Halloween Lobotomy Room 27 October 2017 DJ Set List

From the Facebook event page:

Made plans for Halloween already? Cancel ‘em! Come and rock around the graveyard instead when Lobotomy Room and Fontaine’s join forces for a FREE Halloween extravaganza on Friday 27 October!

Yes! Revel in sleaze, voodoo and rock’n’roll - when incredibly strange dance party Lobotomy Room returns to the Polynesian-style basement Bamboo Lounge of Dalston’s most unique nite spot Fontaine’s! And there’s going to be dry ice, skulls and special Halloween cocktails! Dress up or simply come as your own bad self!

Lobotomy Room! Where sin lives! A punkabilly booze party! Sensual and depraved! A spectacle of decadence! Bad Music for Bad People! A Mondo Trasho evening of Beat, Beat Beatsville Beatnik Rock’n’Roll! Rockabilly Psychosis! Wailing Rhythm and Blues! Punk! Twisted Tittyshakers! White Trash Rockers! Kitsch! Exotica! Curiosities and Other Weird Shit! Think John Waters soundtracks, or Songs the Cramps Taught Us, hosted by Graham Russell. Expect desperate stabs from the jukebox jungle! Savage rhythms to make you writhe and rock! With added spooky Halloween novelty kitsch (“Monster Mash!” “Goo Goo Muck!”).

Admission: gratuit - that’s French for FREE!

Lobotomy Room: Faster. Further. Filthier.

It’s sleazy. It’s grubby. It’s trashy - you’ll love it!

A tawdry good time guaranteed!

Lobotomy Room doing a Halloween club night in Fontaine’s Bamboo Lounge is a very grave occasion! Actually, when it comes to throwing a Halloween bash, I completely defer to the Gomez and Morticia of punk – The Cramps! Here’s Lux Interior (RIP) and Poison Ivy offering festive hosting tips to Details magazine in 1994.  These are words to live by from psychobilly’s royal couple. I totally adhere to their rule of “play music loud enough so that guests are forced to do anything but talk”. (In the past I’ve had a group of people storm out of the Bamboo Lounge in a huff because of the volume. One wailed, “Are you trying to give us a heart attack?!” And they were  faux punks and Goths in leather jackets! Good riddance!). I was hoping someone would order Ivy’s toxic Scarlet Sangria on Friday, but no one did! All of the ingredients were on hand!

Musically, I embraced the occasion by mainly sticking to campy atomic-era Halloween novelty tunes – a genre of music I love and crave for an excuse to play. I drew heavily on Ace Records’ These Ghoulish Things: Horror Hits for Halloween (2006) – the only Halloween novelty song compilation anyone really needs. Elsewhere, I melded-in even more of The Cramps' Gravest Hits than usual (de rigueur on Halloween), Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Screamin' Lord Sutch, not one but two tributes to ultimate coffin cutie Vampira (aka the late horror movie hostess portrayed by Maila Nurmi) and the theme tunes to both The Munsters and The Addams Family as well as the standard rockabilly, tittyshakers, surf punk and rhythm and blues. I strategically left the perennial Bobby “Boris” Pickett masterpiece “The Monster Mash” until late into the night when the dance floor was already full. Rest assured people went batshit!

/ Did someone say "Bat ..." /

For the adult viewing pleasure of the attendees, as a Halloween backdrop I projected Orgy of the Dead (1965) on a continuous loop. It's a deliriously terrible, irresistibly wonderful sexploitation-horror film straight from the twisted imagination of that noted exemplar of quality – Edward D Wood Jr! (It’s directed by Stephen C Apostolof from a script by Wood, but believe me – it feels like an Ed Wood production). Filmed in Gorgeous Astravison and Shocking Sexicolour, Orgy is essentially a “nudie cutie” flick featuring a bevy of big-haired topless go-go dancers frolicking and shakin’ it in a mist-shrouded, el cheap-o graveyard set (a location not dissimilar to the one in Wood’s earlier Plan 9 from Outer Space). Flamboyantly hammy psychic Criswell (one of Wood’s regulars) delivers some portentous speeches as The Emperor, who summons “Princess of the Night”, the raven-haired Black Ghoul (buxom starlet Fawn Silver in a role originally offered to Vampira. Silver’s beehive wig is sensational). The Wolf Man and The Mummy also crop up to leer at the naked women, but really the minimalist "narrative" takes second place to the boob-tastic gyrations of the ten strip-tease artistes. Orgy of the Dead is a true kitsch classick! Glancing up from the DJ booth and seeing the buxotic titty-shaking all night gave me life! (I bought my exquisite deluxe limited-edition Blu-Ray / DVD combo from VinegarSyndrome.com and I highly recommend them). 

Speaking of bargain basement gutter auteur Ed Wood Jr: the Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies film club has been going from strength to strength this year, with full houses virtually every month. For October 2017 we screened our first double-bill: Ed Wood (1994) / Glen or Glenda? (1953) – and it pretty much tanked! (Only an elite hardcore of people stayed for Glen or Glenda?). Regrettably, I have to add Wood to the pantheon alongside Pee-Wee Herman and Elvira of cult figures I personally venerate but who aren’t a “draw”, especially among younger people. (Having said that: I do have Plan 9 from Outer Space and Bride of The Monster on DVD so I inevitably will gamble on screening a Wood film again in the future).

Anyway, here's my Halloween 2017 set list:

Night of the Vampire - The Moontrekkers
Monster in Black Tights - Screaming Lord Sutch and The Savages
Mr Werewolf - The Kac-Ties
Dead Man's Stroll - The Revels
Bloodshot - The String Kings
Drac's Back - Billy De Marco & Count Dracula
Spooky - Lydia Lunch
High Wall - The Fabulous Wailers
I'd Rather Be Burned as a Witch - Eartha Kitt
It - The Regal-airs
The Whip - The Frantics
It's Monster Surfing Time - The Deadly Ones
Johnny Hit and Run Pauline - The Ramonetures
King Kong - Tarantula Ghoul
She's My Witch - The Earls of Suave
Strolling After Dark - The Shades
Two Headed Sex Change - The Cramps
Vampira - Bobby Bare
Nightmare Mash - Billy Lee Riley
The Voodoo Walk - Sonny Richard's Panics with Cindy and Misty
Goo Goo Muck - Ronnie Cook and The Gaylads
Graveyard Rock - Tarantula Ghoul
Dancing Girl - Bo Diddley
Feast of the Mau Mau - Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Scream - The 5,6,7,8s
Do the Zombie - The Symbols
The Munsters Theme - Milton DeLugg and Orchestra
The Way I Walk - The Cramps
Addams Family Theme - The Fiends
The Mummy - Bob McFadden
Monster Party - Bill Doggett
Anastasia - Bill Smith Combo
Strollin' Spooks - Ken Nordine and His Kinsmen
Sinner - Freddie and The Hitchhikers
Torture Rock - The Rockin' Belmarx
Vampira - The Misfits
The Creature from the Black Leather Lagoon - The Cramps
Bo Meets The Monster - Bo Diddley
Pedro Pistlolas Twist - Los Twisters
Monster Mash - Bobby Boris Pickett
Strychnine - The Sonics
Boys Are Boys and Girls Are Choice - The Monks
Muleskinner Blues - The Fendermen
Shortnin' Bread - The Readymen
Batman - Link Wray and His Ray Men
Surfin' Bird - The Trashmen
Peter Gunn Twist - The Jesters
Suey - Jayne Mansfield
Viva Las Vegas - Nina Hagen
Atomic Bongos - Lydia Lunch
Margaya - The Fender Four
Wipe-Out - The Surfaris
Blitzkrieg Bop - The Ramonetures
Breathless - X
C'mon Everybody - Sid Vicious
Funnel of Love - Wanda Jackson
Wild, Wild Party - Charlie Feathers
Wiped-Out - The Escorts
Rock Around the Clock - The Sex Pistols
Sweetie Pie - Eddie Cochran
Surf Rat - The Rumblers
Year 1 - X
He's The One - Ike and Tina Turner
The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard
Lucille - Masaaki Hirao
Jim Dandy - Ann-Margret
Bossa Nova Baby - Elvis Presley

Further reading:

Flashback to the 2016 Halloween Lobotomy Room

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"Like" and follow the official Lobotomy Room page on Facebook if you dare! Remember: Lobotomy Room the incredibly strange dance club is last Friday of every accursed month! The film club is third Wednesday of every month (November feature to be announced soon!).