New Feed - Please Read - New Feeed - Please Read
MonsterTalk
If you're getting this in your MonsterTalk podcast feed it means you've somehow managed to miss the update to our new host. Please re-subscribe from your podcast platform, or if you want to use the RSS feed, the new URL is: Thanks so much! If you have any trouble please let us know. Blake @ Monstertalk dot Org
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Bonus - Chaosium and The Malleus Monstrorum
MonsterTalk
In this bonus episode, we're talking with Mike Mason of Chaosium, the gaming company that makes the role-playing system Call of Cthulhu. Mike is here to talk about the newest version of Chaosium's monstrous bestiary, which is called the Malleus Monstrorum, for the seventh edition of the classic game ecosystem based on the works of HP Lovecraft, and all kinds of Lovecraft-adjacent horror.
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8/1/2021 - MonsterTalk Live - 8 pm ET
MonsterTalk
Hey folks, we'll be doing another "MonsterTalk Live" event tonight, discussing psychic mediums. You can catch it at our YouTube channel and participate in the chat. Hope to see you there! 8/1/2021 - 8 pm ET - http://youtube.com/monstertalk -Blake
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233 - Bigfoot: America's Abominable Snowman
MonsterTalk
On July 18, 2021 the AiPT SciPhiFest Conference included a 45 min segment of my interview with author and comic-book artist Stephen R. Bissette (who is probably best known for his work on the Alan Moore run of the DC comic Swamp Thing). The interview is about Stephen's book CRYPTID CINEMA (http://bit.ly/CryptidCinema) with a special focus on the little-known touring film used by Roger Patterson to promote (and profit from) his famous alleged Bigfoot film.
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232 - Bacteria
MonsterTalk
They're everywhere. They're inside you. You can't escape them - and can't live without them: Bacteria!
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AIPT Presents SciPhi Fest 2021
MonsterTalk
The online convention starts at 10 am and I'll be participating in a couple of ways if you're interested. At noon, I've got a special interview with Stephen R. Bissette. You might know him as a key artist on Alan Moore's run of Swamp Thing in the 80s - but if you've been subscribing to BIG FOOTAGE the Patreon bonus cast, you'll know him as the author of CRYPTID CINEMA.
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231 - Asian Monsters with Sapphire Sandalo
MonsterTalk
Sapphire Sandalo is the host of the web series Stories with Sapphire. She's a writer, animator, podcaster, TV personality, and part-time university instructor. Her series tells stories with distinctive music and animation and has a strong representation of many monsters, ghosts and creatures that come from Asian folklore from multiple cultures and stories submitted by her audience.
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Progress Report - June 23, 2021
MonsterTalk
Hey there MonsterTalkers. We're not dead and I'm not on vacation. I'm happy to report that I've got a new job and have spent the past couple of weeks working on a software project that is nearing its first release. In the meantime Karen and I have been recording interviews, but those require edits and I haven't had time to get everything done to my level of satisfaction. But episodes are coming! I should be able to get our next one out this weekend and another by the end of the month. I'm doing some work on managing our workflow that I hope will put us ahead. In a...
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230 - Otter King & Other Things
MonsterTalk
Karen and Blake are joined by the hosts of MonsterFuzz, Eamonn O'Neill and Rob Billington, to discuss monsters and folklore of Ireland. Well, that's what we were supposed to talk about but we wandered a bit because it was obvious we all loved talking about monsters.
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229 - Watertown 2: Eclectic Boo-Galoo
MonsterTalk
Blake Smith has uncovered the uncropped "Watertown Ghosts" photo, lost to the public for more than fifty years, plus more discoveries about this famous alleged ghost photo.
info_outlinePeter Bebergal returns (previously on episode #180 with his book Strange Frequencies) to discuss magic, witchcraft, and the occult and how those things impacted the world of Rock & Roll music. Check the attachment to this episode for a bunch of music links relevant to the show and Peter's book Season of the Witch.
Speaking of books - Karen has a new one and I made an easy to remember shortcut to it on Amazon: http://bit.ly/OnTheOffensive
(The lettering case in that link does matter.)
Discussed in the episode:
Image of David Bowie in "Diamond Dogs" album (MOMA)
Made for TV Movie: Devil Dog - The Hound of Hell
The George Harrison "documentary" Karen mentions - Paul McCartney Really Is Dead: The Last Testament of George Harrison (There is a lot of mixed messaging out there on whether this is a serious but wacky documentary or a silly but confusing mockumentary. It was originally released as a documentary but the filmmaker has since reclassified it as "mockumentary" - was this for legal reasons?) FYI: The narration is not by George Harrison.
The UFO Club in London was a short-lived hub of early lights & sounds and psychedelic imagery. It only operated over a two-year span but had a tremendous impact on music culture - and on posters for bands.
Peter's original SOTW Spotify List (link)
| Song/Album | Notes |
| Starts with the iconic (and parent-frightening) "I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE..." | |
| Daryl Hall (!?) album inspired by the work of Aleister Crowley | |
| While the legend of the blues musician at the crossroads is often applied to Robert Johnson, it has earlier roots with... | |
| Tommy Johnson, not related to Robert, was the focus of an earlier version of the crossroads legend | |
| Anthology of American Folk Music (via archive.org) | A partial selection of the 6-album (3, 2-record ea) set of American Folk Music curated by Harry Smith. |
| The Syd Barrett-led Pink Floyd would change a lot after Barrett's descent into mental illness, but there are psychedelic and occult themes in this eclectic early Floyd album. Interstellar Overdrive is a good long instrumental track to read Bebergal's book to. | |
| Perhaps the most public of the musician seekers, Harrison's ode to the search for a connection to the numinous was very successful - and also (accidentally?) directly copied He's So Fine by The Chiffons. | |
| Sitar would meet Guitar when the Beatles went to India and met gurus and traditional Indian musicians, most famously Ravi Shankar. | |
| The soundtrack to occult filmmaker Kenneth Anger's movie Lucifer Rising was supposed to be done by Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, but things happened. (This complicated story is covered in Bebergal's book.) | |
| The Ozzy Osborne led band would take its name from an Italian horror film, but like Alice Cooper, the "occult" aspects of Sabbath appear to be entirely performative. Consider Ozzy's paean to Aleister Crowley in which he fails to pronounce the old occultist's name right. (Crowley rhymes with holy.) | |
| The Stones' "wicked" song - was it inspired by Baudelaire or Kenneth Anger? And how many times do the band sing "who? who?" in this 6-minute treat? | |
| Combining elements of Tolkien fantasy and drug-fueled psychedelic experiences, LZ music combined many elements of fictional and authentic occult imagery. Jimmy Page's interest in Aleister Crowley is legendary with him even buying Crowley's Loch Ness adjacent home Boleskin. | |
| The punk band Misfits took their imagery and themes from horror movies and the occult as well. | |
| This came out after Bebergal's book, but this is an amazing modern throwback to the psychedelic era that also tells a weirdly surprisingly accurate story of Jack Parsons, occultist, and rocketeer. | |
| KISS aligned itself with wild stage antics and imagery, but in the 1970s even having the word "hell" in your song titles could lead to allegations that your band's name really stood for "Knights in Satan's Service." (Narrator: It didn't.) | |
| Bowie's role in occult rock history is really quite peculiar and not what I expected. Often in drug-fueled paranoia of the occult, his off-stage behavior stands in stark contrast from the on-stage cool presence. I wanted to include a song from him on this list and this peculiar antithesis to My Way is one I really like. | |
| I'm not recommending this 20 min weird and disturbing soundscape - but if you're feeling a bit like Frank in Hellraiser and just wonder what the cenobites probably jam to? Anyway, in Bebergal's book, there are some interesting tidbits about how Throbbing Gristle's members became involved with William S. Burroughs and the occult aspects of his life. | |
| The song that kicked off the goth scene. It doesn't take 9 mins to tell people that Bela Lugosi (the actor who played Dracula in the 1931 Universal horror film) is dead… but it does the Bauhaus way. | |
| Peter doesn't write about Iron Maiden in the book, but growing up in the 80s, Iron Maiden was one of the many reasons I refused to get a 96 Rock Card. I was so not into heavy metal and it was weird catching up on that stuff in my 40s instead of my teens. | |
| Before Motorhead, Lemmy sang about UFOs. (Well, I think that's what he's singing about?) | |
| Sun Ra's jazz music isn't really rock, but it's something. And I think magician Penn Jillette mentions Sun Ra about as often as he mentions James Randi. | |
| The pioneering electronic album Black Mass Lucifer - or is it Black Mass by Lucifer? - is an album by electronic music audio explorer Mort Garson. It's occult-themed but its weird MOOG tonal tapestries, without the context of title or lyrics, would be hard to classify as specifically "magic" themed. | |
| A friend once described to me how that in the 1970s it was common to put on long, trippy albums and just stare at album artwork and go on imaginary journeys. With a cover by Roger Dean and just four songs, each about 20 mins in length, I think this is exactly what he was talking about. I once had an angry Navy training instructor basically spit at Yes's "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and shout to the class "It ain't Yes unless it takes 15 minutes to listen to and has a 5-minute guitar solo!" | |
| Jay-Z has played around with the imagery of the illuminati and occult. Here's an article about the imagery use in the video for this song. | |
| Combines ghoulish occult imagery with monk garb and skeletal makeup. Swedish in origin, but not flat-packed. |