Halloween Videos and Also-Rans

Since we have spent some time talking about music, and I wanted to go over various holidays that occurred during that last, vast, blogging gap, this piece seems like a good segue.

As we were approaching Halloween, the radio started playing “Monster Mash” and “Thriller”. Now, I have nothing against “Monster Mash”—it serves its purpose—but it is not a high quality song. It is a novelty song, and it works for that.

I have a lot against “Thriller”. Not only does it play into my feelings about Michael Jackson as an overrated child molester (and I know I am in the minority on that one), but also I really hate zombies (I realize that will also be an unpopular decision). They are the grossest monsters of all, so an extra long video of them was really just not for me.

What bothered me was realizing that for most radio stations, this was it, and it led me back to my earlier displeasure at the lack of play that Warren Zevon got. Sure, I don’t listen to the radio much now, but I used to listen to the radio and watch two music video channels that actually played music videos, so how did I get through so many Halloweens without ever hearing “Werewolves of London”? It’s a travesty.

Anyway, I decided for the weekdays leading to Halloween, I was going to post a different Halloween-themed music video on my Facebook page, and try and broaden people’s horizons.

Deciding which videos to use was a challenge—there was so much to pick from.

The first thing I did was eliminate anything where the video fit the theme but the song didn’t. Primarily, this meant “I Think I’m in Love” by Eddie Money and “Doing it All for My Baby” by Huey Lewis and the News. That is not a judgment on those songs, but since it started with thoughts about radio play, the songs had to work in an audio only medium.

From one point of view, anything can be scary—jobs, love, teachers—but I wanted to kind of stick with a theme, and really things ended up fairly supernatural-centric. I do have a Halloween CD, with a mix of songs and scary sounds, and it has Cameo’s “Candy”. Candy is a reasonable Halloween theme, and I had heard one that I thought would work, but was not familiar with it, Through lyric searching, I found out it was “Come on-a My House”, but I could not find the version that I heard. I remembered hearing something pulsing, and almost feral. There was real menace with the invitation, as if it was the candy house where the witch wanted to eat Hansel and Gretel, or maybe it was just the Big Bad Wolf.

Honestly, it reminded me of a version of “Fever” that Rita Moreno did on The Muppet Show, which probably has you thinking, ‘How feral could that have been?’, but it was kind of. Animal was accompanying her on the drums. Anyway, I listened to every version I could find, even ones that I knew could not be it (like the Chipmunks and Surf Punks), and nothing. Maybe I just remembered it better than it was. I do that sometimes. That leads to my next one.

I also considered adding Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights”, because the song focuses on the ghostly aspects of the book, and something literary is nice, but after checking out the videos, I decided against it. The chorus is haunting, but the verses are a little too shrill, and besides which, in looking at the videos it is really distracting how crazy she is. And I say videos because there are two, and when she was too crazy in the one, I was glad to see there was another. Maybe that one would be better. Nope, she is even crazier in the red dress version. Maybe how unsettling that is could be good for Halloween, but I just wanted to steer clear.

I was very sad to not be able to include “Werewolf Bar Mitzvah”. A fan had made a pretty good video for it once upon a time, but it was removed (as frequently happens with fan videos), so that was out.

I also felt bad about not including Alice Cooper. Scary is kind of his thing, but I could not find a video that I liked for “Feed My Frankenstein”. (Well, I don’t think I did, anyway. That’s the problem with blogging about things so much later. Sometimes you gain perspective, sometimes you lose memory.)

I could have done “The Man Behind the Mask”, Cooper’s theme song for Friday the 13th: Part VI. I could also have done Dokken’s “Dream Warriors” from Nightmare on Elm Street 3, but I didn’t. Do you know why? Because if we are going to do a theme song from a horror movie I will never see, it is going to be “Pet Sematery” by the Ramones. It will always be the Ramones!

(I am aware that the band Muse is getting associated with the Twilight movies, so there might be some kind of appropriate video there, but no, never.)

Of course, Alice Cooper is not the only musician who tends towards the macabre. Probably almost any song of theirs would work (except my favorite of theirs, “Joey”, which is not about Joey Ramone), but the one I went with was “Ghost of a Texas Ladies Man”.

Actually, as much as I love “Werewolves of London”, and it was one I used, it is not my favorite Warren Zevon song either. My favorite is “Splendid Isolation”, but it’s not very Halloween. However, “Excitable Boy” and “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” totally are, so I had some options.

Perhaps in my tendency to be contrary, I did include Michael Jackson, but not as himself—I posted Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me”, with Jackson on backup. It was an effectively creepy song and video, and I guess it’s nice that Geico is giving it some new life. (Though if I ever find a little stack of cash following me around, it’s going in my pocket, googly eyes or no googly eyes.

And finally, I am pretty sure the last one was “Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker Jr. I like the movie, I like the song, and this one probably does get played around that time of year, but I had not heard it.

If I could just find my brainstorming list, I could relay the play list with total accuracy, but maybe it’s more important to quit getting so behind in my blog.

Mosiah 28 – Alma 3
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