Here’s a discussion of my selections for Can’t Wait For Halloween, Volume 6 of the Green Monkey Music Project.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Red Right Hand
From the album Let Love In. Halloween songs don’t come much better than this. A spooky groove, and great creepy lyrics.
You’re one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan
Designed and directed by his red right hand
Echo and the Bunnymen – The Yo Yo Man
From their classic Ocean Rain. There are many people who would have gone for “The Killing Moon” off the same album, instead of this song, but those people are wrong. Wrong, I tells ya!
Roky Erickson – Creature With The Atom Brain
Roky was the lead singer for the great Austin, Texas psychedelic band the 13th Floor Elevators. Roky has had mental health issues from time to time, but he’s out and hopefully doing better. He has a real, unironic fascination with the occult and science fiction. This is one of my favorite songs of his. If someone could please do a strange favor for me, please tell me what the sound effect is at approximately the 2 minute, 38 second mark in this song. It has something to do with television (like a test signal or something), but I don’t know what’s it for exactly.
Pink Floyd – Lucifer Sam
We go way, way back to Pink Floyd’s first album, Piper At The Gates of Dawn. I don’t know that it’s so scary, but I think it is ominous. And, of course it has the word Lucifer in the title. Tim ever so slightly ruined this song for me, when he a corrected a lyric I had misheard in this song.
I thought it was:
Black cat’s something I can’t explain
But it actually is:
That cat’s something I can’t explain
Don’t worry, I still sing the superior “Black cat” line.
Flaming Lips – Ice Drummer
This can be found on their EP Providing Needles for Your Balloons, as well as on a tribute album to the band Suicide. This is actually a cover of a song by Suicide’s singer Alan Vega. It’s not immediately obvious this song has a Halloween connection, but in my opinion the lyrics are sufficiently spooky:
Saturn is in the night sky
A freezing, freezing ring of fear
The moon is bright and hanging heavy
A werewolf drives on by in his Chevy
Hey you don’t have to justify a love of Hallowe’en to ME! But I have to tell you those are great choices. Does anybody do creepy better than Nick Cave? Red Right Hand is a must.
That beeping sound? I can’t place it, but the closest I can come is Radio Canada offical time signal, on speed.
I’ve seen Suicide in concert. That gives me credibility, right?
barbara, Mr. Cave is exquisitely creepy. I think that sound is some sort of TV broadcast signal, and one that I heard in my youth. Weird.
idea, you’re goddamn right it does!
Always love hearing Flaming Lips I’ve never heard before. Nice cuts, dube.
The first time I heard that Nick Cave song was in the comic book movie “Hell Boy”. I just thought of it this morning. It had been bugging me for a while about where I had heard it before.
I must admit that the first time I heard the Nick Cave song was in Scream.