I love Halloween. As long as I can remember, it’s been my favorite holiday. I think it was Warren Ellis who called it “Goth Christmas”, and even though I’m not Goth (Goth-adjacent since 1987, though), it’s pretty much my Christmas. Of course, this year I’ve been sick and busy, so not only do I have no costume tonight, I never even decorated the house. But a cold, the flu, and a few thousand miles of travel haven’t stopped me from enjoying the usual amount of Halloween music, which is what this post is about.
When I was a kid, I had the Disney Haunted House record (both releases), a whole bunch of kiddie records with scary stories told by people like Boris Karloff, and the usual collections of sound effects records.
One night a few years ago, while wandering around the Internet, I came across some fantastic music blogs that had links to long out of print Halloween-themed records (look up Frankie Stein and His Ghouls for what I consider the canonical Halloween 60s pop), as well as links to this blog called Scar Stuff, that was like hitting the motherlode of awesome Halloween nostalgia.
Jason at Scar Stuff made two Halloween music compilations that are in heavy rotation every October at Castle Wheaton. I don’t know why I’ve kept them to myself all these years, but I’m correcting that Trick by offering this Treat: Spook Party and Ghoul-arama, by Jason at Scar Stuff.
If that whets your appetite for more human flesh gallons of delicious blood brains fantastic Halloween compilations, allow me to point you over to WFMU’s Rock ‘n Soul Ichiban, where you will find Kogar’s Spooky Spectacular.
Oh, and as a stupid bonus, here’s the first and only (so far) Halloween Radio Free Burrito that I made a few years ago.
Happy Halloween, everybody! I hope it’s fun, especially for those of you who are drying out from the Superstorm.
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I blame Neil Gaiman for my love of Goth chicks.
You are in good company, my friend.
Oh, you can also share a link to your own favorite vinyl sharity blog, especially if it’s focused on weird music, if you want to. I’m always looking to expand my collection.
This is great. I too love Halloween music. I just published a mix of Spooky Tunes I made out of frustration with the repetitiveness of the Monster Mash being forced into my earholes every October since birth. (It was for the local newspaper I work for in Anchorage, AK, here’s a link in case you want to listen to it: http://blog.anchoragepress.com/?p=207)
It’s not music, and I’m dating myself, but iTunes has the old Disney Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House. The Chinese Water Torture always freaked me out.
Fantastic sets of music, I very much doubt I will only listen to these tonight seeing as I love Halloween and everything about it. Although can’t seem to download the two collections linked at Scar Stuff 🙁
My very favorite scary music/band is Deadbolt, the self-proclaimed “scariest band you’ve never heard of.” The best I could find for a link is to their MySpace page…http://us.myspace.com/officialdeadbolt but there are a lot of YouTube videos, too. Voodoo Trucker is one of my all-time favorite albums, perfect for Halloween.
May I humbly suggest:
You’re Delicious: A Zombie Love Song
Awesome Radio Free Burrito Episode! The Coffinshakers! Ah, the magic of Swedish horrrorpunk. The Spookshow is also high on my list of Halloween favorites…
Hey Wil,
Maybe it’s just me, but the download links at Scar Stuff don’t seem to work for me, ( http://www.mrfink.com/zips/sp-2000.zip ) seems to redirect to their main page…maybe the files have been taken down since then?
I don’t know if it would be asking too much, but when you’re feeling better, could you possibly put these up elsewhere? Or if anyone else has links that would work, I would really *really* like these for next Halloween, as it is the best holiday of the year 🙂
Thanks for any help!
D/L link works for me. Using Firefox and opened the link you posted as a new tab.
Rats. Maybe it’s just region-locked. I’m trying from Canada.
You know, I started reading this post and was getting all excited with the talk of Halloween music and was thinking this was a prelude to a RFB. I skipped ahead and saw the RFB link and got really excited. Then I read the text and my hopes were squashed. Think you will have time for a new Halloween RFB (albeit late)? If so, I will knock you my lobes. Now I just need to decide if I am a hipster, flipster, or a finger popping daddy.
Ever since I saw john carpenter’s halloween I have always loved the the day! So the Halloween theme song is my favorite Halloween song!
I love Halloween too! Still, I figured we’d get a reaction about how X-Wings are going start flying out behind the Disney Logo first. 😉
I found a solution to the download issues for the Scar Stuff albums — download from this link instead: http://mrfink.com/scarstuff/?p=58. I am also in Canada and was having trouble — I think because blogspot is auto-redirecting to a blogspot.ca domain, the site that has the zips hosted (mrfink.com) thinks the files are being linked from some other external site (it’s expecting to see a link referral from the blogspot.com address), and prevents the download.
Thanks for the links Wil! I am also preparing for next Halloween..
Thanks so much for this, that seems to be the problem as the download links work now!
I thought I was just about the only person with a Halloween playlist in my iTunes. Thanks for helping me add to it!
Halloween has hands-down ALWAYS been my thing. Everyone who knows anything about me knows this. I somehow managed to get a copy of “unknown halloween version” into my itunes playlist after your halloween radio free burrito. I may or may not sometimes listen to it obsessively. Ok, not obsessively, just a lot. Whatever. No, you shut up.
Looking forward to listening to some of this stuff and expanding my Halloween goodness. So what if it’s November?!
OH!!! I meant to share. My siblings and I loved this Halloween cassette when we were kids. It’s not music. Just some of the best halloween goodness, and some amazing person put it on youtube!
This year I had the easiest costume ever and I don’t know how it tool me so long.
Arthur Dent.
All you need are jammies, a robe, and a towel! And you can curl up on the couch between trick or treaters!