The Classics Rock! Halloween Playlist

 
If you're looking for something besides The Monster Mash, Ghostbusters, and Thriller to provide the soundtrack for your Halloween, then the songs below can help get you started. Some are obvious, others probably less familiar, but each one is appropriate to the season, either for exploring spooky subject matter or creating an eerie mood. In keeping with our mission at Classics Rock!, some even have literary sources, as noted below. We'd love to see this list grow--suggestions are welcome!

This Is Halloween - Danny Elfman

Theme from Halloween - John Carpenter

The Voice - The Alan Parsons  Project

One Stage Before - Al Stewart

Fear Of The Unknown - Martin Briley

Moon Over Bourbon Street - Sting (literary source)

Bad Moon Rising - Creedence Clearwater Revivial

Ave Satani (Theme from The Omen) - Jerry Goldsmith

(Don't Fear) The Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult

Eye Of The Zombie - John Fogerty

The Legend Of Wooley Swamp - The Charlie Daniels Band

Life In Dark Water - Al Stewart

Walking With A Ghost - Tegan and Sara

Hurry Sundown - The Outlaws

The Raven - The Alan Parsons Project (literary source)

The Ghost Who Walks - Karen Elson

Charlotte Corday - Al Stewart

Invisible Man - Joe Jackson

Curse Of the Mummy's Tomb - World Party

Miss Ghost - Don Henley

Spooky - The Classics IV

Season Of The Witch - Donovan

Witchy Woman - The Eagles

Ghost in the Attic - Dave Nachmanoff

Dead Man's Party - Oingo Boingo

Dr. Heckyll & Mr. Jive - Men at Work (literary source)

Goodnight Moon - Shivaree

Tombstone - Suzanne Vega

Moondance - Van Morrison

Werewolves Of London - Warren Zevon

Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) - David Bowie

Scentless Apprentice - Nirvana (literary source)

The Resurrectionist - Pet Shop Boys (literary source)

At The Mountains Of Madness - H.P. Lovecraft (literary source)

Happy Halloween!

The Time Machine/Alan Parsons

Alan Parsons' third solo effort following the dissolution of The Alan Parsons Project was called The Time Machine, released in 1999. Clearly Parsons was referencing H.G. Wells' 1895 novel The Time Machine, but the fan site The Avenue says that "while it was inspired by the H.G. Wells story of the same name, the album is not a musical interpretation of his book. Instead, the album looks at time travel as a generic subject, as well as looking into other aspects of time and space."

Parsons was reportedly interested in exploring the theme of time travel on an album since the 1970s and wanted to devote the second Alan Parsons Project release to that concept. At the time his partner, the late Eric Woolfson, was more interested in the robot stories of Isaac Asimov, and the result was the album I Robot. As discussed previously in these pages, that album is very loosely associated with Asimov's book I, Robot (the placement of the comma is key).

Images on the cover of The Time Machine make sly references to time travel--for example, a photo of a London police box suggests the time-traveling TARDIS of Doctor Who fame, and a picture of a Delorean refers to the time machine of choice in the Back to the Future films.  The tracks on the album have titles such as "No Future in the Past" and "Far Ago and Long Away," and the song "Press Rewind" explores the idea of going back and doing your life over. The title of an instrumental called "Rubber Universe" refers to astronmer Edwin Hubble's theory that since galaxies are moving away from us, the universe must be stretching like an elastic band. Another instrumental, "Temporalia," interpolates physicist Frank Close talking about how looking at the stars is, in effect, looking back in time. (Interestingly, the audio of Close is taken from a documentary called The Rubber Universe, which aired on the British television show Equinox. It was directed by graphic designer Storm Thorgerson, who also designed the album cover art for The Time Machine. Also worthy of note is the band Rubber Universe, which has associations with The Alan Parson Project.)

The song that most closely captures the spirit of H.G. Wells's novel is "Out of the Blue," which seems to be specifically about a time-traveler:

Out of the blue
I come sailing
Through the years
Through the years
What can I do?
Now that I've seen
All our hopes
All of our fears

This "man from out of the blue" also states: I travel far/Yet no distance/I'm still here/Always here--as if he does not move through space at all, but only through time.

One other reference to Wells may be found on the Japanese release of The Time Machine, where the title tracks (Parts 1 and 2) were redubbed "H.G. Force."


The Time Machine (Kindle Edition)
I, Robot (Kindle Edition)

For Winnie-the-Pooh's 90th Birthday: House at Pooh Corner/Loggins & Messina, and more

This Sunday, August 21st, is the 90th birthday of A.A. Milne's beloved children's character Edward Bear, better known as Winnie-the-Pooh. Happy birthday, Pooh! Or as the denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood might put it, hipy papy bthuthdth thuthda bthuthdy.

But how can Pooh be 90? The first Pooh book, Winnie-the-Pooh, was published in 1926. That would make him a mere 85, wouldn't it? It turns out that Pooh's birthday is not calculated from the date of his first publication, but from internal evidence found in The House at Pooh Corner: Pooh was presented to Milne's son Christopher Robin on the occasion of the boy's first birthday, on August 21st, 1921. So Christopher Robin's birthday became Pooh's.

Pooh has inspired his share of songs--and not all of them are for the kiddies. The obvious choice to begin with is House At Pooh Corner, written by Kenny Loggins. The song was originally recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band for their 1970 album Uncle Charlie His Dog Teddy. Band member Jimmy Ibbotson reportedly suffered from polio as a child and spent much of the time reading. The works of A.A. Milne were particular favorites, so he was eager to record the song. But it gained real popularity after it appeared on Loggins & Messina's 1971 album Sittin in. It can also be found on their greatest hits album Best: Loggins & Messina - Sittin in Again. The lyrics describe Pooh going about various Pooh-ish activities--counting bees, chasing clouds, getting a honey jar stuck on his nose--with the help of his friends from the Hundred Acre Wood, including Christopher Robin, Owl, and Eeyore (what, no Tigger?). The subtext is a wistful wish to return to a lost childhood, an aspect that was emphasized when Loggins revised the song as Return To Pooh Corner, which appears on a 1994 album of the same name. Another follow up album, More Songs From Pooh Corner, in 2000, includes Loggins' song Your Heart Will Lead You Home, which served as the theme to Disney's animated film The Tigger Movie.

In 1970 Dutch composer Willem Frederik Bon wrote an orchestral score called To Catch a Heffalump, after the mysterious and elusive creatures that bedevil Pooh and Piglet.

Now things really do get nitty gritty. Arab Strap's song Piglet, from their 1998 album Philophobia, features a couple getting ready to go out clubbing. While the woman is in the shower, her boyfriend lets curiosity get the better of him: I'd always planned to have a look/in your special Winnie the Pooh book/The place was marked and it was there in blue and white/it just said simply, "Paul stayed last night." Her infidelity is revealed--recriminations, scatology and explicit lyrics ensue.

Jefferson Airplane's third album, 1967's After Bathing at Baxter's, features a song called The Ballad Of You & Me & Pooneil, written by Paul Kantner. "A song of love, hope, expectation, and a degree of doubt," writes Eric V.D. Luft in Die at the Right Time! A Subjective Cultural History of the American Sixties. "Pooneil was Kantner's fanciful hybrid of A.A. Milne's character, Winnie-the-Pooh, and Fred Neil, the New York City folk rocker." Kantner said Pooneil "referred to Freddie and Winnie-the-Pooh sort of thrown into a Mixmaster on the psychedelic era." The lyrics draw heavily from Milne's poetry collection When We Were Very Young, in particular the poems "Halfway Down" and "Spring Morning."

The band's follow-up album, 1968's Crown of Creation, featured a follow-up song, the title of which made the Pooh connection even more obvious. The House At Pooneil Corners, written by Kantner and Marty Balin, also draws lyrics from Milne's poetry, in this case "Noise, by Pooh" from The House at Pooh Corner. However, the tone of the song "was much darker than its predecessor," writes Luft. "Its graphically descriptive images of mass death and its gruesome aftermath made us think of nothing but nuclear war and its entailed universal annihilation."

Finally, there is an Italian band called Pooh. And check out The Pooh Sticks, an English indie band whose name recalls the favorite pastime of Pooh and Piglet. If you think Quidditch is the first game to make the transition from fiction to the real world, think again: The annual Poohsticks World Championships have been held on England's River Thames since 1984.