"Satan's Ice Cream Truck" prowls Los Angeles
laist.com has posted a recording of the creepiest minor-key ice cream truck song known to man. It is undoubtedly a truck full of delicious yet horribly deformed licensed character frozen treats. (Photo caption: "I swear to God I did not pose someone in a creepy frock in front of the truck. They were standing there when I got there.")
LinkThe song continues to haunt me. I chased down the truck one day, but I didn't find the answer I wanted. George, the ice cream man, said the song came with the truck when he bought it and he has no idea what it's called. He said he keeps playing it because it is so memorable. Everybody comments on it. So, finally one day I ran outside and taped the music. I also bought an ice cream sandwich. Satan's ice cream truck does sell ice cream sandwiches; it's just your standard ice cream. Except for the the monkey's paw. I really don't recommend that one.
Previously on Boing Boing:
• Disappointing SpongeBob popsicle
• Popsicle parody ad
• Turtle popsicle reflects pride in workmanship
• Bugs Bunny popsicle
• Tweety Bird popsicle doesn't look like Tweety Bird
• Ice cream patent wars in the 1930s
• Expertly produced Korean red bean ice cream fish
• Ice cream treat resembles heinous murderer
• An exquisite popsicle that puts all other ice cream bars to shame
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We have one that plays Christmas carols all year. It can't be worse than that.
We have one in Houston that drives so @&#$! fast through the neighborhood he might as well play thrash metal from his speakers instead of the kiddie song. That's what I always think of when I see him whip by, utterly uninterested in making any sales.
Wow. I thought Satan's Ice Cream Truck was only a song by Strapping Young Lad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_as_a_Really_Heavy_Thing)
"Satan's Ice Cream Truck" is an awesome bonus track from the band Strapping Young Lad as well.
Oye . . . I'd expect that noise from, I dunno, a suspiciously ill-maintained Soviet-era thrill ride found in a carnival touring rural Estonia.
One with chipped paint and scary characters to sit on.
sounds like something from a Dario Argento movie ...
"The Ice Cream Sandwiches are also cursed!"
Link? Can't find it on the site.
Late with the SYL reference, but here's the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZYb7CZ7Ltc
I went to school in Hartford CT (God have mercy on my soul), and there was this ridiculous "ghetto" ice-cream truck that drove around the south end all summer, it absolutely BLASTED the music from painfully shrill, treble-heavy megaphones, and worst of all the loop they played wasn't complete, it was a lop-sided portion of a nursery rhyme, like maybe only 5 bars of music and then back to the start (chop 5 bars out of the middle of "Satan's Ice Cream Truck" song and you'll get the idea). You could hear it for miles, and to walk across a nearly deserted campus in the middle of the summer and hear it echoing around you but not knowing where it was coming from was very surreal.
Whoa, that song is evil. As soon as it started to play my (usually docile) dog bared his teeth and started growling at the laptop.
Wiggy.
it sure sounds like a famous British military march piece to me. i can fairly hear the fife n' drum.
Where exactly does this demonic treat wagon prowl?
Somewhere in Silent Hill a child is happy.
Sounds like a variation of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" to me...or at least, shares similar elements of the melody, in addition to also being in a minor key.
I think it's very pretty. I'm no good at deciphering musical keys...but the tune sounds a lot to me like a minor key minuet like Bach might have written or something. Like this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=exbih1OzrKY
It reminds me of some of the scores in Sid Meier's "Pirates!".
Someone more musically inclined help me out on this one.
"Awake, Awake to Love and Work, the Lark is in the Sky ..."
Possibly my favorite hymn (or the only one I liked) sung at morning "Prayers," Nightingale-Bamford School, NY NY in the late 70's. Some of you may know of that institution of college preparedness from the recent tv series "Gossip Girls" written by another alum considerably younger than I am.
But it's actually a lovely tune, just not when rendered by the ice cream truck's audio?
aka "Morning Song"
http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/a/w/awawlowo.htm
gonna get a truck, paint it black, use the tune and only sell ice cream at night in remote country places
How about the Frogurt?
Is that ok?
my cat hid when i played it. i think i have a new training device!
The song is a pirate song. SCA-dians everywhere know it as "Bedlam Boys" or "Tom of Bedlam" and it's all about madness. Some lyrics:
I went down to Satan's kitchen
To break my fast one morning
And there I got souls piping hot
All on the spit a-turning.
My staff has murdered giants
My bag a long knife carries
To cut mince pies from children's thighs
For which to feed the fairies.
Still I sing bonny boys.
Bonny mad boys.
Bedlam boys are bonny.
For they all go bare and they live by the air
And they want no drink nor money.
It is pretty creepy but I can at least tell you what the song is. It's a slight variation of a singalong for the nursery rhyme Old King Cole.
Check it out beginning at 1:14 of this YouTube Clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_BKHxIYhvI
My bad, y'all. My SO just told me that I jumped the gun on that one. The song is NOT "Bedlam Boys". However, he will figure it out soon.
That's the KLF's Ice Cream Track. All bound for Mu Mu Land!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6YlBAs0Lfo
It hardly matters what the ice cream truck plays, as long as it makes itself known.
In my old town there was a guy who sold slushes out of the back of an old delivery van. He didn't have a tune; just an electric bell that he'd fire off a couple rings of when he was pulling over. Kids flocked.
@#9 Gravedigger Jones
You beat me to it, but that's exactly what I was thinking, it sounds quite a bit like The Goblins soundtrack to Suspiria.
My husband just wandered downstairs as I was listening to it and happily yelled, "Ice Cream!". I guess he's immune to creepiness. And yet, he is afraid of clowns [and rightly so, imo].
#22 Petrodon is correct, the others are not even close.
The famous (infamous?) mob hit man known as the Ice Man had a partner for awhile who was also an assassin. He worked out of an ice cream truck. The perfect cover. He eventually killed him of course.
@22 Petrodon
Yes! I'm with you on this one. That's the song, nearly exactly. Thanks for your post. =)
The Moon Shines Bright
Link from the Laist comments:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_dmusic/102-0067395-9804944?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&field-keywords=%22the+moon+shines+bright%22&x=0&y=0
The power of ice cream compels you!
Oh, and only because it is one of my favorite Simpsons moments (I have it on my phone, even):
Proprietor: "Take this object, but beware: it carries a terrible curse."
Homer: "Ooh, that's bad."
Proprietor: "But it comes with a free frogurt."
Homer: "That's good!"
Proprietor: "The frogurt is also cursed."
Homer: "That's bad."
Proprietor: "But you get your choice of topping!"
Homer: "That's good!"
Proprietor: "The toppings contain potassium benzoate."
Homer: (blank look)
Proprietor: "That's bad."
Homer: "Can I go now?"
Reminds me of an ice cream truck that occasionally (still?) haunts Davis Square outside of Boston. It was a broken down looking truck with weird superhero decals and played... "Send in the Clowns." Really creepy. See for yourself: http://realfake.org/blog/2007/05/03/isnt-it-rich/
there's a jpop gal who's name escapes me at the moment with a whole album of musicbox music that this could be from. reminds me a lot of a tune from Noir or one of the hack-signs OSTs.
gotta agree, it's a version of old king Cole. Yuki musta been riffing on that for the track I was thinking of.
I bet that guy is Armenian, the guys with the vans are Armenian. The guys with carts are Hispanic. Gotta love the SFV ice cream trucks.
First you'll hear somebody snarling,
Then a clash of cacophanous bells.
Frozen dill pickes and vinegarsicles
Are what the Bad Humor Man sells.
He yells, "All you brats quit that shouting!"
And he smacks any kiddie who sings.
Cold curdled custard and horseradish mustard
Are what the Bad Humor man brings.
He carries a silver cop whistle
And he sneers that all children are crooks.
Birds fly away, and the puppies won't play
When they catch his bad-humored looks.
The special today's cubes of topsoil
Bedecked with a relish of dills
Stuck to the foil you'll find cold castor oil
And a garnish of saccharine pills.
He never gives anyone change back
And he takes nothing smaller than dimes.
Take it from me, you're wisest to flee
When you hear the Bad Humor Man's chimes.
(by me: originally printed in the New Pals Club Magazine)
I like pickles
You are the king of tsukemono.
#22 appears to be accurate. But on the wee sing link (creepy in its own right), at bout the 1:00 mark, you'll see the music was done by Bill Scream. I scream, you scream, we all scream for Bill Scream.
This reminds me of Freezing Man - the techno-ice cream truck from Burning Man. Their theme - Bass Kittens - is sort of creepy in a futuristic way.
As mentioned earlier, it is in fact Old King Cole. You can hear the real thing here: . It is not a variation. Old Kind Cole just wasn't really that merry after all.
I heard about a Dad that told his kids that when an ice cream van plays music, it means it has run out of ice cream. Is that evil, or is it genius?
I'm pretty sure that this is indeed The Waits' Carol (AKA The Waits' Song or The Moon Shines Bright or The Bellman's Song, MIDI located at http://share.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5567/belm.mid )--which is not to say that it's not also Old King Cole (or at least a version of it--the one I learned as a kid was in a major key). The Waits' Carol is a several centuries-old folk melody, and has become attached to several different sets of words. I'd bet that it's related to both Bedlam Boys and Awake To Love and Work, given the strong similarities. So in a sense, oh denizens of the internet, you're all more or less right.