GRAVEYARD STOMP.
AT LAST, the time of year when Uncle T feels most alive is here! Pretty soon demons will cry out for him and the manimal within will respond, compelling him to stalk the haunted grounds of CAMP TNUC, thirsting with vulpine ferocity for the taste of apple cider, Reese’s pumpkins and blood.
October is that special time to divulge in all the essentials like moonlit long butts, wet leaves, rubber bats, creaky gates, bite size candy and graveyard guitar solos! It’s not like we don’t partake or cherish those things during the other 11 months of the year, but we celebrate it right now like it’s the last time to do it.
Question for all you dearly devoted disciples. If you could vamp out (rock out) in a foggy cemetery for just one night without the cops showing up or Old Man Rivers chasing you with his pitchfork, what band or artist would you choose to jam with? What music would make you party down in the cemetery like Trash and her friends in Return of the Living Dead? What tunes would prompt you to bend a knee in power-stance-amp-position, on top of a crypt, leather-bound fists clenched and pointed at the moon? Dancing and headbanging into the night?
After careful consideration, my choice would be Dokken, and this goes far beyond the Dream Warriors/Freddy Krueger connection.
George Lynch is one of those guitar dudes whom I’ve always looked up to for his tone and style. He holds the guitar like a goddamned reaper’s scythe and his riffs and solos always give me that chilly nighttime feeling. Aside from the Nightmare on Elm Street thing, Dokken isn’t a band people necessarily associate with horror. They don’t write songs about Satan, witches, murder or anything in the dark realms of bands like Slayer, Candlemass, Ozzy, Bauhaus, WASP or any of the obvious ones. But listen to Lynch’s opening riff to “When Heaven Comes Down” and tell me it’s not the soundtrack to nails popping off a coffin and fog emerging from the casket.
Lynch didn’t need to write riffs for songs about ghouls and rituals to have that guitar sounding like it’s creeping up from a murky basement. Same goes for “Unchain the Night”, “Into the Fire”, “Mr. Scary”, “Kiss of Death” and “Lost Behind the Wall”. The fact that these songs don’t dip into horror themes but still make me want to go for eerie night drives in the middle of nowhere really appeals to me for some reason.
Interesting story about a Dokken music video for one of their other major hits, “Heaven Sent”. Apparently the band was scheduled to shoot the video in a little town during the middle of their tour. They pulled into town but weren’t allowed access to the cemetery so they ended up making a fake cemetery directly outside the gates of the real one. All the headstones you see in the forefront of the video are fake cardboard graves with comical names on them including some of the band and road crew. Watch the video for “Heaven Sent” below and wait for the graveyard solo @ 2:50!
So tell me in the comments section below what band would soundtrack your graveyard stomp. Also, what “non-horror” music unexpectedly lurks into your loins and evokes spooky nighttime feelings?
uncletnuc.com 
KIxx ‘Midnight Dynamite’ and Stereo’s ‘Somewhere in the Night’?
The fellas from Metropolis escape their modern day jobs and/or rehab to materialize in the woods. The serpentine guitar riff from “Darkest Side of the Night” oozes from a fog that permeates the forest just outside camp as horny partygoers flock in, guzzling light beers like they have a death wish. The scene heats up when Tim Cappello drops by to crush “I Still Believe”, then hangs around to share tales of slaying cooz under the Santa Carla Boardwalk. All is groovy until a voice echoes from an unseen shadow of the woods – “You’re with your baby…” Huh? What was that? “And you’re parked alone”, wait a minute – Oh shit – it’s Alice fucking Cooper! Cooper buttfucks the entire crowd with a previously unheard 14-minute extended version of “He’s Back”, which features a three minute hip-thrusting sax feature by Cappello, who abandons decades of sobriety by Stone-Colding multiple cans of beer at the climax of the song. Multiple unopened beers explode for no reason, soaking the shirts of chesty young women, much to the delight of the men who start howling and pounding on their chest. Alice Cooper smiles and quietly murmurs in to the mic, “it was my privilege.”
Greatest comment in the history of this blog. Goddamn. Would you like to guest write for TNUC?
I agree with Uncle T. Mr. Lefebvre, you should definitely be a guest writer for this Holy Land.
DUDE!!!! FUCK YESSSSSS!!!! “Darkest Side of The Night” is one of the sweerest 80’s tunes that got zero rocognition. That, Dangerous Toys self titled album and the soundtrack for the movie Black Roses is really all you need to stink yo the night 80’s street metal style. \m/
Savatage – Power of the Night
YES. Funny you should mention that song, refresh the page and see the latest post!
Hell yeah! \m/ That song and its album kick major ass!
The Cure would be the headliners for my graveyard gig.
“Power of the Night”, by Johnny Steele. There just needs to be an entire mixtape of songs with that name.
Four classics:
Dangerous Toys – Scared
Wildside – Lad In Sin
White Lion – If My Mind Is Evil
Savatage – Strange Wings
Zodiac Mindwarp – Evil Jesus
If I made a vampire movie with a cemetery, a fog machine, and vampires silhouetted against electric-blue disco backlighting, this would be the soundtrack.
Interesting story about the heaven sent video, always have loved that song along with all their others! Btw would you happen to know who the dark haired lady in the heaven sent video is? Cant believe they didn’t cast her again!