Mike and Colin's posts in praise of Halloween culture got me thinking about how some of my favorite songs ever are actually pretty Halloween-appropriate. Call me a closet goth or something, but I'm a sucker for tales of occult figures, satanic carnage, mayhem and intimations of doom with catchy hooks built in.
This was going to be a canon/compilation project a la Trip's Camaro Rock or our household Winter Solstice comp tape, but these tunes are a small, elite group and they don't really fit together on one mix. Diverse though they may be, I'd recommend them all to anyone who appreciates the bloody-minded irony of, say, the Simpsons Halloween specials, or who's just done the Monster Mash too many times already.
Six(66) Songs for an All Hallow's Reprieve (The Phantom Liner Notes):
1) Daniel Johnston, "Casper the Friendly Ghost"
Now it can be told! Johnston's home-recorded, Casio-accompanied song recasts Casper as a lonely soul who fell down a well and came back to find the love he'd been denied. "Nobody treated him nice when he was alive... but everyone respects the dead." There's a lesson in that somewhere.
2) The Lord Weird Slough Feg, "High Season III"
Metal bombast has never been so loveable as in the moment near the end when the lead singer proclaims, "Now the time has ARRIVED!/For you to meet your DEMISE!/ The emptiness plagued mortal men/Upon which you FEAST and you THRIVE!!!" This is part of a multisong cycle that's sort of an inversion of Paradise Lost, and would make a great Broadway show.
3) Barbara Manning, "Someone Wants You Dead"
Singer/songwriter Manning has the creepiest ballad in this lot, told from the perspective of someone investigating the scene of an unsolveable murder: "She didn't have a Doberman/She didn't have a phone/It was not the kind of place/You'd want to live alone." Sounds like a latter-day sequel to all those crime-story folksongs that Harry Smith used to collect.
4) Goodie Mob, "Cell Therapy"
I'm amazed at how many conspiracy theories the Goodie Mob rappers manage to pack into one cut. Or maybe it's just one, big theory with government surveillance at its center. The chorus goes, "Who's that peekin' in my window/POW!/Nobody, now." Could this be the answer record to Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me"?
5) Slayer, "Raining Blood"
Yeah, you could point out that most metal bands live in Halloween Town, but the classic riff that leads this one off and the over-the-top guitar solo make this the anthem for teens to headbang to in their rooms while their freaked-out parents dial Tipper. As Jay points out, both this and the Slough Feg track feature Satan soliloquizing about what will happen when he rises and takes over the Earth--just like that song in the South Park movie!
6) Jad Fair, "Frankenstein Must Die"
Long and regrettably out of print, this is the best of the many monster songs of Jad Fair and his band Half Japanese (For an introduction, rent the excellent documentary flick The Band that Would Be King.) The climax is when, after a long, hilarious setup, Jad stands up to the monster, intoning, "Oh Mr. Frankenstein you must die!" And he triumphs, after a fashion.
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