munster mash: goth meets surf

Another article from the brilliant Art Chantry, Graphic designer par excellence and a very articulate transmitter of art design and lo-fi culture in a straight-forward and honest manner. No punches pulled. The intro is a fragment from an interview with Art Chantry by Lonnie Staccato:

Lonnie Staccato: Isn’t it true Mr. Chantry that you once considered doing ads for a South American gun runner?
Art Chantry: Yes ,and proud of it. I have alot of friends in alot of weird places. I used to have friends and clients who were right-wing fanatics. They were fun people to be with, great senses of humor and you could tease each other about politics. Give these people a gun and they’d stand up for everything they believe in. In ’82, my entire income was about $2000, and I knew this crazy guy who offered to pay me $10,000 dollars to do a small, b&w ad. It was for this thick, glossy magazine only available in the Pentagon. It was amazing, filled with kill ratios, body parts and tanks. I said yes. I needed the money. Luckily, it fell through before I did anything. They needed an ad to sell helicopter parts and bullets to Venezuela. I’ve also worked for pimps,pornographers, drug dealers,and corporate executives. They’re all the same people. They’re all sociopaths. ALL businessmen are sociopaths. America rewards that behavior. Men without conscience.
L: What do you like about your way of working? Your style?
A: Lo-budget execution and a pretty good idea behind it. My style jumps around tremendously depending on my client’s needs. Alot of those styles I’ve done for projects then tossed aside, are now mainstream underground styles.
L: You’re timing is bad. You’ll never be hip.
A: I ain’t bitter.
L: I already said you were bitter in the intro.
A: Bitter, vicious, antagonistic…

By ART CHANTRY:

When I was a grade school kid, I was an “Addams family” man. I was already well aware of Charles Addams’ infamous cartoons and even had a small collection of paperbacks chock-full of his stuff (titles like ‘drawn & quartered’, ‘black maria’ and ‘monster rally’.) the Addams family even premiered a full season before their erstwhile c…ompetition- the Munsters – ever hit the airwaves. so, when them loathesome copy-cats,”the Munsters’, showed up, I derisively referred to them as – “them monsters”.

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However, as an adult I can now see the error of my younger ways. yes, the Addams family was pretty good. Lurch was brilliant. Morticia was a sexy precursor to Vampira and Elvira. thing was a great orator, and I even had a belated affinity for the irony of casting Jackie Coogan (the famous child star of charlie chaplin’s ‘the kid’) as uncle Fester. To top it all off, the Addams family was a prop master’s dream job. It’s one of those impossibly rare occasions when the props outshone the actual stars of the tv show itself. The other great examples of this during that era might be ‘the man from u.n.c.l.e.’ and the flatulent ‘batman’.


when the Munsters popped up, they were correctly seen as the cbs/univeral response to the success of abc’s the Addams family. cbs/universal had the rights to the make up of those famous 1930′s monster movies. you couldn’t legally square off the head and bolt in the neck of Frankenstein without getting sued by them, and they REALLY protected their corporate rights. After the huge revival of popularity (a fad, really) of the universal monster movies on tv over the previous few years, cbs was sitting on a hot property. So, they went for it.

"Like the Batmobile, the Munster Coach became as much a part of a television show as the actors, still recognizable to fans who only saw the show in reruns on TV Land. Barris attributes this staying power to his attention to detail. "I took three Model Ts and cut them into pieces, so I had a six door Model T with all kinds of character to it – coffin handles and spider webs and all kinds of things to make the car more of the show," he said. "Most of the fan mail that was coming was talking about the Munster Coach. So again the car became an important part of the film, just like the actors."---Read More:http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/02/george-barris-shows-car-warriors-whos-boss/?pid=708

Right from the start it was an expensive show. Where as the Addams family starred brilliant props, the Munster’s  had one of the greatest SETS ever built in television history. The home at 1313 Mockingbird Lane was the weekly highlight of the show. The budget on DUST alone must have been a small fortune. Even with that said, the props were no slouchy cheap-o junk either. the hot rods built by George Barris (king o’ customs) for the show are still stars on the car circuit even today. And grandpa’s mad laboratory in the basement? Man, that was totally sweet!

During casting, the cbs people had noticed the classic borscht-belt comedic timing of the those two consumate professionals, Al Lewis and Fred Gwynn (first paired in “car 54, where are you?”). These two were the secret weapon of the whole show. When they tried to tie-in a movie star to the cast (to give it respectability, I guess) they spent a huge amount of money casting Yvonne Decarlo and intended to have the show swirl around her as the focal point. but, whenever Herman and Grandpa started chewing up the scenery together, there was no contest. The conservative (and initially, some say arrogant) movie star playing Lilly Munster quickly succumbed to the fun and started gnawing some scenery on her own, and liked the w


t tasted. So, the show became a wonderful romp in a perfect play house, cornpone and all.

Read More:http://pul.se/search/Bryan%20Fuller

There was a HUGE ‘swag’ business associated with the Munsters that the Addams family never had. Everything from halloween costumes to lunch boxes to model kits to comics and cheezy little kiddie books like this one depicted. But, these items were such crap that none of the art has ever been found credited and the people who cranked out TONS of this material are lost to history. It’s as if anybody associated with the Munsters was so embarrassed by that work, they DIDN’T want their names to be there anywhere. This is a great little cover illustration and the monster type is exquisite (as far as monster type goes, anyway.) Those scratches in the picture is damage made buy some loving child to the front of this thrift store find.

Frankly, looking back at this point, there is no contest between the Addams family and the Munsters.Just check your listing and see which had the more rotations on the oldies channels. While neither show lasted more than three seasons, their life in re-runs has become immortal. But the munsters is totally BELOVED, while the Addams family is just sorta cool.

---the Koach has the driver's seat up front for Herman and Lilly, a center laboratory for Grandpa, and a rear overhanging couch for Eddie and poor Marilyn, the only "abnormal" one of the bunch. Total seating is eight, though Herman in costume was seven feet tall and could not enter or exit the car on camera. He had to drive it in regular shoes instead of his costume. The Koach also has a brass tombstone-shaped radiator, carriage lamps, landau bars, a 300-horsepower 289 Ford Cobra V-8, Anson Astro wheels with Mickey Thompson rear slicks, and a 133-inch wheelbase, nearly identical to the Maybach 57. Casket handles on the front, step bars, parlor curtains, and the family crest on the second of the three doors complete the comically creepy car's character.----Read More:http://www.carlustblog.com/2009/06/the-munster-koach-and-the-dragula.html image:http://www.gregspradlin.com/blog/the-munster-koach-and-the-drag-u-la/

Which brings me to the big point of this little essay. One of the enduring mysteries to the fans of the Munsters is the theme music. The intro is a full orchestration version, guitar heavy. But the ‘outro’ version is classic rockabilly/surf guitar badness madness.It’s been a major influence/love affair for trash hounds the world over. It gets played and covered and recorded and admired over and over and over – particularly the ‘outro’ version. But, I’ve constantly read that nobody knows who did it, the performers have gone undocumented. But, it seems that the actual music was written by a guy with the strangely appropriate name of Billy Strange. But who was that band?

Well, if you ever bother to research the peculiar career of Billy Strange, the answer is obvious. Billy Strange was a great behind-the-scenes performer arranger and writer/conductor/guitarist in Los Angeles for most of the 1960′s and his career continued in major fashion through until the 80′s.

Billy Strange was a guitarist with Duane Eddy & the Rebels – the “kings of the twangy guitar.” Through the recordings of that band, he hooked up with the legendary producer/songwriter/performer Lee Hazelwood. together, they worked on a huge number of artists and recordings and strange became a primo session guitartist associated with ‘the wrecking crew’ of Phil Spector. Many of the musicians he recorded songs with like Jan& Dean, the Beach Boys, the Ventures and many others in the Los Angeles hipster rock-n-roll scene.

Through Lee Hazelwood’s connections into the recording industry – and especially the Nancy Sinatra connections into the infamous Las Vegas ‘rat pack’ – Strange became an arranger and orchestrator for virtually all of the Vegas elite – Sinatra, Dino, Sammy and their kids like Nancy Sinatra and ‘dino, desi & billy.’ that’s him playing guitar on ‘these boots are made for walking.” eventually he became a member of Elvis’s Vegas band and enjoyed that gig for many years.

But, his interest in guitar music lead him to record over a half-dozen guitar albums in various genre’s – show tunes, secret agent music (he had already played on many of the James Bond theme songs), old timey country western. But, his love for that guitar twang always had set his heart on country and rockabilly and surf. he produced artists like Jody Reynolds and Mel Tillis and even unknown garage bands like ‘the surprise package’ of tacoma, wa.

So, back to this Munsters theme. there was an LP of ‘movie songs’ that Billy Strange recorded called “Goldfinger and other movie themes”. On it, he has his recording of ‘the Munster’s theme’. It’s identical to the tv show intro. He even released it on a single credited to him at one point. So, it’s apparent that it is Billy Strange performing that theme song of his own writing. Mystery solved. It’s obscure as all hell, but it’s actually there in the thrift store bins if you know what to look for.

But, the real question is, “who was that great surf band doing the ‘outro’ version at the end of the show?” That’s the biggest mystery. Well, that’s not so tough, either. Billy Strange also played in a surf instrumental band that recorded a number of regional hits called ‘the Challengers’. they recorded several LP’s for the cheezeball GNP/Crescendo label and their work pops up all over the place on bad movie soundtracks and ‘generic’ re-issues of surf music.

There is also an entire LP of surf music (a bit orchestral for purists tastes) called “Billy Strange and the Challengers”. There is no doubt in my mind that Billy Strange’s love of the surf guitar lead him to record that crazy surf version in the outro with his sideband, ‘The Challengers.’ so, that’s actually Billy Strange himself wailing away on that wild guitar, just like he always loved deep in his twangy little heart.

Strange love not so strange. Solved?

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