Suggestions for good, appropriate Halloween songs?

[xiphias]

The first ones that come to mind:

Boris the Spider
Werewolves of London
Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner
Excitable Boy
Maxwell's Silver Hammer
Sympathy for the Devil
Welcome to my Nightmare

What pops into your heads?

Comments

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Bela Lugosi's Dead (Bauhaus)
Every Day Is Halloween (Ministry)
Dead Man's Party
No One Lives Forever
Dead Or Alive
Weird Science (all Oingo Boingo; heck, you could just play Boingo records all night and cover a lot of ground)
Wolf Like Me (TV On The Radio)

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

Pretty much anything by Siouxie and the Banshees really. The best choices strike me as being "Spellbound" and "Cities in Dust". :D

[mcjulie.livejournal.com]

Siouxsie has one called "Halloween," as does The Dream Syndicate.

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but the song "Halloween" isn't one of their better ones. And it doesn't sound any MORE Halloweeny than the ones I mentioned.

[seventorches.livejournal.com]

Thriller

[yendi]

He's Back (Man Behind the Mask) and Eat My Frankenstein (assuming you're not limiting yourself to one per artist), both by Cooper. Concrete Blonde's Bloodletting. About half of Rob Zombie's catalog (solo and White Zombie stuff).

[seventorches.livejournal.com]

Red Right Hand (Nick Cave)
I Put A Spell On You

[bluepapercup]

There are so many good covers of I Put A Spell on You (Screamin' Jay Hawkins) that I'd be hard pressed to suggest a specific one. I like the original, though, if you want to be classing.

[mcjulie.livejournal.com]

Nina Simone's version is pretty great.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Go classic: the Monster Mash!

[tober.livejournal.com]

I was coming here to suggest that, although I'm not sure whether xiphias is explicitly trying to avoid novelty songs. That said, I'll add that Bobby "Boris" Pickett was originally from Somerville.

[(Anonymous)]

Isn't that more appropriate for Valentine's Day and Presidents' Day?

Anyway, how about Temptation Waits by Garbage? And there's some good Poe-based songs on the "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" album by The Alan Parsons Project. "Ghostbusters" by Ray Parker Jr. "Black Magic Woman" by Santana. "Mr. Crowley" by Ozzy Osbourne. "You're the Devil in Disguise" by Elvis Presley. "Mitternacht" by E Nomine.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah:

The Ramones, "Pet Semetary"
Ozzy Osborne, "Bark at the Moon"
Tegan & Sarah, "Walking with a Ghost"

[delerium69.livejournal.com]

Oh that was the Ozzy song I was trying to remember!

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Aside from orchestral stuff like Night on Bald Mountain and Danse Macabre...

Any random Inkubus Sukkubus song

A little early, but Loreena McKennit's "All Souls' Night"

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Oh, and the soundtrack to "The Nightmare Before Christmas"

[ckd]

The entire track list of "Dr. Demento Presents Spooky Tunes & Scary Melodies", of course:
1. Werewolves Of London - Waren Zevon
2. A Nightmare On My Street - DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
3. The Haunted House Of Rock - Whodini
4. Attact Of The Fifty Foot Woman - Tubes
5. Castin' My Spell - Johnny Otis Show
6. Halloween Spooks - Lambert, Hendricks & Ross
7. Bo Meets The Monster - Bo Diddley
8. My Son, The Vampire - Allan Sherman
9. Nature Trail To Hell - 'Weird Al' Yankovic

[delerium69.livejournal.com]

-Zombie Jamboree by Oingo Boingo
-Don't Fear the Reaper by Blue Öyster Cult
-Everyday is Halloween by Ministry (Before they went Industrial)
-Bela Lugois's Dead by Bauhaus
-Raining Blood by Slayer
-The Time Warp from "Rocky Horror Picture Show"
-This Is Halloween from "The Nightmare Before Christmas"
-Creeping Death by Metallica (Actually most of their early songs.)
-Anything by Rob Zombie
-Witch Doctor by Ross Bagdasarian, Sr., aka David Seville
-Dead Souls by Joy Division, covered by Nine Inch Nails

I'm sure there's more out there. Happy Hallowe'en!

[mcjulie.livejournal.com]

Harry Belafonte also did a version of Zombie Jamboree.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

Jeff Wayne's Musical War of the Worlds (OK, this may be a special case limited to those who listened to the late lamented WQDR in the Research Triangle in the late 70s/80s, as they'd play it in its entirety each Halloween in recognition of Orson Welles radio masterpiece.

[delerium69.livejournal.com]

It's the 75th anniversary of that event. We saw a PBS "American Experience" on it this week. It was an amazing story.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Pretty much the entire RHPS soundtrack works for me.

Puttin' on the Ritz from the Young Frankenstein soundtrack (the Falco version if you have to, but preferably with the Peter Boyle line sampled)

And ixnay on the Monster Mash. That thing's been raising from the dead every Halloween since I was about ten, and it makes no sense outside the context of create-a-dance songs (from the Twist to the Loc-o-motion) that it was riffing on.

[ookpik.livejournal.com]

My own favorite would be "When the night wind howls" from Ruddigore.

Also, this just crossed my desk (via a regular email from Roots & Rhythm--a Bay Area mail-order terrific source for odd music, though with emphasis on early blues, R&B, and rock'n'roll and occasional folk):

VARIOUS ARTISTS The Best Of Halloween
One Day 223 $11.98
50 tracks, 121 mins, highly recommended
If you already have a lot of these kind of Halloween compilations (like I do), than you will probably have most of these tracks. If you aren't already well stocked, then this is a great set to pick up, with an excellent assortment and a fantastic sound quality throughout. There are a handful over overly compiled classics: "Monster Mash/ Love Potion #9/ Purple People Eater/ I Put A Spell On You," etc, but they are far out-weighed by great songs that are lesser known (outside of comps like this) like "Screamin' Ball (At Dracula's Hall)" by The Duponts, "Jekyll And Hyde" by Jim Burgett, "You Can Get Him Frankenstein" By The Castle Kings, and "She's My Witch" by Kip Tyler. There's "Dinner With Drac" By Zacherley, which is comped a lot, but then there are 4 more Zacherley tracks that don't get heard often. Some other great tracks here that I haven't seen much or at all on CD: "Igor's Party" by Tony's Monstrosities, "The Martian Band" by The Wild Tones, and "Leopard Man" by Joe Wallace, and a few others. All in all, this is a great comp full of all vintage Rock & Roll and Rhythm & Blues that provides a whole lot of muck for your buck. (JM)

[arib.livejournal.com]

Monster Mash?

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Ghost Riders in the Sky
Ghost Chickens in the SKy
Heriot's Ford (by Kipling and Fish)
The Lady (by Dave Clement)
songs about the Wild Hunt, like Heather Alexander's "The Hunt Is On"
Love Song for a Vampire
and of course Zombie Jamboree

The Very Scry Solstice and An Even Scarier Solstice albums are as apropos for Halloween as they are for the Solstice itself.

[mcjulie.livejournal.com]

Roky Erickson is one of my Halloween favorites -- pretty much every song he did is horror-themed. Probably my favorite is Burn the Flames, which I learned from the Return of the Living Dead soundtrack. There is also a tribute album of his stuff, Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye, which is probably my favorite tribute album ever.

Schoolyard Heroes, a (sadly now defunct) Seattle-area band has another all-Halloween-themed catalog. My favorite song is Cemetery Girls, which is inspired in part by the comic series Y: The Last Man.

Nobody has yet mentioned Superstition by Stevie Wonder, so I will.

Your Ghost by Kristin Hersh
Hammer Horror by Kate Bush
The Ghost in You by The Psychedelic Furs

Oh, and Sonic Youth, Dead Kennedys, Misfits and Mudhoney also all have songs called Halloween.