Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

To those who care about such things, collecting Halloween songs is a bit like collating music for Christmas: you can never have enough. In that spirit, here are some offerings that didn’t find their way on the Halloween Mix I posted a month ago.

Alan Price Set – I Put A Spell On You.mp3
An intense track from 1966 which might have been recorded by Procol Harum. The organ solo totally rocks, echoing the sound Price previously created for the Animals. Alan Price is totally underrated.

Donovan – Wild Witch Lady.mp3
By 1973, the mellow yellow fellow had turned psychedelic. “Wild Witch Lady” is heavy, man, with our boy going all Robert Plant on our sorry asses. Great witch’s cry in the beginning.

Box Tops – I Must Be The Devil.mp3
The Box Tops are most famous for their ’60s British Invasion hit “The Letter”. This is nothing like the big hit. This is a seriously stoned blues work-out.

The Moontrekkers – Night Of The Vampire.mp3
This instrumental is a Halloween must, not just for the song itself (a great Halloween instrumental), but also for the background story of its producer Joe Meek, whose sad life ended with him killing his landlady and then himself in 1967.

Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs – Haunted House.mp3
You’ll know Sam the Sham as the performer of “Wooly Bully”. This Rock ‘n Roll track was the b-side to the performer’s big hit. It has a great Halloween intro, and is great fun afterwards.

Golden Earring – The Devil Made Me Do It.mp3
Widely under-appreciated Dutch rockers Golden Earring were rather forgotten by 1982, a few years after their huge hit “Radar Love” (still one of the greatest rock songs of all time). On this fine track they sound like Adam Ant and Dexys Midnight Runners had joined them, with a bridge that might have been written by the Little River Band. You have to hear it, really.

Check out Touched Mix blog for a series of great Halloween mix-tapes, including one consisting of “AmbientDubHopStep”.

I have prepared a mix CD-R for a brandnew blog I’m helping with, on the theme of Halloween (I made a cover, too, to show how “creative” I am). So, get in early for the celebration of the feast day of All Saints, with all the pumpkins and trick-and-treating, even in parts of the world where there is no tradition of such things.

Tracklisting:
1. Eels – Marie Floating Over The Backyard (2005)
2. Clem Snide – Evil vs Good (2001)
3. Jim Stafford – Swamp Witch (1973)
4. Stan Ridgway – Camouflage (1986)
5. The Go! Team – Phantom Broadcast (2005)
6. The Rolling Stones – Sympathy For The Devil (1968)
7. Procol Harum – A Salty Dog (1969)
8. Johnny Cash – Hung My Head (2002)
9. Nick Cave & Kylie Minogue – Where The Wild Roses Grow (1997)
10. Sufjan Stevens – John Wayne Gacy, Jr. (2005)
11. Mazzy Star – Taste Of Blood (1990)
12. Imogen Heap – Getting Scared (1998)
13. The Cure – Close To Me (acoustic) (2001)
14. Springbok Nude Girls – Baby Murdered Me (1997)
15. Foo Fighters – Hell (2005)
16. Marilyn Manson – If I Was Your Vampire (2007)
17. Sparklehorse – Ghosts In The Sky (2006)
18. Medeski, Martin & Wood – End Of The World Party (2004)

Download here