Tag: Halloween

October 2024 Bandcamp Friday: Spooky Season III!

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Pickup my newest release: Spooky Season III!  Use promo code spooky to take an additional 20% off all purchases on Bandcamp!  Code expires at 11:59 PM UTC on Thursday, 31 October 2024.

Ah, yes, Bandcamp Friday has returned, which means I hope you will consider pitching in a few bucks to buy my music—or my second book!  It’s the most magical Friday of the month!

The first Friday of a bunch of months in 2024 will feature this pro-indie music observance, a day on which Bandcamp waives its usual 15% commission on sales.  Today (Friday, 6 September 2024) is one of those days.

In other words, when you buy my music, almost 100% of it goes to me, instead of almost 85%.

Naturally, yours portly has a brand new release, and my longest to date:  Spooky Season III is available now on Bandcamp, Apple Music, YouTube/YouTube Music, Amazon Music, etc., etc.—pretty much anywhere and everywhere digital streaming is available—including, for the first time in nearly a year, Spotify!

Spooky Season III is forty-one (41) minutes of Halloween-ish jams, from the driving opener “Heavy Metal Mummy” to the creaking creepiness of “A Haunted House” to frightful “Flight of the Vampire Bats” and more.   SSIII features pieces in multiple genres:  heavy metal, rock, country-western, classical, Romantic, smooth 70s pop, and, of course, Halloween music!

My full discography is 50% off (and the 20% promo code spooky can be used for that, too), so it’s only $57.14 to purchase twenty-two releases.  That’s just $2.80 per release—and dozens of hours of music, not to mention hundreds of megabytes of musical scores, artwork, liner notes, videos, and other goodies that are packed onto nearly every release.

With the 20% promo code spooky the total comes down to $45.71, or $2.08 per release.

My plan is to release (at least) one more album or EP this year, Leftovers III, which should release Friday, 29 November 2024 (the day after Thanksgiving).  That’ll make ten releases in 2024.

Thank you for your support, and rock on!

—TPP

My Neighbor’s Halloween Movie Recommendations

The Portly Politico28 Comments

I have two neighbors named Jerry.  I identify them as “Next Door Jerry” (NDJ) and “Across the Field Jerry” (AtFJ).  NDJ is a temperamental alcoholic who shouts incomprehensible frontier gibberish while hosting his drinking buddies for a Tuesday box social.

AtFJ is an upstanding citizen and modern-day Renaissance Man with the physique and demeanor of Gimli the dwarf.  He and his son walk Murphy for me while I’m working, and AtFJ even mows my lawn (NDJ did the same until his health and riding mower deteriorated too much, so I’ve somehow managed to dupe two Jerries into engaging in lawn care on my behalf).

That background information isn’t necessarily germane to today’s post, but I thought it would add a bit of “local color” to the proceedings.  If you just came for the list of Halloween flicks, well, you’re almost there!

Monday evening AtFJ texted me with excitement for the imminent arrival of Halloween.  He sent along a list of films to watch each night of the month, although his list runs to thirty-two flicks in total.  We discussed some other possible additions, but here is Across the Field Jerry’s Halloween Movie Recommendations (in no particular order):

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Spooky Season III Preview, Part II

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Yours portly has been composing like a madman, and finished up Spooky Season III this past Wednesday, 25 September 2024.  It’ll be hitting Bandcamp and all streaming services (including Spotify for the first time in a year!) this Friday, 4 October 2024, which is also Bandcamp Friday.

It is a massive release:  eleven tracks in total, clocking in at around forty-one (41) minutes of music.  My goal was to move away from the super short compositions, and specifically to avoid any tracks under one minute.  Only two tracks are under two minutes in length, and those are just one and four seconds under.

Last week I previewed four tracks for subscribers (and one for my freeloading—uh, I mean, loyal—readers):  “Dancing in the Graveyard,” “Rain on Halloween,” “Curious Little Ghosties,” and “Boneyard Blues.”

This week, I’ll feature four more.  Here’s one for all of my readers to enjoy, the opening track:  “Heavy Metal Mummy”:

What other succulent tunes await?

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

TBT^256: The Joy of Autumn

The Portly Politico13 Comments

Autumn has arrived, and even though it’s still hotter than Balzac here in South Carolina, I’m getting ready for spooky season.  I spent this past Saturday deep cleaning my house in anticipation of the annual Spooktacular (just a month away!) and to make sure the place looks good for the floozies.

There’s something about the fall that inspires industriousness.  Part of it is the cooler weather, but  it’s also the time to get things done before the long, lazy winter months arrive.  I love the winter, but when the sun sets at 5 PM, all I want to do is eat hot pizza and watch cheesy horror movies before collapsing into a salt-induced food coma on my plaid couch.

The autumn, on the other hand, encourages activity.  Perhaps it is a holdover from the days when the autumn meant the harvest, and everyone had to busy themselves with bringing in the sheaves.

Regardless, I love this time of year most of all, and I am excited for more opportunities to explore God’s Creation, catch up with friends and family, and enjoy good music.  ‘Tis the season!

With that, here is 28 September 2023’s “TBT^16: The Joy of Autumn“:

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Spooky Season III Preview

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Yours portly is knee-deep in composing my next album, Spooky Season III.  As of right now, I’ve completed seven of around ten or eleven planned tracks, and it’s shaping up to be much longer than my other releases.  In fact, I’ve already run out of space on Bandcamp for “extras” for the album.  Those “extras” are things like artwork, PDF scores, and videos, and it’s that last category that is taking up a great deal of space.

So I thought I’d give subscribers a bit of a preview of some of the material I’ve been writing.

Don’t worry, my freebie readers:  I’m going to share a piece with you, too, and note that all of these videos will be up on YouTube in October (so subscribe—it’s free!—to my YouTube channel and ring the bell if you want to get notified when those pop in a few weeks).

Here is the first piece I composed for the album, “Dancing in the Graveyard”; I composed it between 3-4 September 2024, according to my notes and information on Noteflight:

“Dancing in the Graveyard” is a playful oboe and bassoon with option tambora accompaniment. It’s a lively waltz in concert D minor.

I’m really loving composing this album, and I enjoy all of the tracks—and I hope you will, too!—but I’m keen to share some of my personal favorites.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

TBT^4: Happy Halloween

The Portly Politico1 Comment

Well, I’m letting the Halloween good times roll, even though we’re now two days into November.  Last year, I posted “Memorable Monday: Happy Halloween“; Halloween fell on Monday, and I broke the chain of “TBT” posts.  I was planning on doing the same this year and doing a rare “Retro Tuesday” post, but I took a nasty spill and missed the window.  D’oh!

Well, what else can be said that hasn’t already been written?  Halloween is awesome.  Maybe creeping it a few days into November is a good way to combat “Christmas Creep.”  Indeed, I’m playing a gig tomorrow, and will likely play some Halloween tunes.

With that, here is 28 October 2021’s “TBT^2: Happy Halloween“:

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Hurting Halloween

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Just before I sat down to write my annual Halloween post, I stupidly slipped on some indoor insecticide I sprayed to treat a small infestation of drugstore beetles. I fell hard and my left ankle is severely swollen.

Hopefully I’ll have my usual post up today. Yours portly can’t catch a break lately.

Happy Halloween!

—TPP

Monday Morning Movie Review: Ad Hoc Halloween Edition

The Portly Politico1 Comment

It’s almost Halloween!  Yours portly couldn’t be more excited for this fun holiday.

Unfortunately, yours portly has been extremely busy lately, and I simply haven’t had the time to write proper posts over the weekend.  I was planning on reviewing the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock classic The Birds today (I saw it on the big screen the weekend before this past one), but I’m holding off on that for another week.

Instead, here are some films I’d recommend to get you into the Halloween mood:

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Monday Morning Movie Review: The Exorcist (1973)

The Portly Politico8 Comments

On Sunday, 1 October 2023, I had the opportunity to catch 1973’s The Exorcist on the big screen.  It’s the fiftieth anniversary of the film, if you can believe it; it debuted the day of Christmas the year my Dad graduated from high school.

That was astonishing to me.  I’m thirty years younger than my Dad (to the year), and was born twelve years after the film’s release.  That said, it was very much a part of the Zeitgeist of the early 1990s.  To be clear, I did not see the film at that tender age—thank goodness!—but it was spoken of in hushed whispers as “the scariest movie of all time.”  I vividly recall my older brother telling me how he stayed up late to watch the film (he was probably a young teenager at the time) on television, and how it scared him so much, he couldn’t sleep.  Powerful stuff!

I saw the film years later—I don’t recall when or how old I was—and while I found it creepy, I didn’t understand all the hubbub.  Yes, it was an excellent film, but “the scariest movie of all time?”  C’mon.

Then I saw it on the big screen.  That experience changed my assessment of the film and its horror substantially.  In the dark, in the theater, the film’s incredible cinematography and effects demanding my full attention, left an indelible mark upon my mind—and, perhaps, my soul.  I get it now:  The Exorcist is terrifying.

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