There Must Be Some Mixtape: Track #13 – "Great Pumpkin" by Mikey Mason

Yeah, I don't believe in a lot that is spiritually based. But, as a fan of Halloween, I still believe in the Great Pumpkin. 

If Linus were my friend, I would probably be at the pumpkin patch with him regardless of whether I believed or not. Friends gotta stick to together, and Linus has a security blanket that he uses to perform pretty groovy tricks. 

Sure, Linus is a pretty religious kid; he can spout bible verses like no one's business. But Linus also has this weird, darker side where he sits in pumpkin patches while all of the rest of his friends, except for the girl who crushes on him, run about having varied success trick-or-treating. (One kid, I hear, only seems to get rocks in his bag...)

I don't have a lot of time left on Halloween to get this thing knocked out, but I wanted to round out my 2017 mixtape to a perfect 13 songs. I got a little behind here and there; as a result, there were a few songs I selected to be used for this year that I didn't get to yet, so I have decided to save them for next year's mixtape. (I own them, so I can listen to them all I want already. I just won't tell you what they are until then.)

So, for my last selection, I ran into a song a few days ago on a site called The FuMP, which stands for The Funny Music Project. The FuMP has been around for a few years, and specializes in promoting comedy and novelty records. New songs are featured on the site every week, the 128k versions of which you can download for free for a short while or you can always purchase the larger, prettier sounding 320k files of the songs. I check in to The FuMP now and then to see what new comedy music is out there, and was surprised to find a couple of pretty decent Halloween tunes that had recently been released on there.

My favorite of the pair was Great Pumpkin by Mikey Mason, a professional standup comic who also has released a couple of geek topic-based comedy albums in recent years. I have sort of missed Mason's music to this point, but I really like this track. Perhaps it is because it is directly about Linus' thoughts as he spends yet another cold, fruitless Halloween night waiting for his other personal deity to arrive. And yet, he never loses his faith throughout the song. No, really... he will be proven right... eventually...

This is the point where I normally post a video of the song from YouTube so you can listen to the song while you read the lyrics below. However, there is no video as of yet for this song on either Mason's YouTube channel or The FuMP's, and while there is an embed code on The FuMP official site for this song, Blogger tells me the code is incompatible with my own site. It is probably bullshit, and there is likely a workaround out there, but I don't have time right now. Maybe I will experiment with it tomorrow. Maybe not.

In the meantime, you can follow this link directly to the song's page on The FuMP: http://www.thefump.com/fump.php?id=2251. You can listen to it there or download it (for the moment).

Great Pumpkin by Mikey Mason

"Tonight
It’s gonna happen tonight
I’ve waited all of my life 
for this moment to arrive 

I’m here
I’ve suffered all of the jeers
The Halloween sky is clear
I’ve never felt so alive

You can have your trick or treating 
Keep your candy, you’ll be eating 
Crow tomorrow
Anyway

So go
I think you already know
You’re gonna reap what you sow
You think this all is just some story but… 

At last
All of October has passed
And here in the pumpkin patch
I’ll be waiting on his Glory

You can keep your masks and candy
I’ll be doing fine and dandy
As one of the anointed 
on All Hallow’s Day

[Chorus]
When the Great Pumpkin comes
I will be the one
who finally gets to laugh at all of you
who think I’m crazy
When the Great Pumpkin comes
shining like the sun
I will choose forgiveness over vengeance
Okay maybe
Maybe not. 

It’s here
And I can see it so clear
This pumpkin patch is sincere
and sincerely here I wait 

Each Halloween
Waiting just to be seen
Just like I am in my dreams
chosen by his orange greatness

While you’re at your parties dancing, 
Trick or treating or romancing, 
I’ll be waiting chastely,
prostrate in my fear… 

[Chorus]
When the Great Pumpkin comes
I will be the one
who finally gets to laugh at all of you
who think I’m crazy
When the Great Pumpkin comes
shining like the sun
I will choose forgiveness over vengeance
Okay maybe
Maybe not. 

Maybe I’ll come riding in with him 
in all his blazing orange greatness, 
And all the infidels will flee
or fall beneath our justice! 
And I’ll be laughing heartily 
as all the unbelievers cry, 
"Forgive us! Linus, please forgive us!" 

What’s that?
I must’ve taken a nap.
And now my head feels like crap,
and out over the horizon is... 

The sun
November first has begun
Another Halloween done 
with nothing left to show for it

But just you wait until next year, 
I’ll be waiting right back here 
And next year he will visit,
and next year you will pay!

[Chorus]
When the Great Pumpkin comes
I will be the one
who finally gets to laugh at all of you
who think I’m crazy
When the Great Pumpkin comes
shining like the sun
I will choose forgiveness over vengeance
Okay maybe
Wait and see..." 

Hope you had a Happy Halloween and a marvelous October. Halloween is never over in my world, but I hope to see most of you next year. Unless you stick around, then I will be glad to see you soon. :)

RTJ

P.S. Remember, if you like it, buy it at http://www.thefump.com/fump.php?id=2251.

There Must Be Some Mixtape: Track #12 – "Sea Monster" by Elephant Revival

In my post about the Eddie Noack song, Psycho, the other day, I went through various other versions of the same tune. One more recent attempt, that committed to recorded life by the husband-and-wife team of author Neil Gaiman and performer Amanda Palmer, rather annoyed me. First, the versions that I have heard (all of them live) were rather lackluster in performance, which disappointed me mainly because I thought the idea of Gaiman – an author and personality whom I admire most highly – striving to croak his way through a country song could at least have been a little fun. 

The end result wasn't fun for me; it was clumsily staged and no two elements from the selection of the song to the pairing of guest musicians with star performers seemed to fit together at any time. I blamed it mostly on a rampant mood of unchecked hipsterism dominating the stage, replete with a group of weirdos delivering some OK singing saw atmosphere that might have worked just fine with this particular song had a little more thought gone into the arrangement and genuine interest in the actual audience bled through the whole affair.

Now, it might sound like I am playing Pick on the Hipster here, and maybe I was to a certain degree. It is, after all, kind of fun and easy to do. But I did state in my original post that I would, as an example, love to find an entry point into the music created by Ms. Palmer, but just haven't been given one yet. I don't want to go through life simply hating certain music without a very good reason; I would rather call a Nickelback a Nickelback, and be done with it. I would point to my forays in facing off with Rolling Stone's Best 50 Songs the past two years as further examples that I am willing to take a chance on music that I normally avoid or just don't encounter in my day to day life. (And there will be a new version of Best 50 Songs coming up in early December, most likely. Watch for it... I have been pleasantly surprised with the past results.) And maybe I went into Gaiman and Palmer's version of Psycho hoping too hard for a decent take on the song to come out of it, after having listened to four good to great versions before it. Still, that hipster vibe of insincerity, unchecked irony, and self-possessed cool just came at me too hard, and I couldn't let it pass with comment.

A slight detour...

Let's skip to archive.org for a moment. One of the things that I love most about this public domain website – aside from the easy access to just about every p.d. film in existence – is their Live Music Archive. There are thousands and thousands of free, accessible concerts available in their archive, many of them recorded openly by visitors to these concerts, and many also coming directly from soundboard recordings (much better quality in general, but I have heard some great ones made right in the crowd). Now, before you get on me about artists' rights and all that, there is one notable point to add about the Live Music Archive: to add any concert to the site, the user and/or the site must have published direct permission from at least one member of a band or the band's management to post said concerts. When one finds a Man or Astro-Man, Robyn Hitchcock, or Camper Van Beethoven performance available for legal download on archive.org, one does it with the knowledge on the artist's page that said performer has approved such posting and further sharing with their audience.

So, you won't find a Radiohead, Wilco, Muse or Red Hot Chili Peppers concert on there; most of the bigger name artists and groups don't allow such easy access. There are, however, some surprises to be found. Some in my list of personal faves do show up in the Live Music Archive, such as Warren Zevon, Cracker, the Drive-By Truckers, Smashing Pumpkins, Ryan Adams, Elliott Smith, and Ween. Mostly though, given the rather socialist notion behind the sharing of all information on the site, it is not surprising that the vast majority of bands to be found there are – ahem – ahem again – jam bands.

That's right... so many jam bands. Hippie jam bands. Stoner jam bands. Hipster jam bands. Psychedelic jam bands. Bluegrass jam brands. Electronica jam bands. Hippie stoner hipster psychedelic bluegrass electronica jam bands. Jam bands from just about every place in the world (but no strawberry jam bands... gotta go to Knott's to score some of that...) At the top is the biggest jam band ever of all time, the Grateful Dead, who have somewhere in the neighborhood of over 11,000 concert recordings ready for either streaming or download on the site. (They have a special page set up on the site.) And then, after the Dead, come all the Dead spinoff groups, many of them containing at least one or two members from the band's past (Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, etc., etc.) After that, you've got Disco Biscuits, the String Cheese Incident, moe., Umphrey's McGee, Yonder Mountain String Band, the Radiators, and eventually Little Feat and Blues Traveler. (Surprisingly, Phish  is not on archive.org officially, and I find that a truly stunning fact.)

As it turns out, while I love 22-minute guitar solos and 12-minute drum solos if either the right guitarist or right drummer are performing them – I would never turn off an Allman Brothers album if given the choice – I am not really a jam band guy. The same way that Seinfeld wasn't an orgy guy; I'd have to go buy jam band clothes, get new jam band friends, and with them came new jam band drugs. Incessant noodling without real purpose except to stretch out an already long concert can often be annoying. I wouldn't mind being at any of these concerts, but that's not really what I listen to normally (with the open admission that some groups I adore, such as Built to Spill, Frank Zappa, Wilco, Cream, and early Pink Floyd – none of them on archive.org, mind you –  are or were really jam bands at heart or started out that way). 

Despite all that, I quite often check out concerts by any group that seems interesting to me, whether they eschew needless jamming or not. I've dipped a toe into the offerings of some of the jam bands I mentioned earlier and even partake of an occasional concert by the Dead, even adding some of the better shows to my own collection. At my collector's core, I have a basic urge to find new music constantly, and the Live Music Archive makes it easy to do at the only cost that I can currently afford: free. (And without annoying commercials like on Spotify or Pandora; I only have the free versions of those apps/sites as well.)

... eventually leads me to...

Elephant Revival. That was the name of the band I encountered on archive.org. A very simple name. The "elephant" part was attractive to me because I love those creatures dearly, and also because of some residual love for the Elephant 6 record label (home of Apples in Stereo and Of Montreal) from way back. "Revival" made me think immediately, of course, of CCR, and there is nothing not to love about that, unless it is a version not involving John Fogerty. The name "Elephant Revival" seems like maybe it is missing a couple of words in the middle, like their real name should be "Elephant Foot Massage Revival" – itself a dangerous proposition – the way that "Monty Python" is not nearly complete without the apostrophe and "s" and the "Flying Circus" part. But still, even the short name "Elephant Revival" intrigued me enough to make me click on the concert first over shows from other bands that had been uploaded that day.

Now, I was guessing that "jam band" would be the eventual outcome of my first listen to Elephant Revival. Past experience had given me a working knowledge of the basic audience on the Live Music Archive, including those who relentlessly tape and post new concerts. The law of averages sees to it that the majority of bands encountered on archive.org are jam bands, and I believe, by and large, that law still stands. And, of course, I always do some research first before digging into anybody's music. Before I even heard a note, I found out that Elephant Revival was a bluegrass/folk contingent, and while I do like bluegrass far more than I usually acknowledge, I still feared the "H" word in all of this. Folk hipsters are over the radio these days, and while I do like some of the sounds I hear, the songs quite often leave me pretty cold. I can find no connection to them. Most of the time, when a pack of Mumfords with crazy facial hair, antique instruments and toothy grins show up knocking on the door to my iTunes, I turn them away roughly 90% of the time.

The first listen to the band floored me. Absolutely floored me. At first, it was the lush instrumentation; the usual suspects as far as mandolin, guitar, and fiddle went, but even if they turned into a jam band, the assured picking told me they could keep up with just about anyone. But this was a hybrid that had bluegrass at its center but seemed informed by nearly every style of music available, including pop, reggae, jazz, and even the occasional electrified solo that rocked the house as assuredly as the sharpest axeman.

And it is of significant note that the first song I heard, Will Carry On, featuring vocals by one Bonnie Paine, who may be changing my listening life as we know it. Her quavering voice on this song seems so odd on that initial encounter, and I was slightly reminded of the first time I heard Katherine Whalen on a Squirrel Nut Zippers record doing her Billie Holiday riffing. (Not a dig, just a note.) But then, a few songs later, Paine lets loose with wailing along the lines of early Grace Slick, and then I understood that Bonnie Paine was capable of so much more. When I finally watched a few live clips, I realized that Paine is also the band's main (and sometimes sole) percussionist as well, thumping a djembe or stomp box while singing the band's introspective lyrics. (She also plays cello and musical saw at times.) She is not the only vocalist though; all five members split duties here and there, and all of them are multi-instrumentalists, easily and eagerly swapping the tools of their trade between songs.

The songs were largely original, but on that first concert listen, there was the remarkable inclusion of Pink Floyd's Have a Cigar, usually a rock monster of a song with heavy guitar licks. In the Elephant Revival version, Paine takes up the role of the sleazy record agent, and the song loses none of its nastiness in being transposed to the folk/bluegrass world. In fact, it seems rather... er... revived from it. And that comparison to Ms. Slick a bit ago? In listening to a second downloaded concert from archive.org, Elephant Revival launched into their own stab at Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit, and I realized that I must not be the only one who stumbled into that comparison. And if it wasn't quite as surprising as their cover of Floyd, it was still really great.

But where is the monster stuff?

OK, Elephant Revival is not a band that you would immediately think would have some horror cred, but keep in mind their folk traditionalist roots and you realize that a walk along the dark side is not that far from their repertoire. I would not be surprised to hear them do a murder ballad or two in their career, but for now, they have a couple of interesting songs that nearly cross over to the Halloween path. The Paine-penned track, Raven Song (which they used to open at least one concert taking place on Halloween), takes on the notion of the raven as a presager and messenger of death, carrying loved ones to the great beyond. It's not necessarily dark in concept, though, and is more lovely than anything, but it still fits the mood.

The howling of wolves is also represented in their track, Sing to the Mountain. In the chorus, we are told "Go and sing to the mountain, go and sing to the moon". When " sing to the moon" is offered, other band members – and in live versions, the more than willing audience – howl wildly and without concern for stepping on the lyrics. I guess it is their version of making an impromptu shark fin on top of their heads while Jimmy Buffett sings "You got fins to the left, fins to the right". Despite being a huge shark fan, as you know, I will take the wolf howls over drunken island hoppers in this instance.

But let's get to the track I have chosen to be added to my Countdown to Halloween mixtape for 2017. The song is called Sea Monster, and immediately, it seems like, yes, such a song belongs here. One could easily read the lyrics and see little more than a purposefully vague imagery involving a possible siren of the sea, calling out to sailors to lead them to their doom. That is fine for any song with that title and surely belongs in any Halloween collection. But what if the monster is not what it seems at first?

Let's listen to the song and read its lyrics first before continuing...

Sea Monster by Elephant Revival

(Music and lyrics by Elephant Revival / ℗ 2016 Itz Evolving/Thirty Tigers, Elephant Revival Publishing]

I’m going out over the sea,
I’ve got a boat, I’ve got a dream.
I trim the sails with my own hands

The song Sea Monster can be
purchased on this album.

leave all my thought back on the land.

I’m going out over the sea,
I won’t be back until I’m free.

I hear a voice, a siren’s review,
I hear it calling out of the blue.
A song of a strange unbearable thing,
it grows in the water, it goes unseen.

I’m going out over the sea,
hearing the song I’ve come to see.

What is this monster in the gyre?
All that’s thrown over the side,
And I want to know…

How we live in a world that provides and expires,
How we grow, come to know our hearts desire.

I’m going out over the sea,
All I have heard, all I have seen,
We are all out, out in a dream,
We are a boat, we are the sea.

After all the rise and fall is all that still remains.

At the end of the second verse, there is the line, "A song of a strange unbearable thing, it grows in the water, it goes unseen." In the bridge, the singer has encountered what it takes to be the true beast and asks, "What is this monster in the gyre? All that's thrown over the side..."

Before you groan and think you are being lectured on the horrors of pollution when you thought you were merely delving into a folksy tune about a sea monster, keep in mind that Puff the Magic Dragon has already had his day. Mere child's novelty has given way to a darker turn of mood. I don't suffer gladly those who pretend that mankind has no sway over the destruction of the natural world, and I suspect that Elephant Revival doesn't either. In the introduction to this song on that first concert listen, Paine attempts to set up the song but encounters some slight difficulties in doing so: chiefly, the type of audience members who grouse when bands try to bring something deeper to the stage than the mere strumming of acoustic instruments. Paine said...

"The Sea Monster in some aspects is a collection of plastic bottles and trash that have accumulated in the gyre of the ocean, which is a large thing...(laughs)... not to cause boos or anything before you sing a song... (laughs)... but it is something worth bringing consciousness to."

That "something" is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a massive man-made "soup" that was discovered in the mid-'80s  in a place known as the North Pacific Gyre. Not the only such vortex in the oceans of the world, just the most prominent in size, the "patch" is largely made up of minute particles but is thought in the public eye to be almost like an island or a creature made of garbage, though it is actually thin enough in most places (and chiefly under the surface of the water) as to be undetectable even from those floating through it, let alone be seen from space. This is not to say that there aren't vast areas where plastic is to be clearly seen. Whatever the imagery the patch invokes, whatever its true visibility, it is almost certainly a monster of our own devising, a Frankenstein's Monster of pollution that could be altered and even stopped if mankind changed its ways drastically.

I was not expecting any of this when I encountered Elephant Revival for the first time. For all my wailing about millennials and annoyance and ironic stances, Sea Monster is a reminder that sometimes even possible hipsters can pass by and leave us something small, sad, and crystalline in its fragility. It's a crushingly lovely song with a hard truth buried deep within it. If the siren that sings to us from the depths of the ocean is merely a call to responsibility for our world, I can live with that. Until then, we have a monster on the loose, and the death of marine life from the increased ingestion of our plastics is a horror that I cannot accept. It's probably a horror more true than anything you would normally encounter on a mere Halloween mixtape, with its usual focus on silly supernatural things.

Elephant Revival. When I get into some spending cash again, I will own all of their available material in one fell swoop. Or one swell shop. Take your pick; I will make them mine. And I will order one Bonnie Paine to go, please...

RTJ

There Must Be Some Mixtape: Track #11 – "Werewolf" by the Violent Femmes

Only two of these three guys are still
with the Femmes...

I have mentioned the Violent Femmes a couple of times in these mixtape pieces this month, but only in speaking tangentially to the main subject at hand. However, I did so knowing full well that I had a Femmes song on tap for later as we neared Halloween. Well, that "later" is now...

The song is called, simply, Werewolf. It's not an original song by the band, but a classic folk tune that the Femmes have occasionally covered in concert. The original song is by Michael Hurley, a revered troubadour of our modern times (and still performing at age 76) who has recorded multiple versions of the song. (Hurley is also known for drawing his own comics and album covers featuring werewolf characters, so the creatures are a regular motif in his work.)

This song, as you will hear, is perfectly suited to lead singer Gordon Gano's voice, and given his penchant for off-kilter subject matter and dark humor, not really a surprise to hear coming from the band. I had first thought about including their original song Fool in the Full Moon, with its creepy lyrics about "following women after dark," until I decided that perhaps a full-on monster song was made to order after we just had five straight versions of Psycho in this countdown.

Let's have a listen, while you read the lyrics for this version below the video...

Werewolf [Live] by the Violent Femmes
(Music and lyrics by Michael Hurley; lyrics from Hurley's 1971 recording)

Oh the werewolf, oh the werewolf comes stepping along
He don't even break the branches where he's been gone
You can hear his long holler from way across the moor
That's the holler of the werewolf when the werewolf's feeling poor

Oh the werewolf, oh the werewolf, have sympathy
For the werewolf he's somebody like you or me
Once I saw him in the moonlight where the bats were a-flyin’
All alone I saw the werewolf, and the werewolf was cryin’

Eeeee Eeeee Eeeee…
Eeeee Eeeee Eeeee…

Michael Hurley

Crying nooo-body, nooo-body, nobody knows
How much I love the maid as I tear off her clothes
Crying nooo-body, nooo-body knows my pain
When I see that its risen, that full moon again

Eeeee Eeeee Eeeee…
Eeeee Eeeee Eeeee…

Crying nobody, nobody knows my pain
When I see that its risen, that full moon again

And ol' Igor, he said to me "man, its this little flute I play
But I never play in the light of day"
(spoken: Well, when you your flute, what do you play on your flute?)

Eeeee Eeeee Eeeee…
Eeeee Eeeee Eeeee…

The "Eeeee" moments in the lyrics don't really approximate the sounds that Gano is making onstage, but they were already in the lyrics for Hurley's version. "Ooooo", "Eeeeee", or even "Oo ee oo ah ah ting tang walla walla bing bang"... who cares? As long as whatever actual sounds the singer makes fit the mood of the song, I don't care how they are spelled out in the lyric sheet.

But do the words match the song? They matched the words that still hung in my head from hearing Gordon's brother Glenn, a close friend of mine, perform the song in coffeehouses around Anchorage and Eagle River, Alaska for many years. Glenn's performances of the song were my first exposure to Michael Hurley and many other folk artists, and strengthened my regard for others that I already knew, such as John Prine and Richard and Linda Thompson. On a side note, when I inadvertently published this post earlier this morning before it had fully baked, Glenn messaged me on Facebook to remind me that he used to play it – which he needn't have, for I did remember the song very well. As a Halloween fanatic, I rarely miss out on monster songs, and Glenn mentioned it was the only Halloween type song that he performed. (He would do a murder ballad here and there, such as the Femmes' Country Death Song, and I kind of count those.) He also added that he and Gordon learned Hurley's Werewolf from their older brother, Christopher, when they were growing up.

In looking up Michael Hurley's versions of the song, I found that the version I owned already had vastly different lyrics to it. It turns out, I owned Hurley's original 1964 recording, from his album for Folkways Records called First Songs. This version is where the "Eeeeee" noises didn't live yet, nor did the weird business with the flute-playing "Igor".

Here are the lyrics from Hurley's original 1964 version, then called The Werewolf Song:

Oh the werewolf, oh the werewolf
Comes a-stepping along
He don't even break the branches
Where he's been gone

You can hear his long holler from away across the moor
That's the holler of a werewolf when he's feeling poor

He goes out in the evening when
The bats are on the wing
And he's killed some young maiden before the birds sing

For the werewolf, for the werewolf
Have sympathy
Because the werewolf he is someone
Just like you and me

Once I saw him in the moonlight
When the bats were a-flying
All alone I saw the werewolf and
The werewolf was crying

The band's most recent recording from 2015.
Only two of these three guys are still with the Femmes
 as well. I don't know about the giraffe... 

Crying, "Nobody, nobody, nobody knows
How much I love the maiden as I tear off her clothes"
Crying, "Nobody, nobody knows of my pain
When I see it has risen that full moon again"

When I see that moon moving
Through the clouds in the sky
I get a crazy feeling and I wonder why

Oh the werewolf, oh the werewolf
Comes traveling along
He don't even break the branches
Where he's been gone

For the werewolf have pity, not fear, and not hate
Because the werewolf might be someone
That you've known of late

Oh the werewolf, oh the werewolf
Comes traveling along
He don't even crush the leaves
Where he's been gone

The concepts are generally all intact, except that flute-playing, and the words are a little fuller and seem in need of some pruning. The version that the Femmes play comes off of Hurley's 1971 re-recording, for his next album (and what some consider his "true" debut album), Armchair Boogie, where Werewolf has been greatly altered to its current, more streamlined but even stranger form. The song's reworking was obviously a deliberate effort by Hurley and important to me as well, for not only does it lead off the album, but the record's cover shows off one of his trademark werewolf art designs. 

It's rather neat to see the song go through variations like this, seeing the songwriter rework the lyrics and elements of the tune over the years, almost like a painter reconsidering a stroke or a splash of color here and there further down the line. Does the creative process ever end for an artist's output? In this case, Hurley condensed a song written in his youth to its most impactful moments and was able to work in a new effect that made the song deeply stranger and more eerie.

If you can find this, good luck.
I can't...

Well, maybe reconsidering one's works is neat in regards to songwriting and painting, but not so much in Star Wars films. Let us please not go through that b.s. ever again, eh? :)

RTJ

[Note: The live recording of the Femmes' version of Werewolf was included on their 2001 E-Music compilation, Something's Wrong, but if you can find a copy, good luck. That company went out of business a while ago (and took my money with it). Oh, and go check out some Michael Hurley as well. His music is strange and wonderful. And sometimes quite beautiful.]

Countdown to Halloween: Cars Land "Haul-O-Ween" Part II

My trip to Cars Land at Disney California Adventure with my mother-in-law Sande last week resulted in a wonderful batch of pictures featuring many of the decorative changes to the area for what they are calling "Haul-O-Ween" this year. It is easy for me to get jaded by such things, but Disney has really done an incredible job of making the whole of Cars Land a truly immersive holiday experience for everyone.

[You can check out Pt. I of this piece here.]

However, I didn't cover the area as much as I had originally wished in the relatively short time we had to visit Cars Land that afternoon. Luckily, I knew that I would get to spend at least a couple more chunks of time there in the coming week. With my friend Janie (wife of one of my oldest friends in the world, Tony) in town as she stayed with us for the weekend on a business break, I knew that Saturday would be a great chance to collect shots of some of the missing details.

First stop was the billboard at the entrance to Cars Land. This feature was proving to be a difficult shot, mainly because Disney constantly keeps a cast member photographer in front of the sign to take pics of every family or group that stops there. On the previous Thursday, I had a couple of brief chances to get a photo of the billboard, but there were always six or seven people standing right there, with some of their heads etc, obscuring the text and other minor details in the artwork. Sure, I could have easily taken their photo and be done with it – they were paying full attention to the actual working camera person and not little ol' me – but I still feel uncomfortable in "accidentally" capturing those I don't know on film without their knowledge or permission. That's right: I do have some small sense of ethics.

Despite my hesitations, I am getting pretty good at snapping quick shots in the small gaps in time between the photographer switching from one group of people to the next. Saturday, I had a more leisurely pace to the day, and Janie was fine with me taking whatever time I needed to get my shots. 

Me and Janie in the Spider-Car having a good time posing for 
the Disney Photo Pass person working this area.

Flo's V-8 Café, while certainly not my favorite place to eat in the area (regular diner fare not necessarily being my thing), does have a really cool design to the place. I love the way it looks normally, but for "Haul-O-Ween" they added a pretty menacing Spider-Car to the environs. Since I am a spider-lover, I was overjoyed to see this, but somehow skipped it on my first visit. The story behind the Spider-Car is that she has taken over the café entrance by spinning webs (made out of chains) from canopy to canopy outside. It looks marvelous.

Why, yes, friends who have not seen me recently,
I have put on even more weight... Why do you ask?

Timing is a big part of visiting any area of the Disney parks in regards to seeing your favorite characters. Cars Land has several car characters that drive through the area, talk to the visitors, and pose for photos at the Cozy Cone Motel or in the town square area. Each of the main cars has a Halloween costume this year (I listed them in Part 1). I got a chance to see the newest character, Cruz Ramirez, dressed as a pirate last week, but failed to get a picture; I also briefly saw Lightning McQueen in his superhero cape, but again wasn't able to angle around for a photo. And I missed out entirely seeing Mater, DJ, and Red the Firetruck.

This time, I was a little more lucky, but thanks to the brightness of the sun and the surrounding lines, my pics for Mater (as a "van-pire" above, nyuk nyuk) and Lightning (below), didn't turn out as well as I wished. In both pictures, you see the back end of people leaving or the front of someone walking into frame, as I shot them in between groupings for the paid cameraperson. The Mater picture does have an odd effect from the sunbeams glancing just past the edge of the motel office roof, causing a weird spotlight effect with the sun that just wouldn't be healthy if he really were a vampire.

I had posted a picture last time of the double signs for Mater's little kid ride – turned into the Graveyard JamBOOree for "Haul-O-Ween," but I wanted to get another shot of the smaller sign for greater detail this time. It kind of got lost in the bigger picture of the sign area.

Of course, Cars Land does have the weird subtext of some vehicles being treated basically like livestock, in what I can only imagine is some weird slavery scenario. One of the funnier scenes in the Cars films is when Mater teaches Lightning about "tractor tipping". This trend is continued in Mater's attraction at the park where not only does he sing along while a couple dozen tractors serves as seats for the ride, but he also has a small "petting zoo" area at the front of the attraction. The cute, little tractor that has to pose with all manner of filthy, smelly children is all wrapped up like a mummy for Haul-O-Ween".

Another part that I skipped the first go was Fillmore's Taste-In, mainly because I already had a bottle of water in my hand, so I had no reason to visit it. This time I made sure to duck in and get a couple of snaps of the commune-like refreshment stand. The first was of this rainbow-colored windmill, slightly transformed with Jack-O-Lantern-style faces...

... and the second was of this lonely little ghost car, projected upward by a large spring set inside an old tire. I like the purposeful rust effect on the whole affair.

While I had a shot of one of the many Jack-O-Lanterns last time in my picture of the Horn o' Plenty over at the Luigi attraction, I somehow missed this entire garden full of Jack-Oil-Lanterns alongside Sarge's Surplus Hut. I get even more annoyed that I missed them because right to the left of them is the spot where I shot the photo of two large spiders (made out of assorted parts) crawling up the side of Sarge's quonset hut. Love this garden!

Finally, we come to the car below, which I think is a nod to the upcoming Pixar feature, Coco. Not that this car doesn't belong in this "Haul-O-Ween" update, since it ties into the Mexican Day of the Dead and all, the beginning of said celebration usually starting on Oct. 31. If you can get to the park soon, I highly recommend visiting the Paradise Pier Grill for another lovely area promoting the film directly. Well worth your time. (And if you can't, I will have more on Coco and the Paradise Pier Grill area in another post next week.)

This was yet another stop where a photographer made it difficult to get a simple picture of the car. Luckily for me, the person having their picture taken was a fairly comely lass partly dressed up (I think) like one of the monster cheerleaders from the Pixar Parade. As I was snapping a series of pics to capture the image below, she suddenly came running through the frame past my camera, so I did get her (fleetingly) on film. But, because I didn't ask permission from her, I have not posted those photos.

There are still some details for which I was unable to get decent photos. Mostly this was due to the sunlight being so bright, and those details being behind windows in the town, so that my photos were basically reflected shots of me taking pictures of something indiscernible behind the glass. I will be in the park again tomorrow, but whether I will have the time to get more taken is unknown. If I do get any more, I am not going to have Part III, but I may work a couple more into this post instead.

RTJ