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When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

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Frequency Rotation: Jeffrey Lewis, “If You Shoot the Head You Kill the Ghoul”

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Published on September 17, 2010

Each week, Frequency Rotation probes a different song with a science fiction or fantasy theme. Genre, musical quality, and overall seriousness may vary.

How do you kill something that’s already dead? One singer-songwriter is doing his best to remind us.

Frequency Rotation is still a bit exhausted from compiling its massive zombie playlist earlier this week (not to mention tossing and turning through a few sleepless, gun-clutching nights since then). So today’s entry will be short and sweet: In 2003, the New York comic-book artist and folk-punk troubadour Jeffrey Lewis unleashed one of the finest, funnest zombie songs ever. It’s name: “If You Shoot the Head You Kill the Ghoul.”

Sandwiched between audio clips from the hilarious, deadpan newscasts in George Romero’s original Night of the Living Dead, “If You Shoot the Head” (and its awesome video) perfectly captures the flesh-eating frenzy of a full-scale undead attack—and almost serves as a mini-tutorial in superior firepower as zombie population control. If you’re out of ammunition, just remember, as a wise man once said: “Beat ’em or burn ’em. They go up pretty easy.”


Yeah, Jason Heller is dead. He’s all messed up.

About the Author

About Author Mobile

Jason Heller

Author

I'm a freelance pop-culture journalist whose work has appeared in numerous publications, including Weird Tales, Clarkesworld, Fantasy Magazine, Alternative Press, most papers in the Village Voice chain, and The A.V. Club, where I served as the Denver city editor for three years and am currently a regular contributor. In addition, my writing appears in Scribner's A.V. Club book, Inventory. I'm also an author of science fiction, fantasy, and magic realism with a novel in the works and over a dozen short stories published by the likes of Apex Magazine, Sybil's Garage, Farrago's Wainscot, Brain Harvest, and the Descended From Darkness anthology. When my head's not lodged in a laptop, I play guitar in a punk band called The Fire Drills. We do the worst Cheap Trick cover you've ever heard.
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