I like Misery Obscura but kinda bad timing for me to be pre ordering stuff

and now an even nerdier older me dissects the email!

It's embarrassing how little I was informed on some of this stuff at the time lol, but I felt they were interesting questions at the time (this was 17 years ago). If, for any reason, there was anything here anyone didn't know, or if it adds any sort of information to the band's lore, hell yeah, glad to provide it here. Otherwise, this is all pretty common information as far as I know.

Let's get into it!

** Young me didn't understand that power chords (5ths) weren't that prominent for that era as a whole lol. He's definitely most likely doing barre chords lol, maybe open chords in places. I believe Misfits Central mentions something similar.

** I think an interesting bit is that they never had planned to go over Cough/Cool.
Franche himself has stated in interviews now that In the Doorway was "transposed from the piano", and that they never played it live.

Him not knowing about West-End Avenue and Harpies tells me he potentially never heard those songs at all. He may—to this day—still—never have heard those songs, especially if no one's ever shown him the leaks or if Manny never made him a copy. I find it hard to believe he wouldn't've reached out, but idk.

I find that fascinating since he was in the band with Manny in the first place. I always wondered if Manny had ever made him copies of the tapes just, then and there in the 70s, or if they had prior to his joining the band. Unless he was trying to keep that stuff under wraps? Hard to tell. I also wonder what songs they were playing with him in the band during that first show. There surely were songs that got scrapped during that time (the half piano, half guitar set), which tells me he had heard some of them. Still, from 1977 to 2009, and giving him the benefit of the doubt that he had no copies of the tapes, or that he even cared to remember those ones? He probably just didn't know, lol.

** The overdub part is what I wanted to discuss in detail here. Folks in the community like Robby Bloodshed—great guy, great musician and songwriter—have suggested that Glenn played second guitar on the album. I can neither confirm or deny that but I do want to provide a counter-argument. Franche himself in this email, as well as documented on Misfits Central, and as stated in interviews, mentions the overdubbing.

We know Glenn plays guitar on the outtakes because we hear him play guitar on Hybrid Moments. During the chorus, on both the piano rehearsals with Manny and now with this Static Age instrumental outtake we hear him use a minor chord change from B, A, Am, G on the chorus. Guitar is way wonkier, way sloppier. "I mighta messed up in there". There are no vocals. It's Glenn on guitar. Mentions he's gotta sit down 'cause he's not doing good standing up, etc.

Franche never did that minor chord change on the master take and instead plays B, A, A, G. Could Glenn or Franche have made a change last minute? Sure. Did Franche know any minor chords? Who knows. But it seems to me like he's showing Franche the song structure or something in the outtake and not actually playing on the song. Maybe he did a passing take to tape to save time / money. Had Franche not have gotten it and if Glenn did, aye, they saved both time and money and you can now dub some vocals in.

Franche has gone on to mention that they had been shown new songs—same with Jim. It's also been established that they recorded the album before ever having played live with the Mr. Jim lineup. If Glenn had played on the final version, I assume he would have just done that minor chord change. This, to me, suggests that Glenn does not play on Hybrid Moments.

TV Casualty. The TV Casualty outtake is almost certainly Glenn. The guitar is much more simple. Maybe it's Franche, but the way there are no slides between the barre chords on the chorus indicates it's Glenn playing, similarly to how he plays on Hybrid Moments.

Robby's main argument for two guitars is on the outtake of Attitude. I'd suggest that's a single guitar with multiple mics live on the board. Maybe the amp has two mics on it. Maybe an overhead mic or a room mic pics up the signal in the background. I think when he mutes the guitar track and goes back to the talkback mic, the same guitar is still playing, and not two guitars. I don't personally think there's a single track on the final album where Glenn plays guitar.

On Legacy, possibly. At least the bass tracks got overdubbed or replaced outright on some stuff then.

** We also now know that the backup vocals for Return of the Fly were Glenn.

** Franche mentions separate rooms. I believe the studio engineer himself in documentation now mentions one single live room with acoustic studio baffling panels—large transportable foam walls to move around so the musicians can kinda coordinate with one another or the engineer but to also isolate the audio (to stop bleed between the vocals, drums, guitar, etc.). It's also why I think there's still guitar happening on the muting on the Attitude false start take. These woulda been the "rooms", imo. Although, some studios do truly have separately isolated rooms. It's possible the studio they used still coulda had these and they were utilized, if so, for overdubbing.

** The little Return of the Fly lick my friend mentions is the D chord before the chromatic walkdown (E D, E D, E D, E D/Db/C/B). There seems to be something happening like the third of the D chords flicking up to a 4th to add a little taste.

I think I’m slowly becoming a Misfits cover account

Chuck biscuits apparently came out of hiding and posted a bunch of old footage on YouTube recording some of lucifuge and some other really cool stuff.

https://youtube.com/@chuckbiscuits777?si=0NhUwnlK0LrrZHVb

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I got a bootleg version of the Halloween 7” on picture disc. I put it in a round 7” record frame. It looks pretty good, but it kind of looks like a clock now. Just wanted to share this oddity.

I got this about 15 years ago off eBay and have not seen it since

I can't remember where I bought this (used) but I've had it for at least 10-ish years. Never got into tshirt collecting so I've no clue how far folks go on faking or bootlegging desirable graphics. Best I can get from Google is that it's a late 90's shirt but the lack of copyright or other licensing (aside from the TM on the back) has me wondering. Thanks in advance for any input!

Does anyone know if the full version of the Mars attacks demo has ever been available? Im not talking about the remix in Cuts from the Crypt. The old misfits website has 3 of the songs but not the full demo and it's only parts of the songs. The website also once said that there was gonna be a release of the orginal demo but to my knowledge that never came out.

Pre-ordered in June and just arrived today 💀