Michael Myers[1] Resplendent[2][3]
Lyrics
I am ready for my close up today
Too long I've let my self-respect stand in my way
Well the prom queen's caught in the high beams
And the strings keen, it’s a big scene
But when the house goes up in flames[4]
No one emerges triumphantly from it
When the scum begins to circle the drain
Everybody loves a winner
I spent eight hours in my make-up chair
Waxed my chest and shaved off all my hair
Well the fire's bright and the frame's tight
Try to get right—Well, we’ve still got light
But when the house goes up in flames
No one emerges triumphantly from it
When the scum begins to circle the drain
Everybody loves a winner
Banter
- The thing about me when I was a child, that sort of made me - I don't want to say different in a way that maybe you would value - what type would get noticed is that, like, when I would see even a trailer for a horror movie, I believed everyone in the movie was literally going to die. And I'd see the movie and everybody else - you know, they'd show it at like a pool party when I'm eleven or something - they’d say, 'Ah, that’s so fake!' Does not look fake to me. I know- I hear what you're saying but even if they're not all going to die now, the point of the movie is that eventually they all die. You know, of old age or whatever. [inaudible] alive. That's also terrifying, right. 'Okay, well, we'll invite you to the next party, John. We hope you'll do better at that one.' This envisions the star of the Halloween movies sort of in soliloquy. (2012-06-22)
Live Performances
2015-05-29 KEXP (JD solo - recording)
Footnotes
1. Michael Myers is the masked antagonist of the slasher film series Halloween, in which he murders residents of his Illinois town, often with a kitchen knife, on Halloween while his former psychiatrist attempts to stop him. (Annotated TMG) ↩
2. "When I wrote this I didn't know that they were remaking Halloween — I have a real love for slasher films, probably because when they were a new phenomenon I was so terrified just by the newspapers ads that I avoided the hell out of them. As a child I was pretty easily frightened, the world seemed like a place where all sorts of random devilment could just pop out from the woodwork at any second. This song is like Sax Rohmer #1 if the narrator had given up on ever actually getting home; of the present bunch, this was the first song written. It's also the one that I played piano on, which I like to do once each album, since piano was the first instrument I ever learned to play." — Heretic Pride press kit ↩
3. A demo for Michael Myers Resplendent exists, released as a Christmas gift in 2006, prior to the release of Heretic Pride. It is part of the Songs for Vamsidasa Babaji collection. John's original post:
I hope everybody is having a great yule. Did you know that it was once a custom in the north of England to cry out "Yule!" in the streets or in church after the sermon? Do you not wish we observed this custom generally, and loudly, throughout the month of December?
Moved by the remembered spirit of frozen Mancunians in stovepipe hats crying "Yule!" at one another with increasing fury, we offer this site's second annual present of an unreleased song. Last year it was two, but both of them were old. This one I wrote just last night. If you're a person who'll be bummed out by finding a song you already knew on the next album, then you might wanna leave this one alone, 'cause it's nearly a sure thing that it'll get the studio treatment at some point. There will be a lyric change in the chorus when that happens, but I liked the energy of this just-wrote-it version, so I'm leaving it as-is.
The title refers not to the trance DJ but to this dude, though it's an elliptical reference so if you wanna argue that the song's actually about a negative epiphany arrived at through the glory of progressive trance, please feel free! This song is part of a series that as yet has no title and, as of this writing, only a vague thematic thread. More on this news as it develops. Meanwhile, here's a new song in your choice of compressed formats. Yule!
Mountain Goats news. Julekage. December 17. 2006. (Annotated TMG)↩
4. This may refer to the burning of Myers' house in Halloween: Resurrection, the supposed death of Myers when his hospital burns in Halloween II, or something else altogether. (Annotated TMG)↩