A picture might be worth a thousand words, but the right sound in the right moment can be worth a million nightmares. A dull bump in the night. A tree limb rattling against an upstairs window. A foreboding e minor chord with just the right amount of tremolo. Halloween - perhaps more than any other holiday - is a celebration of sounds. It’s the sounds that suggest what might be lurking in the shadows, leaving it up to our mind’s eye to paint in the details according to our deepest fears.
You hear the faint pulse of a telephone busy signal coming from the next room. “Did I remember to lock the door?” A snapping twig cuts through the howling wind on a cool autumn evening. “Why’d I park so far away?” You hear the frantic piano notes of John Carpenter’s Halloween theme. Your pulse quickens.
This is the thrill of Halloween: to have felt the danger, but to have gotten away. To have dipped your toes into the possibilities of the unknown & to have come out unscathed. To have survived to see the rolling end credits.
Fifty Horrible Songs of Halloween mines that thrill. Corpses rise from their graves, stalkers peer from between fence posts, & werewolves transform before our very ears. And yet, we live to hear the last note ring out.
Or do we?
Disasterpeace - Detroit, clipping., Cam & China - '96 Neve Campbell, VCTRYS - Black Magic Woman, Los Straitjackets - Rockula, Lauren O'Connell - House of the Rising Sun, Federale, Meghann Hegna - Thirsty's Return, Rob Zombie - House of 1000 Corpses, Herschell Gordon Lewis - It's Almost Like Halloween, The Cramps - Fever, Within Destruction - Danse Macabre, The Jim Jones Revue - Eagle Eye Ball, White Zombie - Blood, Milk and Sky, Daniel Johnston - Devil Town, Kendra Morris - Concrete Waves, Kim Petras - Close Your Eyes, Tiny Tim - People Are Strange, SAULT - Monsters, Michael Abels, Luniz, Michael Marshall - I Got 5 On It (Tethered Mix), Gus Black - Don't Fear the Reaper, John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, Daniel Davies - The Shape Hunts Allyson, Karen Elson - The Ghost Who Walks, Danger Mouse, Sparklehorse, David Lynch - Dark Night of the Soul, Ramones - Pet Sematary, Johnny Cash - Ain't No Grave, Dead Man's Bones - Werewolf Heart, Timber Timbre - Bad Ritual, Talking Heads - Psycho Killer, Southern Culture on the Skids - Undertaker, Heavy Trash - Pimento, Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein - Soldiers, Tom Waits - Little Drop of Poison, The Rolling Stones - Living In A Ghost Town, Rob Zombie, the Ghastly Ones - Halloween (She's So Mean), Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs - Lil' Red Riding Hood, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Tony Cohen - Red Right Hand, Lana Del Ray - Season of the Witch, AC/DC - Night Prowler, Umberto - Black Candles, Pixies - Where Is My Mind?, SQURL, Madeline Follin - Funnel of Love, The Cure - Lullaby, Robyn Hitchcock - Creeped Out, Echo & the Bunnymen - The Killing Moon, Messer Chups - Agent Horrifica, Priest - History in Black, Kip Tyler - She's My Witch, The Coasters - The Shadow Knows, Grinderman - Worm Tamer, Nancy Sinatra - Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down), Jeff Alexander, Alfred Hitchcock - The Hour Of Parting
