Halloween Parade

Halloween is all about the costumes and adopting a persona. Costumes are not just for kids. So welcome to the party! Here is a musical preview to encourage you to show up on our doorstep dressed appropriately and knowing what to expect. Charge your phone and bring your flashlight. It's dark out there.

Parade, Costumes, and Judging

1. “Halloween Parade” from New York by Lou Reed

2. “Peer Gynt Suite Number 1: In the Hall of the Mountain King” by Edvard Grieg played by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.

3. “YMCA” by the Village People

My playlist starts with Lou Reed’s gravelly voice on “Halloween Parade” from the New York album. Reed wrote this song for all those who disappeared from the annual Christopher Street Halloween Parade during the AIDS crisis in New York. The album has songs I won't play at the party tonight but, you should listen to “Dirty Boulevard” and “Romeo Had Juliette” again. I miss Lou Reed.

After you have all marched around the room to Grieg's “Peer Gynt Suite Number 1: In the Hall of the Mountain King” , as recorded below by the Seattle Symphony, we will complete the judging. Display your disguise of the evening to full advantage. Best costume, funniest costume, scariest costume, and most offbeat are the categories. Construct your costume carefully.

“Peer Gynt” is forever seared into my mind as a Halloween selection because of a second-grade choreographed dance created by one of my teachers. It was a graveyard scene with ghosts rising from behind tombstones and flitting around the room with witches on broomsticks in the school gym. Our parents sat in rows in folding chairs at the center of the performance. Each chair became a part of the set with an individual headstone taped to the back. I have since wondered if there was some symbolic wishful thinking on the part of the teacher.

I will send you to the campy “YMCA” by the Village People to celebrate the winners. The parties I have attended as an adult, other than the ones we hosted for our preteen girls, their friends, and family, were mainly given by a photographer friend. He took a fashion shoot series of photos every year in his nearly empty Victorian. Every year, the costumes were at least as good as those worn by the Village People. Use that as your baseline. His Halloween night involved dry ice and a coffin just inside the front door. Ooooohhh.

Fun and Games

4. “Burn in Hell” by Twisted Sister

5. “I Put a Spell on You” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins

A pause for hot apple cider or some other appropriate fall libation. A contest, eating donuts strung from tree branches or the ceiling blindfolded with your hands tied behind your back. Can you do it? I’ll add a little music to help you relax-Twisted Sister’s “Burn in Hell”. Maybe I'll play the video too, inappropriate and terrifying as it is. Please don't wear your Peewee Herman costume to the party. The rightly ubiquitous Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You” deserves a place at every Halloween Party ever given.

Dance Floor

5. “Bite Your Lip (Get Up and Dance)” Elton John

6. “Ziggy Stardust” by David Bowie

On a lighter note, back to the dance floor with Elton John in his Donald Duck costume with “Bite Your Lip (Get Up and Dance)”, and David Bowie as “Ziggy Stardust”.

7. “Love Shack” by The B-52's

8. “Raspberry Beret” by Prince

9. “Vogue” by Madonna

More dance with The B-52’s “Love Shack”. A little Prince with “Raspberry Beret” or “1999” . And then Madonna with “Vogue” . These three artists and the following two are masters of performance-based music.

10. “Tous les Mêmes” by Stromae

11. “Thriller” by Michael Jackson

Next, a tune by Stromae. (The stage name of Belgian performer Paul Van Haver.) He and his band dish out dance music and social commentary wrapped up together in “Tous les Mêmes”. Other picks here could be “Papaoutai” or “Alors On Danse” , which seems to have been twisted and slowed down into a popular TikTok theme. These, along with “Formidable”, are all on my permanent playlist.

What could be more Halloween? We'll be wrapping up with “Thriller”, Michael Jackson's 13 minute-42 second film alternating camp theatrics with great dance. We will project this one will above the dance floor, so follow along if you can.

Dinner

Buffet style. We will give you a little rest while you eat and play some ballads. We will lead with Johnny Cash singing “The Long Black Veil” from his album Murder, and Ralph Stanley's “Pretty Polly” on the album Clinch Mountain Country. “Bringing Mary Home” by the Country Gentlemen is next, to settle in with some spine-tingling events. To round out the end of dinner and get you going again, we'll finish up with the Charlie Daniels Band and “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”.

Haunted House

A lengthy sound-track recording of chains, groans and screams made and edited by children of the house, a couple of willing teen actors, some cobwebs-real and fake, spaghetti guts and peeled grape eyes in a maze in the barn with a candy apple reward for making it through. This event is a perennial favorite. Some people put themselves through it twice.

That is all folks. Drive safe. I hope you checked the gas tank before you left home tonight. Happy Halloween!

To wind down from all the excitement of the evening, I will put on a little Richard Shindell for myself. “Are You Happy Now?”. I need some bitter chocolate to counter the sweet.

. . .

Music artists have been struggling during the past year and a half, not only financially, but mentally, from lack of work and uncertain times in the future. Go ahead and support some of them where ever you can find them by paying them a penny or two on iTunes, Spotify or Bandcamp.

The selections from Youtube posted above are all from the artist's official sites with the exception of the Elton John footage which was posted by 35jeydee.

I write poetry, fiction and non fiction on various topics. Please give me a like and check out some of my other work on Vocal. Thanks for reading.