Cleve's Halloween Playlist

Cleve’s Halloween Playlist

By Cleve Taylor

Wow. What a trip. I just listened to my playlist on YouTube, and I want to go to my party just to listen to my music again. It will be good to see you there, too. But the music is F I N E, and is a good listen anytime of the year. If you miss hearing it this Halloween, give it a go on Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Sarah Brightman and Antonio Banderas start off the show singing the Phantom of the Opera Overture. The music is great. How can you go wrong with Andrew Lloyd Webber? Spine tingling is what it is, and a note to the ladies, Antonio Banderas is singing maskless and never looked better. And Sarah Brightman? That lady has a voice that continues to thrill millions and millions.

Levelling down from that music high, you are next offered the harmony of Don and Phil Everly, the Everly Brothers, as they tell you about the heartache of a soldier losing his bride-to-be on Flight 1203, losing his Ebony Eyes. Theirs is a suppressed unspoken terror harbored deep in everyone who has, or has lost, a loved one. The sadness is further deepened with the knowledge that a few short weeks ago Don Everly died, joining his brother Phil in perpetual harmony.

Then the song and rendition without which no halloween party can be complete, The Monster Mash. Bobby Pickett, born in 1938 in Somerville, Massachusetts made this a hit in 1962. But one would have to turn off all music for the month of October to miss hearing Bobby and the Crypt-Kickers perform this uplifting comedic song.

Staying happy, Bette Midler, who belongs in a Hall of Fame if she isn’t already in one, sings I Put a Spell on You from the movie Hocus Pocus. She was the wind beneath the wings of a lot of fans over the years.

She precedes Steve Martin, the Leader of the Plaque, singing Dentist to Bill Murray his masochistic patient in the Little Shop of Horrors movie. This song makes the cut because for most people there is nothing more scary than a dentist, and Steve Martin’s sadistic Dentist is exceptionally scary if you role play the patient.

Now for something just for the fun of it. Sheb Wooley and his Purple People Eater. It was a big hit when he first recorded it as a 45rpm single in the middle of the last century, but it has endured over the years and is found in many childrens albums.

While we are in the last century, let’s listen to Mark Dinning’s Teen Angel. Lot’s of teenagers in 1960 teared up to the image of a 16 year old girl running back to a car stalled on a railroad track, and being found holding her boy friend's high school ring which she went back to retrieve.

While going to the Dentist with Steve Martin, I couldn’t help adding Feed Me, Audrey the Plants emphatic demand for Seymore to feed him, to my playlist. After all, the Dentist did end up being fodder for the carnivorous Audry, the misnamed alien plant.

That’s eight songs for my Playlist. That’s almost thirty minutes of uninterrupted Halloween pleasure. There would have been nine songs, but Transfusion, a comedic treatment of a car crash by Nervous Norvus did not weather the years well. I think it had been remastered and lost its essence in the process. Too bad, in my memory it remains a fun staple.

Now the part I have the least experience with --- giving you access to my playlist. On YouTube it is in my library as “Cleve’s Halloween Playlist”.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLO_Npdnu3zZKM97ys7yu2560dQt8-4zmY