33 Concrete Blonde “God is a Bullet”

I remember going to the local supermarket growing up and my mother specifically having us wait in the checkout line that had books rather than candy and other child-pressuring instruments. So, I’d look at the paperbacks with little more interest than it was just something to do.  

One paperback title stood out to me: Interview with the Vampire. The title cracked me up. Imagine sitting down with a vampire and having a conversation. It has that mixture we’ve already established I love of darkness and absurd humor. I didn’t know what it was about outside of the title, but I wanted to read it.  

As a younger child than the time I’m describing above, I was terrified of vampires. I can remember my earliest nightmare. I was in a crib sleeping ay night when I saw a black and white image of a vampire hand that was going to eat me.* I don’t know if I could speak yet or perhaps only knew a few words, but I did know that I could not speak to explain to my parents what terrified me. It turns out that I will sometimes sleep with my eyes open and then dream something based on what I am literally seeing, such as centipede circling a poster I had on the wall. The hand I was dreaming about in black and white was my own. The dream added the vampire. I spent a long time in my youth sleeping with the blanket covering my ear as I didn’t want a vampire to come in and bite me on my ears so that I could still hear after I died. Gotta love kid logic. 

So, there was some hesitation reading this book. But eventually I bought and, read it, and then next two sequels, the three having been published and in paperback by the time I read the first one. I was a fan. 

Why am I spending time on Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles? That series was pretty formative for me, and fit the (at least wannabe) goth aesthetic I enjoyed. Then, I heard Sting’s Moon Over Bourbon Street, based on Interview with the Vampire. A bit of alt rock/jazz/goth/vampire/sign me up. But Sting wasn’t the only artists to have a song based on these books. Enter Concrete Blonde’s Bloodletting album and the first track “Bloodletting (The Vampire Song).” This album, along with the single “Joey” put Concrete Blonde on the map, but despite this I didn’t really delve any further into their catalogue until decades later. For this list, I went with a track that I immediately loved upon first hearing. The opening guitar riff just rocks in every sense of the word and, while it’s not the gothic scenery found in Bloodletting, still has that tinge of darkness.