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For Halloween: Tunes from
the crypt
By
GREG KOT
Chicago
Tribune
It’s Halloween and time for some scary songs — sorry,
but no “Monster Mash.” We’re talking about really scary songs. Here are 20,
arranged chronologically, that’ll give you the chills:
1. Skip James, “Devil Got My Woman” (1930s): The
demon runs wild, and betrayal runs rampant.
2. Billie Holiday, “Gloomy Sunday” (1941): The
song, unofficially known as the “Hungarian suicide song” because of its origins
in that country, has been covered numerous times, definitively by sad-eyed Lady
Day.
3. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “I Put a Spell on You” (1956): The
ultimate stalker nightmare.
4. The Doors, “The End” (1967):
Alternative title — Jim Morrison’s got Oedipal issues and he’s got them bad.
5. Velvet Underground, “The Gift” (1968): A short
story set to disorienting music, with a shocking payoff.
6. Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Bad Moon Rising” (1969): John
Fogerty’s deceptively jaunty ditty about the apocalypse.
7. The Buoys, “Timothy” (1971): A song
written by Rupert Holmes, quite possibly the only Top 40 hit about cannibalism.
8. Bloodrock, “D.O.A.” (1971): Another
unlikely hit, this time about a grisly road crash, a severed limb and a life
expiring before our ears.
9. Lou Reed, “The Kids” (1973): The
most wrenching moment on a wrenching album (“Berlin”) about a doomed
relationship.
10. Mike Oldfield, “Tubular Bells” (1973): Not a
single word is spoken, and all hell breaks loose in the theme from “The
Exorcist.”
11. Randy Newman, “In Germany Before the War” (1977): A
brooding meditation on a child killer.
12. Joy Division, “Dead Souls” (1979): A
haunted cry from the edge of the grave made even more poignant by the suicide
of singer Ian Curtis less than a year later.
13. Husker Du, “Diane” (1983): The
Minneapolis trio pays tribute to a fan who was raped and murdered by a serial
killer. Drummer Grant Hart’s screams say it all.
14. Diamanda Galas, “There Are No More Tickets to the
Funeral” (1991): The harrowing introduction to her “Plague Mass,” about the AIDS
epidemic.
15. Geto Boys, “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” (1991): Every
minute is life or death in this nightmarish series of vignettes.
16. PJ Harvey, “Down by the Water” (1995): Harvey
quotes Leadbelly in this tale of infanticide.
17. Johnny Cash, “Mercy Seat” (2000): The
country legend turns Nick Cave’s song about a condemned man’s final minutes
into a riveting psychodrama.
18. Tori Amos, “97 Bonnie and Clyde” (2001): Without
changing a word of Eminem’s first-person tale of butchery, Amos redefines it as
a woman’s dying testimony.
19. Tom Waits, “Poor Edward” (2002): The
grim tale of a man with two faces.
20. Sunn O))), “My Wall” (2002): The
masters of doom and drone get even creepier with Julian Cope providing an Edgar
Allan Poe-like narrative.
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