Game Theory - Throwing The Election

I voted Saturday. This election matters. In fact, every election matters if you happen to enjoy things like democracy, accountability, and not having your tax dollars treated like someone else's casino bankroll.

I don't care whether you're a Democrat, Republican, Independent, or a member of the "Leave Me Alone, I'm Organizing My 45s" party. No politician is above the law, and elected officials work for us, not for their political parties. If you're a crooked politician, you should be shown the door. If you're buying votes, you should be escorted through that door at high speed. Integrity shouldn't be a campaign slogan; it should be a job requirement.

So that's my public service announcement: Vote. More importantly, vote for integrity and not fabricated issues to distract us from the real issues being dumped on us. Now, back to another subject that inspires fierce loyalty and occasional heartbreak: records.

I recently wrote about how much I love Game Theory. I bought this LP brand new when it came out and was genuinely bummed when the band called it quits. "Throwing the Election" was always one of the standout tracks for me, though honestly the entire album is fantastic from start to finish.

Fortunately, Scott Miller went on to form The Loud Family, and I happily followed along and became a devoted fan of that chapter as well.

When Omnivore reissued the Game Theory catalog, I purchased this release with absolutely no hesitation whatsoever. Because that's what collector geeks do. We spend years hunting down original pressings, then happily buy the reissue anyway, just in case there might be one bonus track, a slightly different liner note, or a photo we've never seen before. It's not a hobby. It's a highly specialized form of rationalized madness.

The Citations - Moon Race/Slippin' and Slidin'

The Space Race was in full throttle during the surf era, and apparently you didn't need to live anywhere near an ocean to catch the wave. The Citations prove the point, blasting off from Wisconsin and aiming straight for the Moon with all the enthusiasm of a garage band armed with reverb and big dreams.

Like a lot of surf bands from the heartland, they understood that geography was merely a suggestion. No beach? No problem. Just crank up the Fender and imagine Lake Michigan is the Pacific Ocean.

They even dusted off the vocals for a run through "Slippin' and Slidin'," showing they were capable of more than instrumental lunar exploration. Unfortunately, their recording career was brief, producing just two 45s before vanishing into the great record-collector mystery file in the sky.

But the story has one final twist. The guitarist eventually resurfaced in a Wisconsin disco band, proving that while surf music may have launched him toward the stars, polyester and a mirror ball ultimately pulled him back to Earth.

The Palace Brothers - Idle Hands Are The Devil's Playthings

Back when I lived in Denver, I worked nights at a group home and met my friend Craig, another employee whose musical rabbit holes seemed to have no bottom. If there was an obscure label worth knowing, chances are Craig already owned everything they'd ever released. Sub Pop, Drag City, Scat Records, Estrus... he was my unofficial graduate school in underground music.

Craig didn't just collect records, he lived them. He even started his own label, Honeyman, released a Bassholes 45, and at one point owned one of only two known copies of an unreleased Jim Sheppard (V3) 45. A few years ago he sold it for serious collector money, proving once again that sometimes the weirdest records become the most valuable.

I'd spend entire days at his house listening to records, borrowing stacks to take home, and having my musical horizons stretched far beyond where they ever would have gone on their own. One day he put on this Palace Brothers LP he had just picked up. By the time it was over, I was heading straight to Wax Trax with my wallet already surrendering. My record collection is infinitely deeper, stranger, and better because of Craig.

These days I'm in North Carolina and Craig's in Maryland, but we still talk at least once a week. The last time we met up was in Norfolk about four years ago. That feels less like "recently" and more like a warning label that says: Road Trip Required.

As for Idle Hands Are the Devil's Playthings, the title still holds up. These days it's hard enough keeping your mind on the straight and narrow without the nonstop circus of news, social media, and general world chaos doing its best to drag your attention in twelve directions at once. Sometimes the best antidote is simple: put on a good record, drop the needle, and let the rest of the world wait its turn.

The Detergents - Igor's Cellar

I end Halloweenie week with The Detergents, one of those odd weird footnotes in pop history. Most people know Ron Dante as the voice behind a parade of fictional hitmakers like The Archies and The Cuff Links, and later as one of the people helping steer Barry Manilow toward superstardom. Yet here he is lurking in a parody group whose shelf life somehow stretched for two years, several TV appearances, and one delightfully unexpected B-side. While Ron Dante is known as the voice in those other fictional groups, the voice on this particular slab of vinyl wasn't Ron at all, but Danny Jordan, who sadly left us in 2024. Danny's name rang a bell because he was also a member of The Court Jesters, whose two excellent 45s on Roulette I posted years ago. Naturally, that realization triggered the familiar collector's curse: "I should really re-upload those MP3s, take better photos, and repost them." Just what I needed... another project. My growing pile of projects now has projects of its own.

Igor's Cellar was the B-side of the second-to-last Detergents 45 and, it’s part novelty record and part garage-rock basement experiment. It rattles around like something that escaped from a mad scientist's basement laboratory, complete with breaking beakers, flickering Tesla coils, and poor Igor dutifully sweeping up after another monster mishap. The song has enough raw garage energy to stand on its own, even if it arrives wrapped in the group's trademark sense of absurdity.

As for Igors’ Cellar, it's a reminder that sometimes the best surprises are hiding on the flip side of a novelty record, waiting in the shadows while Igor throws the switch and hopes this experiment works out better than the last one.

Hot Blood - Soul Dracula

I wrote that I’d invite Dracula in for coffee, but that’s not entirely true. The only coffee he’d be getting is the blood flowing through my veins, and I’m not exactly in a sharing mood.

I’ve never been much of a vampire fan. My wife, on the other hand, treats vampires as a year-round hobby. October just kicks things into overdrive. If it involves fangs, capes, ancient curses, or mysterious castles, she's watching it.

I picked this up last year and figured, why not? If Dracula is going to show up on my turntable, he might as well arrive aboard the Disco Soul Train. Somewhere between Transylvania and Studio 54, the Count apparently traded his coffin for platform shoes and decided eternal life needed a better dance beat. Maybe immortality isn't a curse. Maybe spending eternity promoting novelty disco records is.

Personally, if I’m inviting any vampire over for breakfast, it’s Count Chocula. At least he leaves cereal instead of bite marks and doesn't spend 400 years trying to launch a disco career.

One record! Ah-ah-ah! Two records! Ah-ah-ah!

Hugh Barrett and the Victors - There Was Fungus Among Us/Got The Bull By The Horns

My posts were absolutely exploding for about a week. We're talking nearly ten times the normal views. Then, just as suddenly, they dropped back to earth like a UFO whose parking meter expired. I have no clue what caused the temporary surge. Perhaps the Algorithmic Fungus Network detected my page and spread spores throughout the internet. Maybe a secret colony of music bots became obsessed with obscure 45s before wandering off in search of another digital mushroom patch. The truth remains hidden deep beneath the forest floor of social media.

I harbor no illusions that I'm doing anything revolutionary here. Mildly interesting? Perhaps. Worthy of a SiriusXM executive pounding on my door and offering me a once-a-month DJ slot? Highly doubtful, especially after hearing my voice, which has all the broadcast smoothness of a chainsaw being tuned by a raccoon.

Today's offering is the one-off single from Hugh Barrett And The Victors, There Was Fungus Among Us. I picked this up in a box lot last year where there happened to be two copies. The first was cracked, prompting a colorful stream of language that would have caused nearby mushrooms to curl up and die. A few records later, I discovered the second copy and was forced to issue a heartfelt apology to the universe for my verbal outburst.

When I hear "fungus," my mind doesn't go to biology. It goes straight to mutant spores, zombie outbreaks, and The Blob. That movie scared the living daylights out of me as a kid. There was something deeply unsettling about an unstoppable goo silently consuming everything in its path. Looking back, maybe that wasn't a movie. Maybe it was just a metaphor for record collecting.

Monks Of Doom - The Insect God

I'm not much of a horror movie fan. Give me vampires, werewolves, zombies, or any other supernatural creature that politely announces its arrival and I'm fine. But spiders? Bugs? Any creepy-crawly thing with more legs than common sense? Absolutely not. The very thought makes my skin start scheduling emergency evacuation procedures.

Every other year or so, our house becomes the filming location for a nature documentary called Me vs. Eight-Legged Terror.

For some reason, giant spiders decide our front yard is prime real estate. And when I say giant, I mean they're approximately the size of Cincinnati. Scientists may argue with that measurement, but scientists have never walked face-first into one of these monstrosities at 5 a.m.

These creepy little architects spend the night constructing enormous webs stretching from the tree to the ground right across our path. Not off to the side where sensible creatures would build them. No, directly where Cooper and I are guaranteed to walk the next morning.

Nothing gets the heart pumping quite like strolling through the yard in the dark and suddenly spotting a massive web suspended in front of you. It's the closest I've ever come to discovering a hidden superpower. If startled badly enough, I'm convinced I could clear a six-foot fence without touching it.

Of course, Cooper is no help. He just happily trots along while I'm scanning the horizon like a paranoid cryptid hunter searching for signs of arachnid invasion.

Thankfully, this was one of the years they skipped town. No webs. No eight-legged nightmare fuel. No impromptu cardiovascular stress tests before sunrise. I'm not saying the spiders hold conventions and only visit every other year. I'm just saying the evidence is starting to pile up, and I'm not brave enough to attend the next meeting.

The good news is I survived past encounters. The bad news is I probably used up ten years' worth of courage in a single early morning. If vampires ever show up at my door, I'll gladly invite them in for coffee. But if a spider the size of a nickel appears in my bathroom, expect to hear a grown man screaming from several counties away.

So here we have the "Insect God" and a poem that blurs the line between reality and the uncanny, I always loved how this one explodes out of the gate:

"What has become of Millicent Frastley? Is there any hope that she is still alive?"

Now that's how you open a record.

I bought this new back in the day because I was already a huge Camper Van Beethoven fan and knew about their side project. Back then I was happily throwing money at mail-order catalogs from every interesting Washington State label I could find: Sub Pop, Estrus, C/Z. Buying this was less a decision and more a reflex.

The 10-inch picture disc is absolutely gorgeous, but thankfully the music lives up to the packaging. Far too many records treat the artwork as the main attraction and the songs as an afterthought. Not this one.

Years later I discovered the song was adapted from an Edward Gorey poem of the same name. Gorey was still alive when this was released, which makes me wonder if he ever heard it. Did he smile approvingly? Did he raise a skeptical eyebrow? I'd like to imagine Gorey emerging briefly from a cloud of ravens and Victorian gloom, listening with perfect indifference, then pronouncing it “reasonably bleak” before disappearing back into the ether.

Because if you stop and think about it, this is a remarkably strange piece of writing. A missing girl, unanswered questions, lingering dread, and a uniquely piece of writing making the absurd feel unsettling and the unsettling feel oddly funny. It reads like a supernatural mystery narrated by someone who has seen entirely too much and plans to explain none of it. Looking at the illustrations online, I can imagine a parent flipping through the book in a bookstore in 1963 and thinking, "Oh, what charming drawings..." only to find themselves several pages later wondering, "Wait...this is for whom exactly?"

The Monks understood the assignment perfectly. They created a musical backdrop that feels like wandering through a foggy cemetery with a faulty flashlight while a distant voice calmly recounts events that are becoming increasingly impossible. The result is charming, creepy, intelligent, and just weird enough to linger in your brain long after the needle leaves the groove.

Much like poor Millicent Frastley herself.