Exploitative, unconscionable, and normally divorced from standard notions of style, so-called demise discs (or “splatter platters”) might be onerous to defend: however for discerning ghouls with a strong humorousness, they will additionally present no finish of toe-curling enjoyable.
What’s a demise disc?
Before everything, a definition is so as. Loss of life discs have come beneath a wide range of names over time. Splatter platters. Teenage tragedy songs. Principally, it’s a track that takes on the subject of a untimely and/or grisly and/or bitterly ironic demise. The industrial heyday of the demise disc was the last decade between 1955 and 1965 – although the subject material has lengthy sewn a black seam into the very warp and weft of conventional folks, blues, and nation music.
Take heed to the very best demise discs on Spotify.
The primary demise disc
It’s not possible to say who made the primary demise disc, however there’s a powerful case to counsel that it was storied songwriters Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller who did most to mint the template for demise discs with “Black Denim Trousers And Motorcycle Boots,” a No.6 US hit for vocal group The Cheers in 1955. Right here, at a stroke, had been all of the substances that had been quickly to turn into de rigeur (mortis): a bad-boy protagonist, his recklessly piloted mode of transport, the inevitably deadly smash, a heartbroken girlfriend left to water the grave together with her tears. With attribute élan, Lieber & Stoller ensured that the trousers and boots of the track’s title had been all that was left of the sufferer after his bike collided with a California-bound diesel. Six days after the track entered the charts, film idol James Dean totaled his Porsche 550 Spyder on the junction of California State routes 41 and 46, thereby cementing a fantastic, Valentino-esque notion that dying younger might by some means be perceived in romantic phrases.
By no means ones to chorus from mining a remunerative seam, Lieber & Stoller alluded to the celebrated racing scene from Dean’s 1955 movie Insurgent With out A Trigger in “Chicken,” The Cheers’ subsequent demise disc, and one other grim parable set to an association of haywire, inappropriate jauntiness. (“There might have been a winner but they had no way to tell, for the couples were all dead and there was no one left to yell.”)
Jody Reynolds – Limitless Sleep
Exhausting proof of morbidity’s money-spinning potential was offered by Jody Reynolds’ million-selling “Endless Sleep” in 1958, a monolith within the historical past of demise discs – although no demise truly happens within the track. On the behest of his apprehensive file label, Reynolds modified the doleful ending and, within the revised model, thwarts his girlfriend’s suicide try by pulling her “from the angry sea… I saved my baby from an endless sleep.”
Mark Dinning – Teen Agel
The track’s success was compounded when Mark Dinning’s “Teen Angel” reached No.1 in February 1960. This sorry story of a 16-year-old lady who returns to a stalled automotive on a stage crossing to retrieve the high-school ring given to her by her boyfriend – with well-what-else-did-you-expect penalties – struck a resonant horror chord with besotted younger {couples} in all places.
Inform Laura I Love Her
Six months later, one other ring was the fateful spur in “Tell Laura I Love Her” by Ray Peterson, wherein a stock-car driver hopes to win a race in order to purchase his lady a marriage ring with the prize cash – however finally ends up shopping for the farm as an alternative. Ricky Valance’s British cowl model climbed all the way in which to No.1, regardless of – or due to – a BBC ban. UK actor/singer/heartthrob John Leyton additionally recorded a stillborn model of “Tell Laura I Love Her,” however had quite higher luck with 1961’s No.1 “Johnny Remember Me,” an elemental, Joe Meek-produced sonic whirlpool, haunted by the illusion of a useless lover.
1964
Aficionados of demise discs usually nominate 1964 as a banner yr for the shape. Take into account “Dead Man’s Curve” by Jan & Dean, which particulars a spectacularly ill-fated drag race alongside LA’s Sundown Boulevard. The track acquired dismaying real-life resonance when Jan Berry was himself concerned in a highway accident south of Sundown Boulevard in April 1966, leaving him with everlasting mind injury. There’s additionally “Last Kiss” by J Frank Wilson & The Cavaliers (a US No.2 hit), wherein a driver swerves to keep away from a automotive stalled within the highway and crashes his personal auto, ensuing within the demise of his girlfriend – poignantly sealed with the titular final kiss. Surreally, Pearl Jam coated the track in 1999, additionally reaching No.2.
In the meantime, within the UK, “Terry” – a self-penned morality story by Lynn Annette Ripley, aka Twinkle – involved a younger lady condemned to an eternity of responsible regret, pinioned on the karmic wheel as a result of her unfaithfulness induced the Terry in query to roar off on his motorcycle in a snit – all the way in which to “the gates of heaven.”
After which, in fact, there was the wonderful “Leader Of The Pack” by girl-group goddesses The Shangri-Las – the apogee of all demise discs, with its motorcycle-straddling anti-hero, stern parental disapproval, and that inescapable, melodramatic denouement. (“As he drove away on that rainy night, I begged him to go slow… but whether he heard, I’ll never know.”) Avenue-tough and moony in equal measure, The Shangri-Las additionally bequeathed “Give Us Your Blessings” to the canon – one other torrid fable of forbidden and actually doomed love, initially recorded by Ray Peterson of “Tell Laura I Love Her” infamy – and “I Can Never Go Home Anymore,” which mixes up the drugs by making the singer’s mom the sufferer. (She dies, broken-hearted, out of sheer chagrin over her daughter’s woeful style in males.)
Such histrionic fare was, in fact, catnip for satirists. In “The Big Tragedy” by Johnny Lance – co-written by Jody Reynolds of “Endless Sleep” notoriety – the vocalist’s girlfriend is run over by a steamroller (“I’m taking a shower now – just slide her under the door”), whereas the monumentally disturbing “I Want My Baby Back” by Jimmy Cross finds the track’s narrator truly climbing into his girlfriend’s coffin after “the leader of the pack” crashes into her automotive. Fairly aptly, it stiffed.
The Loss of life Disc, Submit-1965
Even when demise discs, and their parodic spin-offs, by no means once more achieved this stage of market saturation, the format proved sarcastically deathless. For instance, the glowering, operatic “DOA” by Bloodrock stalks the aftermath of a aircraft crash, and is sung by a dying man on an working desk. “Johnny Don’t Do It,” in the meantime, from 10cc’s self-titled 1973 debut album, extends a fond salute to the dead-biker paeans of yesteryear (as, by the way, did the title monitor of Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell). Notably, the inconceivable international gross sales figures of Terry Jacks’ valedictory “Seasons In The Sun” – a sentimental rewrite of Jacques Brel’s elegantly reducing “Le Moribond” – revealed that the general public’s urge for food for maudlin contemplation of an early check-out was inexhaustible.
Moreover, automotive wrecks litter the lyrics of 1978’s “Hello, This Is Joannie” by Paul Evans, that very same yr’s “Come Back Jonee” by Devo (“Jonee… went head-on into a semi”), and the JG Ballard-derived, crash-fetishizing “Warm Leatherette” by The Regular, later memorably coated by Grace Jones on her album of the identical identify. Ramones additionally waded in with 1981’s fond homage, “7-11” (“Oncoming car went out of control; it crushed my baby and it crushed my soul”), whereas The Birthday Occasion proffered “Dead Joe” (“Welcome to the car smash”) on their feral 1982 album, Junkyard.
In more moderen years, the protagonist of Primus’ “Jerry Was A Race Car Driver” (1991) “wrapped himself around a telegraph pole”; two lovers collide with one other jackknifed semi in Headphones’ “Slow Car Crash” (1995); and the psychotic “Stan” within the supremely bleak 2000 Eminem track of the identical identify drives his automotive off a bridge, along with his pregnant girlfriend trapped within the again, when the article of his fan needs is just too late in replying to his obsessive letters.
Get pleasure from, in case your spirit is sufficiently doughty.
