1 post tagged “chetwynd-hayes”
Another of my guilty pleasures is the horror fiction of R. Chetwynd-Hayes, "Britain's Prince of Chill." He put out a huge amount of short horror fiction through the 70s and 80s, and I will qualify "horror fiction" by noting that his stories are just as scary as a carnival haunted house, and in the same way. He actually could write a chilling tale, but he was obviously a humorous sort, and his humor took the edge off of most of his work. Still, he made a living at it, and had two portmanteau movies made from his stories, From Beyond the Grave and The Monster Club. A little Chetwynd-Hayes goes a long way, so it had been about a year since I last read him when I discovered a Chetwynd-Hayes fansite, Loughville. That rekindled my interest and inspired me to get copies of the films, which I had never seen before. Now here comes the music part: in The Monster Club, vampire Erasmus (Vincent Price) takes his latest victim, horror writer R. Chetwynd-Hayes (John Carradine) into the eponymous club, where he introduces tales of various "breeds" of monsters in between band performances. The bands are a motley mix of new wave and AOR; but the band after the second story is... Night! Yet another of my weaknesses is minor AOR hits from my teenage years, and Night's "Hot Summer Nights" is about as minor as they get. I managed to get an mp3 of it during the Napster era, but I lost it (along with about 600 others) when I inadvertently let my MyPlay account lapse. Damn and blast! So I don't have it anymore, and I'm having trouble finding one (it's not very Googleable). But now at least I have "The Stripper," with lead singer Stevie Vann Lange absolutely belting out the lyrics! I couldn't tell from "Hot Summer Nights" what a powerhouse singer she is; Chris Thompson, the band's other singer (who was the lead singer on Manfred Mann's big hits of the 70s, e.g. "Blinded By the Light") is relegated to guitar and backing vocals on this track. The movie clip is on YouTube, but it's not embeddable, so instead of just posting a link, here's an audio rip. (But watch the YouTube clip to see the stripper take it all off--insert Cryptkeeper laughter here.)
Stevie has provided backing vocals on tons of other artists' records and concerts. She's credited on Gang of Four's Songs of the Free, so that must be her singing the iconic "I Love a Man in Uniform" chorus. Wow! (And she got the last name Lange by marrying rock producer extraordinaire Mutt Lange!) Now, back to Night: "Hot Summer Nights" was actually a cover; the song was written and originally recorded by Walter Egan on his 1978 album Not Shy. Hey, whaddyaknow, here's Walter singing it on YouTube!
I think I prefer the Night version, if only for Stevie's vocals, but it's great to hear the song again anyway. (Coincidentally, the song is thematically similar to a song by another Stevie: "Gold" by Stevie Nicks and John Stewart. It's musically similar too, for that matter.) Walter Egan is best known for his bigger hit from Not Shy, "Magnet and Steel":
Oh my gosh, it's all connected, and if I don't stop now I may never stop, so that's it for now. But Chris Thompson will figure in another post soon.
