Sunday, October 30, 2011

A Moment of Syracuse Nostalgia

As I think I've admitted before on this blog, I've become a bit of a Tumblr addict. In case you haven't heard, Tumblr is the latest and greatest in social media/blogging sites. Think of a cross between Blogger, Wordpress and Facebook, only with more pictures, and populated almost entirely by teenage girls. That's pretty much what Tumblr is like. President Obama is on Tumblr now, so you know it's cool.

I've started cross-posting most of my Outpost bits, or at least excerpts thereof, on my Tumblr blog. I have no idea what the Tumblr kids make of these. They probably skip over them, because those posts have no Doctor Who, Harry Potter or Sherlock content, or teen angst about not being in love and flirtations with the idea of suicide. Oh, it's an emotion-fraught world, Tumblr! It's full of extravagent, animated gif-filled posts about One True Pairings of characters whose romances the kids wish to experience vicariously!

But last night, in a Halloween mood, I went looking for postings related to Baron Daemon, the Syracuse horror host of my youth. I wrote about him here at the Outpost back in 2008. Baron Daemon, a corny comedy vampire, was played by  local features reporter Mike Price when I was a kid. I remember the show, but I don't remember his 45 record, The Transylvania Twist, which was a big hit locally, according to what I've read. Last night I found several recordings of this 45 on YouTube, along with clips from the Baron's tv capers of long ago. I thought I'd post them here too, because I can, and because I tend to get more feedback over the years from my Halloween and Syracuse-related posts than from everything else I write about here. So here we go:

Monster Movie Matinee opening credits:



The silly locally-produced stuff at the beginning of the Sunday afternoon creature feature was much more interesting to my child-self than any of the movies were.



More fun with Dr. Witty and Epal.

For Baron Daemon we have:

The Transylvania Twist. This has just a still image of the original 45, but good sound. Not a bad song, either.


The B-side, introduced by the Baron on a local oldies station in the 1980s.


This is my favorite of several Baron Daemon outtakes on YouTube. Search for Baron Daemon and you'll find several more, plus a Syracuse house whose Halloween display lights up in time to the Transylvania Twist.

That's all for now!


Karen

1 comment:

William B. said...

Wow I remember you from the United Whovians! I stumbled across this. Very cool blog. I was a Whovian briefly in 1992 or so, just a wee teenager at the time.