Some Halloween music you might not expect

October has always been one of my favorite months … of course culminating with its final day: Halloween.

You see, October is the month all the family pictures and portraits get replaced with creepy black and white images all around my house … it’s the month those cheesy little plastic skeletal hands and arms peek out from behind our light switch cover plates … it’s the month where a good dozen or so pumpkins decorate the front porch and wait patiently for the time when they can display their personalities (and when their innards get roasted in salt and spices — Yum!) … and it’s the month the eerie (and not so eerie) music oozes out my stereo speakers.

As a kid, it was a bit of a tradition on my mother’s birthday (October 15th) to dust off the Disney Chilling, Thrilling Sounds Of The Haunted House LP, plop it onto the old stereo console on a lazy Saturday afternoon and listen to the creepy sounds that issued forth, glazed look in my eyes waiting for All Hallow’s Eve to approach, dreaming of the edible loot to be collected that night.

Those fond memories turned into afternoons in front of the television set taking in old black and white Z-grade horror flicks. As I got older, the hair-raising enticement of creepy (and, yes, cheesy) theatrical releases dared my nerves to venture forth into theaters with friends.

The music, naturally, was integral to those experiences. Somewhere along the line (in appreciation of the simple piano refrain composed by John Carpenter for Halloween, Mike Oldfield’s main piece for The Exorcist and Max Steiner‘s incomparable score for my beloved King Kong) I strayed from the course and began warping my mind with all sorts of scatological monkey business.

One of my all-time favorites? The Gonk from George Romero’s original Dawn Of The Dead, the heart-lifting toe-tapper that plays during the end credits to that film. I play this piece all through October. It’s tradition for me. I whistle it often. At appropriate times I blurt it out when friends are around — when they trip comically … when waitresses screw up orders. I hum it while brushing my teeth. Yes … really.

I discovered Burt Bacharach‘s opening credits tune to The Blob long before The Gonk, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember where I had originally heard it nor the words to the piece. All I remembered was the tinny, tinky guitar, the wailing, warbling sax and the background singers aaaaaaaahing in the background. The realization of what it was and where it came from was later discovered at a midnight film fest:

But wait! Here’s a treat I bet you didn’t see coming! Getting a bit more traditional, I offer some of the score to an old favorite of mine, Godzilla, King Of The Monsters:

Of course, there are the more established musical pieces which turn my costume-wearing crank. The Frankenstein and Dracula scores. Alien.

And the three below are from the standard and one and only iconic Night Of The Living Dead — the main title piece, the truck-on-fire sequence and the ending credit score:

 These — and more — define the season for me.

And, yes … I realize I’ve ingrained The Gonk into your seasonal consciousness now. You can’t escape its alluring earworminess. All part of my horrific, diabolical plan.

*Bwah-Haaaaaa-haaaaaa-haaaaaaaaaaa*

Clacked by Michael Noble
on Oct 02, 2011 @ 09:00 EST5EDT