Free Music Volume 10: “Bald Mountain Party” by Richard C. Hackley and Scott Crawford
Posted in My Big, Black Cock., Scott Crawford's Free Music. on May 21st, 2010 by Scott Crawford
Bald Mountain Party by Richard C. Hackley and Scott Crawford is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at: http://www.mybigblackcock.com/
This means you can play it on commercial and non-commercial radio, remix it, copy it for your friends, put it on your web site, whatever, as long as I am properly credited, this license information is included wherever you choose to put my music, and, if you sample it, remix it, etc., your music containing any part of my music must be released under this same license unless you contact me specifically to negotiate other terms that I agree to.
Here’s the song, in both 320k MP3 and WAV format. (Sorry, FLAC nerds, but you’ll just have to convert your own. Consider it your punishment for the years of y’all being snobby to people on torrent sites, while posting “lossless” copies of things like Sammy Hagar albums. As I’ve said in the past, “When you post Sammy Hagar albums to torrent sites, EVERYBODY loses”.)
Bald Mountain Party: 320k MP3 | WAV
Right-click these files (or Control-click it, on a Mac) and go to “Save as…” to save the. If you want to play them first to hear how they sound, click the play buttons next to the mp3 download links.
Bald Mountain Party
original music by Modest Mussorgsky, adapted by Richard C. Hackley (vocals and keyboards) and Scott Crawford (drum programming, sampling and mixing)
lyrics by Richard C. Hackley
It’s just a lifeless rock
where nothing ever grows
But ev’ry Halloween
a strange event unfolds
Bald Mountain party
Bald Mountain party
Bald Mountain party
No living thing goes near
Bald Mountain party
Even the vultures fear
Bald Mountain party
The party starts at night
attended by the dead
Who frolic in the dark
while humans are in bed
Bald Mountain party
Bald Mountain party
Bald Mountain party
The spooks and skeletons
the ghosts and goblins
They gather at this place
most of them float in
They leap and dance about
a deep and fiery pit
And in the jostling
some of them fall in it.
But no one cares ‘cuz it’s their type of fun
They know it ends with the morning sun
Mayhem and wild abound
Bald Mountain party
No sign of letting down
Bald Mountain party
Some of the creatures fly
up high above the rest
They see an evening meal
and snatch a party guest
That’s how this party goes
there is no courtesy
And everybody knows
“Don’t turn your back on me!”
But when the day begins
Bald Mountain party
This party always ends
Bald Mountain party
‘Cuz they can’t stand the light.
Some info about this song: this is the song that took 143 years to finish, 4 plus of which were my fault! Thank you to Richard, first and foremost, for being patient with me while I took my sweet time on things. The first mention in my inbox of this most unlikely collaboration of ours in my inbox was on April 30th, 2006. That whole “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” thing applies here. Ironically, Modest Mussorgsky’s “Night On Bald Mountain”, the framework we stretched our song over, also had its share of problems getting finished and released to the public. Mussorgsky didn’t live to hear his composition performed, in fact. Rich and I have at least heard the finished product, and will hopefully live for a good while past it, so we may come out ahead here, knock wood.
My contributions to the song were the drums, all the weird, scratchy, panned out sounds you hear, and I also spent a fair amount of time getting the mix to where it is right now, which mostly involved making Richard’s awesome harmony vocals come to life as the monsters you hear them as now, and staying the hell out of the way of the original piece as much as I could. I gave some serious thought to additional instrumentation, but decided not to put my foot through a Van Gogh, so to speak. Maybe if we do remixes, I’ll have another go at it. Hopefully, you all enjoy what we came up with.
And now, for a bit more on the song, I turn the floor over to the man, the myth, the legend…Richard Hackley.
“Around 2000, I started pondering writing some songs based on the questions, “What if famous composers from history had been prolific song writers instead? What would their famous works sound like in song form? What would their lyrics say?” What held me back from actually putting something together was taking the time to do necessary research of a composer, his life, times, passions, etc. Then, a couple of on-going things dovetailed together.
- Scott and I had been in contact (via internet) for a while, and eventually talked about a collaboration. Without being fully honest with Scott at the time, I had silently questioned how this might turn out. Me, as an elderly, Bible-believing, Bible-belt lifer, easy listening, soft-rock crooner type — him, as a younger, New Jersey, not particularly religious, cutting-edge performance artist. We had heard each other’s works. He saw possibility. I only wondered, “What would a child sound like coming from those parents? Could it be anything but a bastard?”
- I’d been performing local music programs at various Halloween-themed events since the early 90′s. I was looking for some fresh material. I recalled that Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” was generally about a late-night party of dark forces. With this pre-made story line, I was spared the need for study of Mussorgsky’s life and times. I knew I had a decent library (both in my head and on my shelves) of books, movies, stories, religious doctrines, etc., regarding devilish things. I knew it would not be hard to conjure up my own demonic party in lyrics. So, I thought, how about a spooks-and-goblins collaboration with Scott, based on Mussorgsky’s composition? I was thinking our two styles might merge in this venue. Scott approved the idea. Stage one was completed in my basement. Once I completed all my tracks, I mailed them to Scott who, after digesting what I had done, added his layers.
It’s been a slow and arduous labor for both of us. But, if the child is indeed a bastard, we are both happy with him.”
From here, as mentioned earlier this week, I still need to re-record the vocals on “If I Could” and the slow “Something True” to finish the “babykiller.” album. Gonna try and get this stuff done before the Mayan calendar ends so I can get on with my life and maybe finish writing/record/release some new songs, perhaps even perform some of them live.
While I’ll be doing all of this free of any kind of mandatory charge, and I think I’m going to move forward with that plan for the rest of the time I’m making music, donations of any size above $1.00 USD (below that, and PayPal fees make your donation kind of useless, sadly; if you want to give me less than a dollar, do it in person) are greatly appreciated. Donations will enable me to compensate the people who work on this music with me as best I can (in this case, if you’d like part of your donation to go to Richard, please say “for Bald Mountain Party” on the PayPal form), as well as perform much-needed repairs and upgrades on my aging home studio. Ideally, this will result in more music being made and released, though I’m trying to take this music thing one tiny act at a time these days. In the meantime, thanks in advance for your continuing support, as well as for all the support you’ve given my music and I over the years. As always, if you have any questions about this release or anything else, suck@mybigblackcock.com. For any questions directed to Richard, he can be reached at richardhackley@mybigblackcock.com, or you can contact him via his Soundclick page.


