sometimes love is only sleeping

Zombie Love

It’s Halloween, do you know where your zombie is?

As I was waffling about what song to offer you this month – something new that I’d need to bring to life, or something old that’s dressed in cobwebs – I was thinking about all the spooky Halloween-type songs of the rock era and kept coming back to this one: Zombie Love by the Jazz Butcher.

There are two great versions of this tune on vinyl (one on Bath of Bacon, the other on The Gift of Music), and they’re quite different in tone and execution. The latter version seems recorded live in the studio and has all the great fire of a live Butcher performance, while the former is darker and more swampy. There’s lots of great guitar interplay on both versions, the kind of guitar interactions inspired by Television and the Velvet Underground, where chance and improvisation are allowed a turn at the wheel, steering the song over a hill of repetition and into unexpected diversions of dissonance and delight. I love that stuff.

Yesterday I set out to make my own little version of the song as a nod to Halloween, choosing the earlier version as my template (truly, I copied it to the best of my meager abilities). I hope you enjoy it, and that it sets your bones a-dancin’ under the bright zombie moon….

The song was written by Pat Fish. The photo was taken by Andrew Braithwaite.

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