"I mean this as a compliment: this band sounds like Scooby Doo music."
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Need some creepy bangers? Spooky season is a GREAT time to get into Ludo, the former Warped Tour band that now does nothing but Halloween concerts. To get you started, I've made a playlist of their top ten most haunted songs. Thank me later.
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Haunting Memory - Carol Woods (Your Face Keeps Haunting Me / Haunting Memory, 1976)
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111: The Haunted // ...in Return From the Grave
The Haunted in Return From the Grave
The Haunted
1983, Voxx Records
“If there’s one thing about Montreal, it gets damn cold sometimes, and about the only way to keep warm is to grow your hair long and jump up and down—possibly the two most basic requirements for being in a rock band; which makes it easy to explain the sheer over-congestion of musicians in Montreal and the province of Quebec as a whole.” Quality intro to some quality liner notes by punk historian (and former Diodes manager) Ralph Alfonso, a Montreal lifer who should know. Quality contents too: the existence of one classic garage rock single (in this case “1-2-5”) does not always augur an equally classic band, but the Haunted move from strength to strength on Return From the Grave, an early ‘80s compilation that collects their sole self-titled plus a few early singles and B-sides.
The Haunted were one of Montreal’s two top Anglophone rock acts of the late ‘60s, alongside their friendly rivals the Rabble. The Rabble were weirder, evincing a Merry Pranksters-esque psychedelic sense of humour, but the Haunted were heavier, jumping off from the blown-out maximum R&B of bands like the Stones, Spencer Davis Group, and maybe the Sonics. Calling card and debut single “1-2-5” wins no points for originality but makes up for it in bicep-brained swagger. It helped that singer Bob Burgess sounded like a grown man, which helped sell his story about picking up a streetwalker with only $5 in his pocket and being told upon entering her room not to worry, “you’re at a penny arcade.” The b-side, “Eight O’Clock This Morning,” isn’t far behind either, with a high-gain hillbilly riff and an easy “hey hey hey” chorus. They make righteous, nearly Sonics/early-Seger levels of noise on “Horror Show,” and then whip right around into a Stonesy harpsicord-laced ballad (“Untie Me”) delivered with surprising grace.
The compilation (like the Haunted’s self-titled) kind of slumps to a conclusion with the goofy piss-take “Twist” and the soggy “Montreal Blues,” but the overall impression is of a band with a deft hand for rockers and ballads alike, and it’s easy to see why they were in high demand on the Canadian rock circuit till Burgess quit the band after a dust-up with lead guitarist Jurgen Peter. A second Voxx compilation, I'm Just Gonna Blow My Little Mind to Bits, collects the remainder of their singles and is also worth seeking out for those sufficiently possessed by this stuff.
111/365
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