laws, Sutch got himself named the 3rd Earl of Harrow even though he had no connection to the title.

The following song is not off the infamous Heavy Friends album. Released as a single in 1964 (backed by "Come Back Baby") by Oriole Records, here's Screaming Lord Sutch's cover of the vampire novelty tune "Dracula's Daughter."



Dipping even further back into Screaming Lord Sutch's back catalog, here's 1961's single "'Til the Following Night." The misspelling is Sutch's and not mine (for once). Before you listen, reflect on the fact that Sutch's wailing delivery and fuzzed out sax are recorded here a full two years before the Beatles got relatively sloppy on "Twist and Shout." Though it seems a bit quaint now, its pretty raw stuff for its time.



Now, from Sutch to the Moontrekkers . . .

The Moontrekkers are now mostly remembered by surf instrumental fanatics. This mid-1960s London group was produced by the legendary Joe Meeks (who also produced "Telestar" by the Tornadoes, the first instrumental rock song to go to #1 in both the UK and the US), who was working his effects-laden magic on this, the Moontrekkers' only substantial UK hit: "Night of the Vampire."

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: Jump back, Jack.

I don't throw around the phrase "Renaissance man" lightly. I think it has been abused to the point of semantic uselessness. Unless I'm discussing a European male of great and varied accomplishments and who lived between 14th and 16th century, I try to avoid the term. However, polymath and scare-rock icon Screaming Lord Sutch really tests the limits of my resolve not to slap on the RM-label.

Famous for his horror-themed rock shows in 1960s, Lord Sutch (born David Edward Sutch – he legally changed his named to "Screaming Lord Sutch" in the 1960s) is also the author of a quirky autobiography - Life as Sutch - and a founding member of the Monster Raving Loony Party, the party of choice for the UK's surreal voter.

Screaming Lord Sutch killed himself in 1999, ending a career that was, if not always successful in the traditional sense, always colorful and, somehow, even kinda inspiring. Below you can see an early video for Screaming Lord Sutch's most famous tune: "Jack the Ripper."

Note: "Scopitone" refers to an old jukebox that actually showed "videos" as well as played music. The blog address flashed in this video is a clearing house for Scopitone info and works from the first age of music video. It is worth checking out.

As a Thursday bonus, here's a few seconds of a more deliciously unhinged live performance of "Jack the Ripper." Watch the audience reaction.



And a little something extra, for the loyal "And Now" fans (fan? anybody?) who have read this far. Below is a clip of the White Stripes performing a short bit of Sutch's signature tune.