John Shelton's blog

In Apocalypse Mixtape we investigate music with horror movie-type themes.

Skip James

Devil Got My Woman

I found out about Crystal Castles completely by accident. I saw the band's name on the front page of the all music guide the other day and it reminded me of the trackball-controlled "pac-man as a magical bear" arcade game of the same name that I loved when I was a kid.

Oingo Boingo

"No One Lives Forever"

When I was a kid my entire knowledge of British tv consisted of Monty Python, Benny Hill, and everything else- the weird stuff they showed on PBS that looked like it was filmed on VHS. These days, British tv has gained some ground with Americans with the success of Spaced, The Office and Doctor Who as well as BBC America and other channels rebroadcasting shows from the UK. My girlfriend is British, and I work with a bunch of Brits for a British organization so I've had the chance to find out about a lot of UK tv that I'd never heard of.

When I started this series I considered laying some ground rules excluding certain bands from the Mixtape because they're too easy and obvious and it would just be lazy to include them. I like The Misfits as much as anybody but do you really need me to single them out as having written some pretty decent horror-themed songs?

When I wrote this review of Inside I found out some interesting things about Beatrice Dalle, the actor who played the killer. I knew she looked familiar and with a the help of the IMDb I found out I recognized her from Jim Jarmusch's Night on Earth where she played a blind taxi passenger.

For me, the horror genre and music are the chocolate and peanut butter of pop culture. People have been telling spooky stories and playing music around campfires from our earliest prehistory and the two have been intertwined from the beginning. In that spirit, I'm starting an ongoing series in this space I call Apocalypse Mixtape where I'll look at some songs that touch on the same themes as the movies this site's dedicated to.

Uwe Boll, king of German tax loopholes and director of nigh unwatchable film versions of videogames, in a recent interview with FEARnet.com said that he would stop making movies if one million people signed a petition that's been circulating online. I think you all know what to do.

Here's the link to the petition.

If you guys saw this week's South Park you know they followed up the brilliance of last week's sequence of Kenny in a bitchin' Firebird cruising around a world of magic and boobies to the Heavy Metal soundtrack with another musical sequence. This time it was Butters, who became an internet sensation with a song called "What What (In the Butt)".

Lately I've gotten hooked on a TV series that came out a few years ago called First Person. It was made by Errol Morris, a guy who calls himself a "non-fiction" (as opposed to documentary) filmmaker who's best known for films like The Fog of War and A Brief History of Time and commercials like the Apple ad from a few years ago with the "stoned" girl (see above) as well as famously winning a bet against Werner Herzog that resulted in Herzog eating his own shoe.