# 92 Days Till Halloween



## Dinosaur1972 (Mar 28, 2007)

92 Days Till Halloween
7/31/2013

I’ve been enjoying the “Modern Mixes” folder, so I’ll stay with it. I don’t have far to go … 

*Mastermix Halloween (2004)
*A long time ago, back in the days of rampant file-sharing, I found a track called “Halloween Madness”, which was a brilliant mix of Halloween songs such as “Ghostbusters”, “The Twilight Zone” theme, Vincent Price’s “Thriller” laugh, “The Addams Family” theme, and lots of movie clips and “Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror” audio. Ever since, I’d hoped to find the album it was on, hoping there were more tracks like it. I finally found the album – it is the best set of remixed Halloween songs I’ve heard. 

CD 1- It takes a certain degree of brilliance to freshen up songs like “Abracadabra”, “Monster Mash”, and “Ghostbusters”. This CD of mixes throws sound effects, movie and television audio clips, and solid beats on top of the classics and makes them sound really good. It’s a fun listen, as you try to identify song snippets and figure out which movies the audio comes from. Also – Monster Mash #5 (alone) and #6 (as part of “House of Horror Mix” – the whole song is in the mix). After 8 pretty good mixes, the CD ends with some stand-alone tracks and sound effects.

CD2,3, 5 –Typical Halloween-related hits. Nothing new or unusual – Chubby Checker’s “Doin The Zombie”, Elvira’s “Full Moon”, and The Rev. Horton Heat’s “Halloween Dance” are at least somewhat unusual.

CD4 – My favorite Halloween is the old-timey stuff from the 30s and 40s, and that’s what we’ve got on CD4. Most of these I’ve heard on other releases, but I still like them here.

Now for the “Miscellaneous Music” folder … recordings that are still musical, but don’t fit into a nice genre like “Old Rock”, “Gothic”, “Novelty”, etc.

*Alfred Hitchcock (with Jeff Alexander Orchestra) - Music To Be Murdered By (1958)
*As much as I love Hitchcock’s “Ghost Stories for Young People”, I don’t enjoy this one so much. Hitchcock’s narration is a delight, but while some of the music is at times a little scary, much of it is big band cheese, the stuff that put food on Lawrence Welk’s table. Very pleasant and very well done, but not very Halloweeny. 

*Attilio Mineo - Man in Space with Sounds (1962)
*I know this isn’t a Halloween recording in the purest sense, but nobody can deny the connection that exists between the supernatural spookiness of Halloween and the weird and unknown-ness of science fiction. Some of the greatest horror movies of all time have their roots in science fiction. “War of the Worlds” was broadcast the night before Halloween in 1938 … this connection has been around forever. Frankly, this music is spookier and eerier than Hitchcock’s album. There is cheesy sci-fi announcing, too. Very fun album.

*Creed Taylor Orchestra - Shock_ Music in Hi-Fi (1958)
Creed Taylor Orchestra – Panic - The Son Of Shock (1959)
Creed Taylor Orchestra - Nightmare!! (1962)*
This is an odd combination of sound effects and big band music. I’m not sure what to make of it. I don’t like it all that much. I’ll get through 3 albums of it though. Wait … frogs croaking? And a bird got shot? And a tree fell down? “Lion Act”? This is weird, but not good-weird. It’s kinda boring-weird, which is a bad kind of weird. It is elevator music with sound effects that have nothing to do with the music – or with anything else.


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