Sci-Fi Song #9: Beautiful Vampire

Beautiful Vampire.mp3

As the season passes into October, I thought that it would be fitting to post a few songs that were influenced by the Gothic/Horror side of speculative fiction.

Beautiful Vampire was inspired by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Gothic novella "Carmilla". According to Wikipedia, the novella "tells the story of a young woman's susceptibility to the attentions of a female vampire named Carmilla."

I actually wrote this song about four or five years ago. I took the character of Carmilla and placed her in a modern setting, which in this case happens to be a goth club in New Jersey where she is working as a bartender.

This song was a staple of my live set for years. At the time, I was into using digital loop samplers. I would often create an ambient, reversed drone of a loop to set an atmosphere and I would improvise a solo using my lap steel (a string instrument played on the lap with a metal slide bar). That is exactly what I did for the intro of "Beautiful Vampire". In retrospect, I wish that I had cut the intro and placed it as a separate track on the CD, as it runs for about one minute and thirty seconds before the actual songs begin. If you get impatient listening to this piece, I recommend downloading it and skipping ahead to the '1:30' mark on the track.

I hope you enjoy it,
John

Here are the lyrics:

Beautiful Vampire
by John Anealio

With ample fear I descend into this dungeon paradise
The atmosphere is a haze of sweat and smoke and false black light
That illuminates the room into fluorescent shades of green
Elven queens and Gothic boys are high on Benzedrine
She's pulling on her vinyl dress

Carmilla reigns, dispensing drinks and supernatural stares
Mascara stains her ivory face and flowing chestnut hair
I'm captured in her regal glance

Now she wants to be alone with me, this Beautiful Vampire
She wants to be alone with me but I won't invite her in

As techno blares, she offers wine and immortality
As strobe lights flare, dark women act out sapphic fantasies
I'm clutching on my crucifix

Now she wants to be alone with me, this Beautiful Vampire
She wants to be alone with me but I won't invite her in

Her eternal life began in 1810
when she was bitten by an English nobleman
Just a farm girl who was young and innocent
And as the decades past she hasn't aged a bit

Now she wants to be alone with me, this Beautiful Vampire
She wants to be alone with me but I won't invite her in

Full disclosure:
I actually released this song on CD a few years ago. If you are interested in hearing the other songs on this CD, you can check it out here. When I started Sci-Fi Songs this summer, I decided to use a pen name. It is not much of a pen name though. John is my real first name and Anealio is my real middle name. I just dropped my last name. If you click on the links to my old CD, you will see my real last name with no mention of my middle name. I hope that isn't too confusing. I didn't want to receive an e-mail from someone telling me that I was ripping some other guy off when that other guy is me. :-) From this point on, I plan on using John Anealio for all of my music.

Here are the links:

• CD baby
• eMusic
  
• Rhapsody
  
• Amazon MP3 store
• iTunes

Please don't feel pressured to buy anything. I am still going to release a new free song every two weeks here on the blog. I may even post some other songs from that CD here in the future if they are applicable to the sci-fi theme. I just thought that some people might be curious to hear some of my older work.