Teaser Playlist: Ricky Porter

I’ve got a playlist for Ricky that I made for THE DAY WE ATE GRANDAD and going forward, that I love and which is here, called The Gilded King:

Behind the Title

The Gilded King is a nod to The King in Yellow, a fictional play that appears in the story of the same name by Robert W. Chambers. Anyone who reads it goes insane, and that’s basically the premise (on steroids) of one of my favourite Weird films, In The Mouth of Madness (dir. John Carpenter). In the later stories in the Lovecraftian mythos, the King in Yellow is conflated with Hastur (an Ambrose Bierce invention, initially, and a benign god of shepherds in his short story ‘Haïta the Shepherd’ (1891)).

Ricky is linked to the King in Yellow very subtly in the books, as when he’s not head to foot in grey, the main colour that he is linked with in terms of fabric is yellow. He has a dirty yellow blanket around his shoulders in the cellar of Fairwood in The Crows, and Carrie’s bedding is yellow, with yellow sheets or a duvet patterned with sunflowers. He also has a thing for cornflower blue (cornflowers being wild flowers that show up in fields and pasture lands) and he’s linked to the woods and fields in terms of his setting. That’s all a nod to Hastur in Bierce’s story, and the fact that Ricky is an autodidact who loves to read is a connection to The King in Yellow being a play in Chambers’ story.

Then there’s the fact that Wes constantly calls Ricky royalty-adjacent terms of endearment (usually sarcastically) – His Majesty, Her Majesty, Princess, Queen Richard, King Richard, King Richard IV… etc. [That’s meant in the way gay men in the UK (and probably/possibly elsewhere) can refer to each other with she/her pronouns, not a reference to his gender identity, just in case anyone’s unfamiliar with that and wondering.]

The Tracks

1. Arsonist’s Lullaby – Hoozier
2. Villain of My Own Story – Unlike Pluto
3. Filthy Pride – Social Repose
4. King For A Day – Pierce the Veil, Kellin Quinn
5. We Don’t Have To Dance – Andy Black
6. Choke – I DON’T KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME
7. Throne – Bring Me The Horizon
8. Animal I Have Become – Three Days Grace
9. I’m Not OK – Weathers
10. Sorry About Your Parents – Icon For Hire
11. Ribcage – Andy Black
12. I’m Not A Vampire – Revamped – Falling In Reverse
13. Hold On For Your Life (Acoustic) – Sam Tinnesz
14. Homecoming King – Andy Black
15. The Kill – Thirty Seconds To Mars
16. Beautiful Darkside – The Classic Crime
17. A Love Like War (feat. Vic Fuentes) – All Time Low, Vic Fuentes
18. Nightmare – Set It Off
19. Mama – My Chemical Romance
20. Ending – Isak Danielson
21. Power – Isak Danielson
22. Home (Bright Soundtrack) – Machine Gun Kelly, X Ambassadors, Bebe Rexha
23. Honey, I’m Home – Ghost and Pals
24. While Monsters Rage – Barry Coupland
25. Kill Everyone – Hollywood Undead
26. Solitude – Sorry, Peach
27. Lonely – Palaye Royale
28. Madame Le Mort – newhaven
29. Fly On The Wall – Thousand Foot Krutch
30. Ocean Eyes – American Avenue
31. In The End – Black Veil Brides
32. River – Ochman
33. Feel So Numb – Rob Zombie
34. Square Hammer – Ghost
35. The Killing Kind – Marianas Trench
36. Demons and Angels – LOWBORN
37. Start A War – Klergy, Valerie Broussard
38. HELL TO HAVE YOU – Our Last Night, Sam Tinnesz
39. Tonight Is The Night I Die – Palaye Royale
40. Street Fight – Adam Jensen
41. More – Finnegan Tui
42. Angry – Paravi
43. Tomorrow We Fight – Tommee Proffitt, SVRCINA
44. Not Afraid To Die – Written By Wolves
45. The Stigma (Boys Don’t Cry) – AS IT IS
46. Drown In My Mind – Story Untold

This is based on a shorter playlist of Ricky Vibes I made for earlier in the series, but these songs also still work and there are crossovers: