Holidays

I’m scared, lordy Lord, I’m shakin’, I’m petrified

Posted on by brucehhackett

Favorite holiday?

Many say Christmas, and with good reason. Others pick Thanksgiving, also a fine choice. Even the Fourth of July gets a nod from a few, and that makes sense as well.

But me? I’ve always loved Halloween. As the leaves turn, the temperatures dip and the sun keeps setting earlier in the day, I get a sense of foreboding that gives me goosebumps. I relish a good scare, whether it’s from negotiating my way through a haunted house or sitting through a marathon of really hair-raising horror movies.

Like other holidays, Halloween comes with its own soundtrack, but I don’t mean the tired, overplayed stuff like “The Monster Mash” or “Werewolves of London.” I’m talking about music that imparts a sense of unease and makes you want to glance repeatedly over your shoulder to be sure there’s no one about to do you harm.

I’ve gathered 15 haunting pieces of music from the classic rock era that should make your trick-or-treat season just a little bit more creepy. They’re all on a Spotify playlist at the end of this post, along with a handful of honorable mentions.

May the ghosts, goblins and monsters from your psyche come visit you this weekend!

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“‘Halloween‘ Theme,” John Carpenter, 1978

Every October, I dial up this horror classic starring a young Jamie Lee Curtis, and it never fails to give me the willies. I was astonished to learn very recently that the frightening soundtrack theme music was written by the movie’s director, John Carpenter. We used to use it every year for the haunted house we staged in our Atlanta neighborhood. It’s such a hypnotic piece, using a 5/4 beat, minor chords, piano and synthesizer to build a relentless heartbeat to what turned out to be the first in a long series of scary movies about the unkillable killer Michael Myers.

“‘Psycho‘ Prelude,” Bernard Herrmann, 1960

I still rank this Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece among my favorite films of all time (not just scary ones), and part of the reason it retains its effectiveness is Herrmann’s incredible score. He uses staccato violins almost exclusively to build tension as he torments the audience while star Janet Leigh struggles with moral issues, and then co-star Tony Perkins as Norman Bates wrestles his inner demons. It might be the most terrifying soundtrack ever created. This piece and two others from “Psycho” were also a regular part of our haunted house music accompaniment.

“Season of the Witch,” Donovan, 1966

It’s hard to decide which version of this classic song grabs me more: Donovan’s five-minute original or the 10-minute track by Al Kooper, Stephen Stills and Co. on the legendary 1968 “Super Session” LP. Donovan, the British mystical folkie responsible for “Sunshine Superman” and other flower-garden reflections of the mid-to-late ’60s, wrote it as a somewhat creepy ode to October. Two years later, Kooper & Stills recorded a remarkable jam on Donovan’s chords that became something else entirely, also haunting and intriguing in its own way. “When I look out my window, so many sights to see, and when I look in my window, so many different people to be, and it’s strange, so strange…”

“Black Magic Woman,” Santana, 1970

Written by the great blues guitarist Peter Green and released as a single with his band Fleetwood Mac back in 1968, this song became a huge #4 hit for Carlos Santana and his band in 1970, from “Abraxas.”   It was combined in a medley with the 1966 track “Gypsy Queen,” and utilised congas, timbales and Latin polyrhythms to give the whole thing a distinct voodoo feel: “Got your spell on me baby, yes, you got your spell on me baby, you’re turning my heart into stone, I need you so bad, magic woman, I can’t leave you alone…”

“Spooky,” Classics IV, 1968

Written in 1967 as an instrumental featuring the saxophone riffs of Mike Shapiro, “Spooky” stalled at #57, but the next year, Mike Hirsch added lyrics about “a spooky little girl like you,” and the Classics IV took that version to #3.   James Cobb of the Classics IV went on to form The Atlanta Rhythm Section in the ’70s, and their re-recorded rendition in 1979 reached #17 on the charts.  Not really a very spooky tune at all, but still appropriate lyrically:  “Just like a ghost, you’ve been haunting my dreams, so now I know you’re not what you seem, love is kinda crazy with a spooky little girl like you…”

“Witchcraft,” Frank Sinatra, 1957

Carolyn Leigh was a successful lyricist for Broadway shows and films throughout the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. Among her most popular efforts was her collaboration with composer Cy Coleman on “Witchcraft,” the 1957 song made famous by Frank Sinatra. It reached #6 that year on US pop charts and was nominated for Song of the Year and Record of the Year at the very first Grammy Awards. Its lighthearted tempo and melody may not be exactly right for Halloween, but the words certainly send a few chills up the spine: “Those fingers in my hair, that sly ‘come hither’ stare that strips my conscience bare, /It’s witchcraft, /And I’ve got no defense for it, the heat is too intense for it, /What good would common sense for it do? /’Cause it’s witchcraft, wicked witchcraft…”

“Thriller,” Michael Jackson, 1982

Jackson’s trailblazing 13-minute music video of his title track “Thriller” broke new ground as a short story, fully choreographed with gory zombie makeup, and the first to be preserved in the National Film Registry…and for the finale, horror movie legend Vincent Price recites the spoken section that ends with his maniacal laugh. It has become a Halloween classic, and rightly so:  “It’s close to midnight, and something evil’s lurking in the dark, under the moonlight, you see a sight that almost stops your heart, you try to scream, but terror takes the sound before you make it, you start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes, you’re paralyzed…”

“Black Sabbath,” Black Sabbath, 1970

Death metal, Goth, Satanic rock — the bands who revel in these genres have plenty of disturbing, macabre lyrics that could certainly be deserving of space on a Halloween setlist, but frankly, I don’t claim to know much about them.  I do, however, recall the spooky chill that made me shudder the first time I heard the song “Black Sabbath,” the leadoff track from Black Sabbath’s debut LP (and check out that creepy album cover).  An ominous tolling bell, a rainstorm with distant thunder, then huge power chords in a minor key, and Ozzy Osbourne demanding to know, “What is this that stands before me?”  Brrrrr. If this isn’t appropriate Halloween music, I don’t know what is.

“Too Much Blood,” The Rolling Stones, 1983

Mick Jagger gets the lion’s share of songwriting credit for this strangely compelling dance track from The Stones’ 1983 LP “Undercover” that protests gratuitous violence in 1980s films even while it’s knee-deep in graphic images about that same violence.  Sparked by a lurid murder in Paris that year involving dismemberment and cannibalism, the song’s lyrics devolved into rap in the middle third, specifically mentioning the 1974 film “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and bemoaning, “I can feel it everywhere, feel it up above, feel the tension in the air, there’s too much blood, yeah, too much blood…”

“Don’t Fear the Reaper,” Blue Oyster Cult, 1976

Out of Long Island, New York, in 1971 came Blue Oyster Cult, one of the stalwart hard rock bands of its era.  BOC guitarist Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser wrote this 1976 hit single in his early 20s, imagining an early death for himself.  “I wasn’t suicidal,” he said, “just thinking cosmically about eternal love and premature death.”  Seems spooky enough to me to be perfect for a Halloween mix… “Then the door was opened and the wind appeared, the candles blew and then disappeared, the curtains flew and then he appeared, saying, ‘don’t be afraid, come on baby, don’t fear the reaper’…”

“D.O.A.,” Bloodrock, 1971

The two-note drone of a European emergency siren is the basic hook on which this gruesome song hangs, and embodies that feeling of dread you might feel in a dark alley or as you approach a haunted house.  The lyrics, which caused the song to be censored in some markets, graphically describe the thoughts of a plane crash survivor as he is brought into a hospital:  “I try to move my arm and there’s no feeling, and when I look, I see there’s nothing there…Life is flowing out my body, pain is flowing out with my blood, the sheets are red and moist where I’m lying, God in heaven, teach me how to die…”

“Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps),” David Bowie, 1980

Bowie had written an early version of this song called “Running Scared” in 1975, and recorded a demo, but ultimately put it aside until compiling tracks for his 1980 LP that he intended to be more commercial than the so-called “Berlin Trilogy” albums that preceded it. “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)” is a punky, heavily distorted track featuring Robert Fripp’s harsh guitar, and Bowie so loved the way it turned out that he chose to make it the album’s title track. The eerie lyrics convey the dysfunction behind a strange relationship: “When I looked in her eyes, they were blue, but nobody home, /Well, she could’ve been a killer if she didn’t walk the way she do, /She opened strange doors that we’d never close again…”

“Devil Woman,” Cliff Richard, 1976

British rock ‘n’ roll legend Richard ruled the UK airwaves in the pre-Beatles years (1957-1962) and is one of the most successful recording artists of all time, but he rarely made a dent in the US charts. In 1976, after he had gone through a softening phase, dabbling in gospel and Christian music, he found himself with a big hit in “Devil Woman,” which reached #6 in the US and sparked four more Top 20 hits here in the late ’70s. The lyrics tell the tale of a man jinxed from an encounter with a stray cat with evil eyes, and his discovery that the psychic whose help he sought to break the spell turned out to be the one responsible for the curse in the first place.

“I Put a Spell on You,” Nina Simone, 1965

Written and originally recorded by “Screamin'” Jay Hawkins in 1956, “I Put a Spell on You” has been covered by more than a hundred different artists, from Creedence and Jeff Beck to Annie Lennox and Bryan Ferry. In 1965, blues/jazz singer Nina Simone recorded an amazing rendition that reached #23 on the R&B charts here and also charted well in England. Hawkins, a blues singer, had established himself in the rock ‘n’ roll pantheon by turning the song into a ghoulish stage centerpiece, rising from a coffin amidst smoke and dry ice to deliver a frightful screaming vocal that gave him his nickname.

“‘The X-Files‘ Theme,” Mark Snow, 1993

Martin Fulterman, known professionally as Mark Snow, has written theme music and incidental score parts for several hundred film and TV series since his first project, “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble,” in 1976. Other series include “Hart to Hart,” “Starsky and Hutch,” “Vega$” and “Cagney and Lacey.” At first, Snow was hesitant to work on “The X-Files” because he thought creator Chris Carter and his staff were “kind of weird.” That weirdness is reflected in the theme he ended up composing, which utilized electronic whistling and spooky piano scales that complemented the often macabre story lines.

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Honorable mention:

“Welcome to my Nightmare,” Alice Cooper, 1975; “Yes, I’m a Witch,” Yoko Ono, 1974/2007; “Evil Woman,” Electric Light Orchestra, 1975; “Cemetery Gates,” The Smiths, 1986; “Witchy Woman,” The Eagles, 1972; “Halloween,” The Misfits, 1981; “Hells Bells,” AC/DC, 1980.

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It’ll be just like starting over

Posted on by brucehhackett

January 1st, I think, is a terrible time to start a New Year.  We’re exhausted from the Christmas season, it’s cold and dark outside, there’s a long stretch of winter months ahead of us.  I always thought April 1, or May 1, with its blooming crocuses and “hope springs eternal” mindset, would be a far better time for this spiritual, physical and mental renewal.  But January 1 it is, so let’s proceed.

The need for rebirth, for turning over a new leaf, is a strong and beneficial thing.  We all benefit from recharging our batteries, refocusing our goals, and starting anew sometimes.  Maybe every day, or every month, but surely at least once a year.

Today, to commemorate the ushering in of 2025 (even though it’s already January 3rd), I am featuring 15 songs that celebrate New Year’s Day and the opportunity for renewal. Most have lyrics designed to give us all a little motivation to hold our heads up and forge ahead as we turn the calendar once again.

I saw this wish the other day and am embracing it: “A new year is like a blank book; it has 12 chapters and 365 pages, and you are the author. My wish is that, this year, we all write the most beautiful stories for ourselves.”

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“Auld Lang Syne,” Jimi Hendrix, 1969

In 1970, Hendrix reached #5 on the US album charts with “Band of Gypsys,” a live album of performances he did at the Fillmore East in New York on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day as 1969 turned to 1970. Nearly thirty years later, a 2-CD package called “Live at the Fillmore East” was released that contained 16 more tracks of performances from that two-night gig, one of which was an instrumental Hendrix adaptation of the traditional New Year’s tune “Auld Lang Syne,” complete with the crowd counting down to midnight and an emcee’s well wishes.

“New Year’s Day,” U2, 1983

“Though I want to be with you, be with you night and day, nothing changes on New Year’s Day…”  Bono is probably right.  Nothing much changes on New Year’s Day.  It’s usually the day AFTER when we start getting serious about exercise programs, diets, job changes, or whatever high-hopes resolutions we’ve made. Bono’s lyrics were inspired by the fact that the Solidarity Movement in Poland was pressuring the government to lift its martial law, and it ended up doing so on New Year’s Day 1983, only days before the song was released as U2’s first single to reach the Top Ten in the UK (only #53 in the US). The words make a general plea for perseverance and commitment to improved lives.

“New Year’s Resolution,” Otis Redding & Carla Thomas, 1967

Since Marvin Gaye had done so well recording duets with Kim Weston and Tammi Terrell, Otis Redding decided to try the concept with R&B songstress Carla Thomas on “King and Queen,” an album of collaborations of Redding’s grittiness and Thomas’s sophistication. With Booker T and the MGs providing razor-sharp accompaniment, the twosome charted two Top 30 singles, and the album includes “New Year’s Resolution,” a horn-driven, waltz-time tune in which they take turns vowing not to hurt each other in the coming year.

“The New Year,” Death Cab for Cutie,” 2003

In 1998, Death Cab for Cutie was just a struggling US band, working the Seattle area and recording on a small indy label.  Their fourth album, 2003’s “Transatlanticism,” was their first to chart, leading to a new contract with a major label and a Top Five LP, “Plans.” The opening track on “Transatlanticism” was a startling tune called “The New Year,” which offers some universal, sobering lyrics that we can all learn from a quarter-century later:  “So this is the new year, and I don’t feel any different…and I have no resolutions for self-assigned penance for problems with easy solutions…”

“This Will Be Our Year,” The Zombies, 1968

Rod Argent, Chris White and Colin Blunstone founded The Zombies in 1964 and had some good-sized hits (“Tell Her No,” “She’s Not There”) but were ultimately dropped by their label in 1967. On their own, they wrote and recorded the songs for “Odessey and Oracle,” seen decades later as one of the best of the psychedelic rock era. One of the finer tracks is “This Will Be Our Year,” in which a man expresses his gratitude to his woman: “I won’t forget the way you said, ‘Darling, I love you,’ /You gave me faith to go on, now we’re there and we’ve only just begun, /This will be our year, took a long time to come…”

“Celtic New Year,” Van Morrison, 2005

A stunning recorded catalog of nearly 50 albums iover six decades makes Morrison one of the most prolific songwriters of the rock era. He did some particularly fine work in the 2000s, with his 2005 LP “Magic Time” a notable standout with tracks like “Stranded,” “Evening Train” and “Gypsy in My Soul.” Two guitars and a whistle carry the comforting “Celtic New Year,” on which Morrison makes a plea to his Irish lover to return: “I’ve got to see you when it’s raining deep inside the forest, I got to see you at the waning of the moon, /Said ‘Oh, won’t you come on back, want you to be of good cheer, /Come back home on the Celtic New Year…”

“Bringing in a Brand New Year,” B.B. King, 2001

Bluesman Charles Brown is best known for writing the timeless “Driftin’ Blues” and the 1961 Yuletide favorite “Please Come Home for Christmas,” which The Eagles made into a Top 15 hit in 1978. Brown’s own recording of the latter tune in 1964 came with “Bringing in a Brand New Year” as the B-side, and showed up again on his “Cool Christmas Blues” collection in 1994, only a couple years before he died. The great B.B. King recorded a fine cover of it in 2001 for his own holiday package, “A Christmas Celebration of Hope,” and it’s more vibrant than Brown’s understated original.

“This Will Be My Year,” Semisonic, 1998

The Minnesota-based alternative rock band Semisonic had a brief arc of success in the late 1990s, especially the Top 20 single “Closing Time” from their 1998 LP “Feeling Strangely Fine.” I’m partial to a deep track called “This Will Be My Year,” where the narrator bemoans his lady’s penchant for overdoing the partying and crashing her car, and hopes he’ll be better off without her: “One wheel in the ditch,
another spinning in the air, /Put your pedal down to the floorboards, but you’re not getting anywhere, /Then you tell yourself what you want to hear, ’cause you have to believe this will be my year…”

“Funky New Year,” The Eagles, 1978

For the B-side of The Eagles’ 1978 Christmas single “Please Come Home for Christmas,” Don Henley and Glenn Frey channeled Earth Wind and Fire and came up with the aptly titled “Funky New Year,” a song about the consequences of overindulgence and how they offer a sign of a tough road ahead: “Can’t remember when I ever felt worse, nothing matters and everything hurts, /They were passin’ round the bottle, made me feel brand new, trouble with the new man, he wants a hit too, /A party, baby, never again, whose shoes are these?, /What year is this anyway?…”

“Maybe Baby (New Year’s Day),” Sugarland, 2009

The Atlanta-based country music duo of Kristian Bush and Jennifer Nettles debuted in 2002 and have released six successful LPs since then, reaching high on the pop charts as well as the country charts. Their Christmas LP “Gold and Green” in 2009 includes five originals alongside five traditional tunes, and the most touching to me is “Maybe Baby (New Year’s Day),” in which the narrator visits his hometown for the holidays and wonders if he’ll run into his old flame so they could spend New Year’s Day together: “This whole town ringing one more year, I don’t wanna let this feeling disappear, /I pray that you might be here tonight, and there you were standing, shining underneath that light…”

“New Year’s Prayer,” Jeff Buckley, 1998

The premature death of Buckley at age 30 in 1997 brought about a critical reappraisal of his only officially released LP, “Grace,” which had underperformed upon its release in 1994. His cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” is widely praised as one of the best records of the last 30 years. In 1998, his label released “Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk,” a compilation of songs Buckley was working on when he died. From that collection comes the rather obtuse and haunting “New Year’s Prayer,” whose central idea seems to be “Feel no shame for what you are.”

“Nothing New for New Year,” Harry Connick Jr & George Jones, 2003

For his second album of Christmas music, 2003’s “Harry For the Holidays,” Connick wrote four original songs to complement the customary traditional and secular seasonal tunes. The most intriguing of the bunch was “Nothing New for New Year,” in which the narrator bemoans the fact that he has no new romantic prospects on the horizon for the new year. He was thrilled to that country music legend George Jones accepted his invitation to join him for a duet on the record. “George Jones is one of my favorite singers, probably the most soulful country singer of all time,” said Connick. “I was so honored that he said yes.”

“Brand New Year,” Eric Carmen, 2014

I couldn’t find much information about this symphonic track, when it was written or why it was never released as a seasonal single, but I do know it turned up as a bonus track on 2014’s “The Essential Eric Carmen” collection. It has a typically quasi-classical Carmen structure and vocal delivery, with lyrics that offer praise for having made it through the previous 12 months and hope for better things in the year to come: “It’s been a long hard year, sometimes it felt like we might not make it, /But baby, we’re still here, we showed the world that our love could take it…”

“Let’s Start the New Year Right,” Bing Crosby, 1942

For the 1942 movie musical “Holiday Inn,” about the goings-on at a former farm turned into a luxury inn and entertainment venue open only on holidays, the great Irving Berlin was commissioned to come up with a dozen tunes for the soundtrack. The most famous was the war horse “White Christmas,” perhaps the quintessential secular Christmas song, and winner of the Best Song Oscar that year. Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire co-starred and sang most of the songs, one of which is this corny but lyrically appropriate track about kicking off the new year on the right foot.

“Auld Lang Syne Rock,” Freddie Mitchell, 1954

Beginning as a pianist and bandleader in the 1930s, Mitchell made records and toured with several different bands into the mid-’40s before forming the Freddie Mitchell Band, in which he made his mark as a stellar tenor saxophonist. He developed a pioneering sound, a honking sax that dovetailed well with Swing, boogie and the emerging rock and roll. His albums never sold much, and by the late ’50s, he retired from the business, but there’s a great collection of his stuff, “Rockin’ Wailin’ Saxophone,” released in 2010, that shows off his instrumental prowess. On the opening track, I dig the way he invigorates the New Year’s standard as “Auld Lang Syne Rock.”

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