TRACK #420
Halloween by Abstractions
As I mentioned earlier this year (or rather in 2023 when I wrote this cause it was originally slated to appear 2 years ago!), I’ve had to dig around just a little deeper to find songs lately. And sometimes those songs just aren’t readily available.
Halloween by Abstractions is just that sort of tune. No one had this streaming. No one had it uploaded to YouTube. This was a pay to play deal for The Shindig and we were glad to shell out and be able to provide this digital version to the Halloween music loving world.
It’s been available on our YouTube channel for some time now, where the response has been, well, we don’t see much action on the YouTube page. Though I am gonna be adding a few more rarities in the coming weeks. Look out for those!
Anyway, seems about a month before we posted our version to the tube, someone beat us to the punch. Wish that dude beat me to the punch when I was trying to buy this album, but hey, it’s not like it was expensive, and the album’s not a wash or anything. I guess buying an album, ripping the audio, taking nice shots of the sleeve and cutting a YouTube video is a sure fire way to make it miraculously appear on YouTube right before I post it. This sentence was in reference to The Night of the Monster’s Party from that year, the post I’m referring to above. Then, I originally had a line here about EJ Rock’s Freaky Halloween which is (thankfully!) completely irrelevant now. That was a beautiful surprise development of the 2024 season.
Either way, Halloween by Abstractions is there now, and now it’s here too, closing out our 2025 season and our week of Hallo-Women. The lead singer of Abstractions was Joyce Martin, who co-wrote the lyrics with Rex Martin, who also wrote the music. Are they married? Are they brother and sister? Who knows? We can only speculate. I’d like to think they’re lovers. At least, I’d like to think that only if they aren’t actually related. If they are related, I’d like to think they are definitely not lovers, cause ya know, why would I like to think they were if they were? I wouldn’t like that at all. I’ll move on.
According to Discogs, Abstractions was from Indianapolis Indiana, which is totally corroborated by the liner notes. These also contain lyrics, which is pretty cool for an LP like this. We scanned them and ran them over our YouTube Video.
It’s a moody sort of ABBA-esque and atmospheric song of loss and self discovery, all set to the Season of the Witch. Sure, it ain’t Bill Ervin’s Halloween, but not everything can or should be, right? Songs of loss and longing fit perfectly with the season. They needn’t all be trick or treating and ghosts, right? At least not literal ghosts.
So, we’re gonna leave you now for the season with this mellow rumination and wish you all a very Happy Halloween. Thanks for stopping by again this October. We’ve got some episodes of Shindig Radio in the can already that should be slowly trickling out next year and hopefully we can record a true blue Halloween episode for you to enjoy next season.
Until then, treat softly and carry a big trick!