No matter what era or medium they seem to find themselves, be it a comic strip in the late 1930’s, a sitcom in the 60’s, cartoons in the 70’s, movies in the 90’s, or a modern Broadway musical, The Addams Family always seems perfectly suited to their surroundings and never disappoint.
In honor of America’s first family of the macabre, let’s all gather with a shawl on, a broomstick we can crawl on and lets make a few calls on – The Ad-dams Fam-i-ly.
Sometimes in my attempt to mix things up and keep an even distribution of styles and bands, the Shindig kinda seems a bit musically schizophrenic.
So, in the spirit of cohesion, here’s the Beware Of The Blob, which I think doubles up pretty nicely with The Purple People Eater, and is even from the same year.
Much like The Dudes of Wrath (though the ridiculousness of comparing these two groups is not lost on me) The Five Blobs were assembled for the singular purpose of singing this tune, penned by the late Burt Bacharach.
Easily one of the oldestTitle Tracks on the Shindig (if not the oldest) The Blob is also one of the more curious tunes on the playlist as well.
Such a fun and upbeat song for something as horrendous as The Blob is kind of alarming, and as such, a bit creepy. There’s no immediacy to their tone, almost as if you really needn’t worry about this whole indestructible and unstoppable goo-monster. Seriously gang? Its eating fucking everything, maybe a little urgency, or god forbid, terror?
Naw, they’ll just keep it light and breezy over here. Shit, it’s only The Blob.
A classic novelty song featured on countless Halloween lists and albums since it’s release in 1958, The Purple People Eater gets it day on the Shindig, but mostly just for that reason.
I like The Purple People Eater, don’t get me wrong, I just don’t find it terribly Halloweeny, aside from the fact that Halloween is probably the only time your liable to here it on the radio.
Interesting side note, do a quick image search for the Purple People Eater and you’ll find an array of 1 eyed, 1 horned winged purple things, mostly (but not limited to) “Purp” from the 1988 film Purple People Eater.
So what? Why wouldn’t you? Who gives a fuck?
No one, probably, however it is my assertion that The Purple People Eater is not himself purple, as indicated by the below lyric:
I said “Mr. Purple People Eater, what’s your line?”
He said “eating purple people, and it sure is fine”
So he eats purple people. Well, what the hell are purple people? This doesn’t make any sense.
Maybe on his planet there were purple people, because right after this he goes on to explain how that’s not the reason he came here. Well, of course, there are no purple people here.
So on his planet, they have people, they’re just purple? Still don’t make no goddamn sense.
Well, maybe not, but I’m just saying, ole Sheb here was pretty explicit in his songwriting, and that thing ain’t purple.
First up from Krueger and Co. comes the not-quite-Title Track from A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4: The Dream Master.
Nightmare is interesting as it is performed by actress Tuesday Knight, who plays Kristen Parker in the film, the role originally held by Patricia Arquette in Dream Warriors.
Long before Christopher Walken needed more cowbell, Annie Brackett and Laurie Strode we’re cruisin’ around Haddonfield, smokin’ a J and rockin’ out to some Blue Öyster Cult.
Almost inaudibly and without much ceremony at all, (Don’t Fear) The Reaper is the only piece of music appearing in the film not scored by John Carpenter.
If that wasn’t enough (and it is) the song also finds itself quoted in Stephen King’s original novel The Stand, as well as playing mood setter to it’s TV miniseries counterpart.
Though not appearing on the Shindig, honorable mentions go out to the 2 covers featured in The Frighteners and Scream, performed by The Muttonbirds and Gus respectively.
“It’s Halloween,” Sheriff Brackett tells us “I guess everyone’s entitled to one good scare, huh?”
legendary evil being that robs graves and feeds on corpses
one suggestive of a ghoul; especially : one who shows morbid interest in things considered shocking or repulsive
So basically, we’re all ghouls. And if there was ever a night for ghouls, it was Halloween.
So, take it away boys.
(Cut in with Stephen Weber from Tales from the Crypt’s S3 Episode Mournin’ Mess, and well, that’s Bill the Butcher at the end there from Gangs of New York.)
In the early 90’s both hip hop and Tales from the Crypt were riding high on the pop culture wave, so it seemed only natural to some sleazy executive to combined these two concepts.
The result is The Crypt Jam, a rather curious musical number that finds our pal the Cryptkeeper inviting us to a “monster bash, if you will.”
The next 3 minutes or so is The Cryptkeeper (voiced by the great John Kassir) rhyming and punning his way through a generic 90’s hip-hop beat.
Even better is the video, featuring our pal dressed up in typical gansta threads of the era, dancing with a dozen or so fly-girls and a coupla pop-lockin’ zombies.
Was it a good idea? Well, The Shindig certainly thinks so, as this type of thing is right up our alley over here. However, that may not be everyone’s conclusion regarding this particular Monster Rap. Either way, the Cryptkeeper’s in the house, and we couldn’t be happier about that.
With so much representation on the Shindig, in one form or another, it’s strange to see we’ve gotten this far without including Danny Elfman.
Easily my favorite anthology-form horror offering, HBO’s Tales From the Crypt positively scared the shit out of me in my youth, largely thanks to its creepy intro with that incredible model, the Cryptkeeper bounding from his coffin like a ghoulish jack in the box, and Elfman’s eerie theme here.
Perhaps my favorite theme of all time, and certainly my favorite of Elfman’s (maybe with The Simpson’s catching a close 2nd), creeping us a little further into the Shindig, here’s Tales from The Crypt.
Before Full Moon became synonymous with “shitty movie”, Charlie Band had Empire Pictures, which produced a fair amount of good genre offerings like Re-Animator, Ghoulies, From Beyond and Prison, just to name a few.
Among them was TerrorVision, a 1986 film you can easily catch on Netflix these days and won’t be disappointed with,…supposin’ you like that sort of thing.
And that sort of thing is ridiculous (not ridiculously bad, however) horror. With Charlie Band’s name attached, we could be walking into that territory, but TerrorVision manages to be 80’s enough and fun enough to avoid such trappings and deliver a flick that doesn’t take itself at all seriously and has a good time with some silly creature and gore effects.
Plus it’s got The Phantom of Paradise’s Beef, Garret Graham as the Dad and Jon Gries as his daughter’s punked-out boyfriend named O.D., and that’s gotta be worth a viewing.
From TerrorVision comes TerrorVision, the Title Track performed by the Fibonaccis.
I don’t know bout y’all, but when I was a kid, only one thing meant Halloween and that was Garfield’s Halloween special.
6 years before The Simpsons would forever lace itself in my brain to this Eve of the Dead, Garfield was digging through costumes in John’s attic, trick or treating with Odie, and getting lost in a row boat.
The most memorable aspect of Garfield’s Halloween Adventure, other than those goddamn ghost pirates scaring the living shit out of me, was the music.
The first cut from this classic holiday cartoon is the opening number by Lou Rawls, lead in by our old pal Binky The Clown. Enjoy.
There are so many songs on the Shindig simply titled Halloween, that one appears roughly every 20 songs.
So, up at #20 is this vintage Betty Grable ditty from the 1950 film entitled My Blue Heaven.
The film, while not itself about Halloween, does feature this rather bizarre song and dance number. Stranger still, the movie is actually about a married couple (Dan Dailey and Grable) both radio personalities, that are expecting their first child. After a car accident, Grable miscarries and the couple look in adoption. Yeah, that sounds pretty light, let’s turn that into a musical. Shit, and while we’re at it, let’s throw in this completely unrelated song about Halloween!
Hey, if you’re singing about the Eve of All Hallo’s, the Shindig don’t judge, particularly when you have lines like “Hot jack-o-lantern it’s Halloween!”
If there’s a theme to rival John Carpenter’s undeniably iconic Halloween, it’s Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, used to terrifying effectiveness in William Friedkin’s 1973 masterpiece The Exorcist.
Oldfield’s track however is an epic 25 minute sonic barrage that no Halloween partier has time for.
Friedkin uses only about the first 3 and 1/2 minutes for his eerie theme, ‘round about the time the flutes pick up, and just before the song begins veering well away from its haunting opening.
Who am I to challenge the man who made Sorcerer?
To spare weeners everywhere any horrendous knock-off Halloween CD versions, I’ve used Oldfield’s original track, and cut in the ending used in the closing credits of the movie. Enjoy.
Well, we’re almost 20 songs into the Shindig, and we’ve yet to supply any songs in the Devilish category.
What can i say? Its my least favorite category, as I don’t tend to think of the Devil or Hell as particularly Halloweeny. Yeah, the two go hand and hand, I suppose, but there’s a shit load of songs talkin’ bout the Devil, and you can’t fit ‘em all into one Halloween playlist.
But, I have a soft spot for this song, and it’s band, Grim Reaper, and I just like hearing it, and Halloween’s as good an excuse as any to get it into a rotation.
Perhaps the most ridiculous song you can imagine, sung by the most ridiculous group of dudes you can imagine, See You In Hell features one of the most repetitious choruses you’re liable to hear.
In fact, the phrase “See You In Hell” appears in the song a total of 38 times in a matter of 4 minutes. That’s an average of a “See You In Hell” every 6 and a half seconds. That’s pretty incredible. It’s probably a world record.
Ushered in with a little help from a Devilish Ned Flanders and a desperately hungry Homer Simpson, I’ll see you in hell, my friends.
Once in a while a song is not only about a horror movie, or just featured in that horror movie but it’s named after the goddamn thing too. It’s the trifecta, the hat trick, the triple threat – it’s the Title Track, and little else ever competes.
Regretfully, Title Tracks mostly appear to be a thing of the past. Maybe they seem too corny or passe to modern filmmakers. However, dig around through the 80’s and early 90’s and these fuckers are everywhere, probably more out of some ridiculous sense of cross media marketing than any real attempt to make something awesome,…unless your talking about today’s Title Track, Shocker.
Whatever your opinion of Shocker (its definitely not Craven’s finest hour and a half) its soundtrack is out of control.
A supergroup like Voltron assembles from nowhere to rock your pumpkins off.
Paul Stanley, Desmond Child and Alice Cooper show up to sing.
Vivian Campbell and Guy Mann-Dude from Def Leppard stop by to shred.
Whitesnake’s Rudy Sarzo picks up the bass and Mötley Crüe hammer Tommy Lee keeps the beat.
Add in some backing vocals by Van Halen’s Michael Anthony and Cooper guitarist Kane Roberts and you got yourself a genuine fuckin’ supergroup to end all supergroups.
What’s more, these guys got together specifically for this soundtrack and never again. To top it all off they called themselves The Dudes of Wrath, a pun I’m not sure makes any goddamn sense, but is still pretty awesome none-the-less.
So bang your head for the dearly departed Horace Pinker, nobody may ever see him again.
I love The Cramps, so you can believe there’s as many Cramps songs on The Shindig as I can justify within my categorization. At present, I believe that number is 5.
First one from Lux and Co. is I Was a Teenage Werewolf, a groovy garage tune with plenty of monstrous overtones.
Lead in with claw-ripping attack by a clip from the trailer to I Was a Teenage Werewolf.
Nothing you’ve ever conceived packs such a spine-tingling jolt!
Since the song The Wolfman’s Wedding Receptionby the Goofy Toons doesn’t actually exist, I figured this was the next best thing to follow such an introduction.
From the always ridiculous brain of 30 Rock’s Tracy Jordan comes this monster novelty throwback spoof, to which Jordan received a Gold Record.
It may be a sweaty premise, but i think it sustains itself just fine.
13’s a pretty horrific number. You got 13 Ghosts, 13 floors, 13 turns in a hangman’s noose, that hockey masked guy, the Knights Templar and all sorts of Lunar and Witchcraft associations. It’s also a prime number and appears in Fibonacci’s Sequence. Hell, it even has it’s own phobia – Triskaidekaphobia.
So, it was a nice coincidence to see this song pull into the 13 spot after some sample/track merging (the playlist originally had separate tracks for all the lead-ins.)
From one of my favorites sketches from one of my favorite sketch comedy shows of all time, Mr. Show with Bob and David, comes the namesake of the entire playlist, Halloween Shindig.
It’s a spot-on spoof of paranormal phenomenon shows like Sightings entitled Probings, and it poses one of the greatest questions of our times..
Now that we’ve all had a chance to gawk at Elvira (some 1000+ times) lets keep the tunes going.
You mighta heard this one on classic rock radio and not thought much of it. Hell, why would you? Damn thing don’t even got no lyrics.
Despite being largely unrelated to the actual Frankenstein , or anything horrific for that matter, it finds itself on the Shindig, and just about every other Halloween collection or list, for the same reason – It’s called fuckin’ Frankenstein.
So naturally, it tends to get a bit more airplay around Halloween. At least that’s when I remember hearing for the first time anyway. In my Dad’s car, probably 17 years ago, driving around Massachusetts on a Sunday morning, getting coffee or donuts or newspapers or something morningy and its all red, and orange and brown all over everything and this song is playing in the cold air. So now, Its just guilty by association.
But why Frankenstein? Well, to quote Wikipedia:
“The song’s title, coined by the band’s drummer Chuck Ruff, derives from the fact that the original recording of the song was much longer than the final version, as the band would often deviate from the arrangement into less structured jams. The track required numerous edits to shorten it. The end result was pieced together from many different sections of recording tape using a razor blade and splicing tape.”
Sounds legit. And as a guy cutting sounds together, especially about monsters, I like that kinda thing. Sure, I do it digitally and it’s been years since I held (let alone cut) a piece of tape or film – but the image of a mangled, spliced together, Frankenstein-ass looking piece of tape is awesome, Halloweeny, and right up the Shindig’s alley.
So let the Monster Squad test you, and get down to this stitched-up instrumental.
