Turn It Up (Boo!) - Halloween edition

Earthworms, possessions, assassinations

We’re back again to start the week with some things we’ve been listening to - this time, we’re celebrating Halloween with songs that give us the creeps. David goes first this week, then Charles, and we’ve also included some new reading recommendations at the bottom.

“The First Mrs. Jones” – Porter Wagoner (from The Cold, Hard Facts of Life, 1967)

A fiddle scrapes the record to life, like an old rusty gate swinging in the wind, and then Porter Wagoner begins to sing about Betty, his first wife in the song, in what appears to be a familiar enough story of love gone wrong: She leaves him, he follows, and before long he’s drinking too much. But then Wagoner stops singing and begins to speak, slowly, deliberately, about that time he phoned Betty and threatened to kill her if she didn’t return to him. There are a couple of more twists after that and, no spoilers, each is more chilling than the last—all in a harrowingly efficient 2:45. “The First Mrs. Jones” was written and originally recorded by Bill Anderson, but Whisperin’ Bill’s version is…not scary and recommended only for purposes of highlighting Wagoner’s gift for the macabre and skill at recitation. “Did my lil’ story scare ya?” Wagoner asks near the close of his tale. Yes, Porter. Every time. -DC

“Revelation” – Waylon Jennings (from Ladies Love Outlaws, 1972)

A Christian gothic about slowly realizing one’s been left behind at the rapture, this Bobby Braddock song has been cut a few times but accept no substitutes: Waylon’s shaken reading of the song is a marvel as is the slow building of tension and instruments through each of the lyric’s unremarkable vignettes—in Vietnam, Belfast, Memphis, D.C. and finally a cheap hotel room. “Dear God, I’m thankful I was only dreaming,” Waylon trembles, awakened by his own screams and convinced a real hell really awaits him if he doesn’t fall to his knees in worship. A nightmare in more ways than one. -DC

“Come Out, Come Out…,” “It Really Was No Miracle,” “We Thank You Very Sweetly,” “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead,” “As Mayor of the Munchkin City,” and “As Coroner I Must Aver” – various cast members (from The Wizard of Oz: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

When I was very young and saw The Wizard of Oz on TV the first couple of times, I’m told I’d run and hide in the bathroom each time the Wicked Witch of the West appeared. It’s a scary movie. Later, as I studied the soundtrack album I got one year for Christmas, I was especially delighted to memorize lyricist Yip Harburg’s playful internal rhymes detailing Dorothy Gale’s accidental assassination of the Wicked Witch of the East: Dorothy’s house “landed on the Wicked Witch in the middle of a ditch, which is not a healthy sitch-you-ation for a wicked witch.” At the same time, I was also startled by how gruesome Harburg was. The Munchkins celebrate their liberation from tyranny and terror singing “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead.” But not only dead: “She’s gone where the goblins go! Below! Below! Below!” (A school friend: “My dad says it’s not right to be happy people’re goin’ to hell.”) Even more haunting to me, then as now, is the revelation that as the Witch was dying, she “began to twitch and was reduced to just a stitch of what was once the Wicked Witch.” This entire sequence of the film, from “Come Out, Come Out” to “As Coroner I Must Aver,” is so fun to sing along with and so full of death. (Me to my parents: “What’s a coroner?”) If they’d shown a witch twitching as she died on screen instead of merely singing about it gleefully, I’d probably still be cowering in the bathroom. -DC

“Vampire Empire” – Big Thief (single, 2023)

Big Thief’s menacing new single “Vampire Empire” stomps rigidly, is trapped in two chords that won’t let singer Adrianne Lenker go. Necrotic details pile up—dead leaves, bad milk, “bleeding on the bed.” The whole jagged record feels frozen in place. Lenker hovers just inches off the ground, her voice jerked into pained falsetto for the last word of each line in the chorus: “I'm empty 'til she FILLS, alive until she KILLS.” Obviously, this is all just a metaphor for some soul-crushing, emotionally draining relationship. Lenker is most definitely not falling under the spell of any literal vampire. I mean, right? Whether Lenker is wailing about a toxic lover or about some actual undead creature, my advice is the same: Run. -DC

“Bringing Mary Home” – Mac Wiseman (from Timeless, 2015)

So many fine versions of this old country ghost story—from the 1965 original by the Country Gentleman (mandolinist John Duffy is one of its cowriters), to readings by the Willis Brothers, Red Sovine, Mac Wiseman and others over the next few years, plus dozens more in the decades since. My pick for the sweetest and scariest “Bringing Mary Home,” though, is Wiseman’s fiddle-haunted late-in-life reprise (at 25:46 in the album linked below). Mac’s voice trembles as he tells the story of that long-ago night when he found a little girl wandering along the roadside. The music grows quieter as he goes, so you lean in, a little shaken yourself, to hear the girl’s mother explain that her daughter has been dead these 13 years. ‘Tis sweet to be remembered. Spooky, too. -DC

“Vampire Blues” – Neil Young (from On the Beach, 1974)

There’s a reason why On The Beach and the albums that frame it sometimes get called Young’s “doom trilogy.” Beyond the fact that he followed the commercial success of Harvest by rejecting its inviting creative approach, the albums are filled with songs about failure, death, and apocalypse, as well as performances that sound as fried and frazzled as the recording sessions apparently were. “Vampire Blues” might not be the scariest song on these albums – in fact, it might not even be the scariest song on On the Beach – but it does pull a clever trick. Over loping country funk, Young uses the familiar image of the bloodsucking vampire to make a point about oil extraction and ecological destruction. He’s made something like this point a lot over the years, admirably if not always effectively. But he’s never done it better than he does here. Like vampires before and since, he’s both sexy and scary as he licks his blood/oil-drenched lips, leers inside, and gets ready to suck you dry. Will you let him in? - CH

“Little Demon” – Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (single, 1956)

Screamin’ Jay Hawkins is in the starting lineup of the Halloween all-star team. Even beyond writing and originating the justifiably canonical “I Put A Spell On You,” the wildest of the R&B shouters filled his catalog with various sorts of spookiness. Sometimes he seems dead serious, even when his performances veer into campy exaggeration. But there were also songs, like this rave-up from 1956, where he’s happy to let you know that he’s in on the fun. Here, the feisty demon who Hawkins’ protagonist spots isn’t so much scary as ridiculous, throwing a shit-fit because he didn’t treat his missus right and she kicked him out. As with so much ‘50s R&B and rock ‘n’ roll, the lyrics only tell about a third of the story – the rest comes across on the bouncing backbeat, bumping saxophone, and Hawkins’ mix of big-voiced verses and clipped chorus delivered in the demon’s native tongue. A graveyard smash, if ever there was one. - CH

(Note: There are a few versions of this song floating around out there - I went with my favorite, the alternate take that was included on the Rhino box Loud, Fast, and Out of Control.)

“Creature from the Black Lagoon” – Dave Edmunds (from Repeat When Necessary, 1979)

Every monster needs a theme song. Written by Edmunds’ Rockpile bandmate Billy Bremner, this jangly stomp is less a tribute to the scaly star of ‘50s cinema and more an attempt to understand or empathize with him. The whole “see, it was all the lady’s fault” thing is pretty blecch. But, if we understand monsters as outsiders who were created and then unfairly scorned by society, this tale of a freakish “lonely fella” (who, it should be noted, is only pushed to violence by the scientist intruders who try to capture him and take him far from home) has an undeniable emotional resonance. Plus, it’s prime Rockpile - tight, bright, and with a good beat that I can dance to. Another graveyard smash. - CH

“I Put A Spell On You” – Diamanda Galás (from The Singer, 1992)

Playtime’s over. There was no way the great composer and performer Diamanda Galás wasn’t making this list. I almost went with her debut solo album The Litanies of Satan, a symphony of terror with Galás’ voice as the only instrument. (Her debut solo album!) Or Plague Mass, her stunning 1991 work that’s one of several albums documenting and embodying the horrors of the AIDS epidemic. Or 2022’s plague-and-war hellscape Broken Gargoyles. Or any number of other songs and albums throughout her truly extraordinary career. But I’ll go with her take on Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ classic, which seems influenced at least as much by Nina Simon’s signature version. Opening with an invocatory cry of “Devil Devil Devil” – welcoming him in as much as warding him off – Galás takes the song’s cursed love and exorcises the demons within it, moving quickly through some lyrics in her lower register before unleashing a series of screams that move back and forth between ecstatic and agonized. She waits for you “like a snake in the grass” and a “shark in the water,” before a chilling final “you’re miiiiiiiiiine” that bridges the gap between Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Robert Johnson, and PJ Harvey. That fire you feel isn’t just passion. Pleased to meet you – won’t you guess my name? - CH

“Frankie Teardrop” – Suicide (from Suicide, 1977)

There are very few recordings that I can’t listen to because they scare me so much. (I can even handle Diamanda Galás’ most intense stuff, as much as it shakes me to my core.) But I can’t listen to “Frankie Teardrop” without freaking out halfway through and skipping to the next track. Suicide’s intoxicating music, built from only Martin Rev’s pulsing synths and Alan Vega’s lizard-Elvis vocals, always has a sense of creeping dread, even in its most propulsive or seductive moments. But here there’s no fucking around. In this 11-minute nightmare, a working man named Frankie gets fired, learns he’s getting evicted, kills his wife and baby, kills himself, and goes to hell. It’s rooted in details that are realistic enough to earn the praise of Bruce Springsteen, who cited the record and the band as an influence on his own primal screams in Nebraska. But the festering, relentless arrangement – climaxing with Vega’s jump-scare screams – gives it a surreal quality that makes “Frankie Teardrop” into something like a sonic sleep-paralysis demon. Vega’s conclusion – “We’re all Frankies…we’re all lying in hell” – is as unnerving as the endings of cinematic cousins like Eraserhead or The Blair Witch Project. Abandon all hope. - CH

“Chuckie” – Geto Boys (from We Can’t Be Stopped, 1991)

Bushwick Bill’s love of horror movies helps explain “Chuckie,” the Child’s Play homage first unleashed on 1991’s We Can’t Be Stopped. But an additional factor led him to find connection with the murderous doll: as he told one interviewer, “He’s short. I’m short.” As I’ve written about elsewhere, so much of Bill’s best work – whether with the Geto Boys or solo – considers his shortness and how the world reacted to it. The Chuckie character lets him deepen his larger interest in phantasmagoric storytelling and to specifically embody another icon whose shortness causes people to underestimate him at their own peril. Over a snarling beat, Bill presents “Chuckie” – written by Houston rap colleague Ganksta N-I-P – with both menace and humor, a horrorcore origin story that he expanded with the character’s reappearances on later albums. On these musical sequels, Bill (in a different, lower voice for the character) uses Chuckie to explore inner psychological and spiritual turmoil. It’s a far more interesting choice than the Child’s Play franchise ever dared. It’s far scarier too. - CH

Reading recommendations:

Danny Alexander with “Halloween: The Deeper Cuts,” at Medium

Libby Rodenbough visits with Alice Gerrard, for Bluegrass Situation

Michaelangelo Matos on Brandy Clark, for The Current

Althea Legaspi in conversation with groundbreaking women music critics, for Rolling Stone

Marisa Kabas talks with women who worked at Rolling Stone under Jann Wenner, for The Handbasket

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