Housewife in Hollywood - housewifeinhollywood.com

Foolish mortals, does your Halloween spirit need a revival? Do you wish that ghoulish feeling could last all year long? Are you in need of some groovy music you can shimmy too?

The Ghastly Ones bring you spooky surf sounds from beyond the grave. Learn more about this groovy, or should I say ghouly band. I had a fun Q&A with Norman, aka Baron Shivers, take a look if you dare:

HIH:  Who came up with the name? Was there any inspiration from the 60’s horror movie with the same title?

Garrett “Dr. Lehos” and I wrote a bunch of names down and The Ghastly Ones stuck because it just had a cool spooky vibe to it but not too over the top. It came from an Andy Milligan film of the same name from 1968. It’s a pretty bad movie but we dug the spirit of the film, plus The Lively Ones was, and still is, one of our favorite surf bands from 60’s. The Deadly Ones was already used by a novelty band in the 60’s, so The Ghastly Ones was perfect.

HIH:  When I hear the word Surf band I think of music from the Ventures. Hearing Cemetery Surf, I think of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion theme song with its ghoulish lyrics and 60’s sounds. What made you want to incorporate the silly scary?

Growing up I really loved The Munsters and religiously watched Creature Features on late night TV. Both shows had a surfy sounding theme song and the idea clicked in my head to make the first real spooky surf group. The Deadly Ones was a novelty band that played instrumentals with groans and screams on top and several bands including The Ventures played around with spooky songs but no one had even done an all horror surf band, so The Ghastly Ones were born!

HIH:   There’s an event in the summer called Tiki Oasis. You played there this year and it sounded like a wild time. I’m fascinated by the mixture of tiki themes mixed with zombies. Can you give us an idea of where this mix came from?

Zombies and Tiki go hand in hand. Besides there being a famous tropical drink called the Zombie, Tiki imagery has always been steeped in mysterious island rituals and Voodoo practices but in a very romantic and idealized way. In the old days many restaurants and bars had this theme and the tradition carries on today.

HIH:  Can we purchase the single you did for the SpongeBob Scaredy Pants episode?

We don’t have that single for sale but we get asked about SpongeBob a lot. We really enjoyed creating music for that show. We just contributed music for another animated film called Los Campiones de La Lucha Libre. It’s from the creators of Mucha Lucha.

HIH:   You’ve been together since the mid 90’s. Has your band changed at all since then?

The biggest change was the addition of a permanent keyboard player, Dave aka “Capt Clegg”. He’s been on all of our recordings since day one but he joined our band officially in 2006. Other than that, we’ve been incorporating some more Davie Allan style fuzz numbers and recently we’ve been on a Japanese Instro kick. There were these cats in the 60’s, Yuzo Kayama and Terry Terauchi that did some amazing Ventures style instros but with a very aggressive guitar tone that we really like. We’re doing a tribute to them in January at Deke Dickeson’s Guitar Geek Festival here in the LA area.

HIH:   What is one of your favorite late night monster movies?

Wow, that’s a very long list! For starters anything by Mario Bava, Black Sunday, Black Sabbath, Kill baby Kill. Hammer films and the original Universal Horror films of the 30’s and 40’s are great. Horror of Party Beach is a big fave, Beach Girls and the Monster, Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster, and the Santo Wrestling films are non-stop fun too. This list could go several pages.

HIH:  In 2007, you performed for the first time in Japan, and on the East Coast. Was there a big difference between those audiences and your California fans?

The Japanese fans were amazing. They love to go nuts over there. A mosh pit started at one of our shows but it wasn’t violent, just kids having a great time. We love to see people out there moving dancing and jumping around, not just staring at our every move.

HIH:  What’s next for The Ghastly Ones?

More grave-diggin’, fuzz-fueled, reverb-drenched, brew-injected, hearse-powered skullduggery at a location near you!

For some hip, happening and haunting tunes go to:

 www.myspace.com/ghastlyones

The Ghastly Ones

“Baron Shivers” Drums and Vocals
“Dr. Lehos”  Lead Guitar
“Sir GoGo Ghostly”  Bass
“Captain Clegg”  Organ
“Necrobella”  Go-Go