Tape Spaghetti

Before his name became synonymous with nightmares and jumpscares, John Carpenter was a humble film student with an extremely limited budget. So, what did this industrious director do when he couldn't afford to hire a composer? He became one. This week on Tape Spaghetti, Scott & Blake look at Carpenter's lesser-known brilliance as a music-maker and how what started as a workaround became a legacy of minimalist tension and, without hyperbole, the sound of fear itself. With a lofty imagination but no money for an orchestra, Carpenter discovered he could create massive, atmospheric synth soundscapes entirely on his own. That approach exploded with Halloween, where a simple, relentless theme became instantly recognizable. But the story doesn’t end there. From Escape from New York to The Thing (with a little help from Ennio Morricone), Carpenter kept evolving his sound while building a catalog of cult classics. Eventually, he stepped away from directing and leaned fully into music, even touring and releasing albums of “soundtracks for movies that don’t exist.” Here's how a kid who grew up resisting formal music training became the architect of some of the most pervasive film music of all time – scary movie or otherwise.

A burned out music teacher with no plan. A room full of kids. And a record that sounds like nothing else on earth. In this episode of Tape Spaghetti, Scott, Blake, and guest Nate Catanzarite discuss the Langley Schools Music Project, which started out as a classroom experiment and ended up as a captivating cult classic. Frustrated with traditional lessons, teacher Hans Fenger let students choose songs they loved – including tunes by David Bowie and the Beach Boys – and learn them by ear, turning disengaged kids into a full-blown choir and band. Recorded live with minimal gear, the result was raw, imperfect, and strangely powerful. Decades later, a crate-digging DJ stumbled across the record and unleashed it on the world, quickly turning it into an underground sensation. Here’s how a kids’ choir accidentally summoned something truly cosmic.