Demonic Soundtracks from Beyond the Grave - A Spotify Mix to Creep out the very fall itself

Fall, and its bite-size candy trick-or-treat assortments, pumpkin guts still on your fingers,
the slowly spiraling colored dry leaves, the darkness and the chill each
with its own rooted black wet shiver,
the crisp new school year already darkening into sinister homework maze; girls and/or guys gone wild... with other people, you left alone
with the Hardy Boys inside Smuggler's Coven,
but then the movies, that autumnal chill in the creeping tick-tockable momentum of HALLOWEEN, PHANTASM, SUSPIRIA, PHENOMENA,
they're coming to get you Barbara,

but then they leave without you,
curled under the watchful eye of your dozing big daddy, the heater coming on for the first time since May with the smell of mold and mop handle incense.
mom in the kitchen, the safety of her presence without the meddling,
and then when they dress and leave for bridge... you're all alone
and barely old enough to be without a babysitter. Powerless, even with a butcher knife in your side pocket
And the chill in the leaf-swirling wind settles into your bones
like a personal threat.

I feel it all whenever I hear one of those great horror soundtracks from the 70s-80s, the time when simplicity and synthesizers and eerie time signatures left an uncanny mark that no amount of Williams, Goldsmith, Shore, or Elfman-style orchestral themes could or will ever match. Less is more and the more instruments and elocution you stuff the music with the less we care. We're not idiots. Imagine HALLOWEEN if scored by John Williams. Yiick!



Yeah, he got lucky with JAWS, which is mainly a rip of the rip of Les Baxter's MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH 'initiation ceremony / shamanic dream' ritual music which itself is lifted from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. But then, all you need to hear is that ridiculous jaunty pirate music when the boys go out on the Orca to know that shark cue was a bleedin' fluke. Less is more: Goblin, John Carpenter, Ennio Morricone, Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh, and of course the ones that started it all, the creepy sing-song theme of ROSEMARY'S BABY and the moody keyboards of "Tubular Bells."

And a special shout out to the groups/composers Zombi and Umberto, who make music for 70s-80s movies that never existed! They use the Italian / American drive-in synth score format as a jumping off point, into the dark spooky heart of the creepiness that is the fall we love, remember, and chill to, so come along, or you might get left behind... in the dark!

OVER THE EDGE sountrack (1979) + Other Anthems of Middle School late 70s (Spotify Mix)

Someone had to do make one - there was a soundtrack for ahwile on vinyl, but you knew that. And nothing on Spotify, so here it is. I cobbled the original songs in the order I remember them, and put on some songs that either could, should, or would have been on there, as they were/are a part of my life in one way or the other, and from the approx. same time and capture the same theme of wild rebellion.

If you have Spotify or something like it - enjoy whilst kicking back with a lil' hash, a 1.75 of Old Crow, some acid, and a brick to throw through the school window. If not, well, you can read my handy rant on this, the greatest youth film of all time aside from Dazed and Confused. Think of it as Dazed's little brother, who never got the chances to be crazy provided the Dazed crew.

Man oh man. Some day....

 In AA there's a saying "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans." The ultimate factor that destroys New Grenada is the refusal of the parents to admit that the base of their pyramid will probably not widen, and that their kids aren't going to just stop growing just because the town isn't. Kids can't slow their maturation to suit your dowdy suburban growth schedule! Nowadays kids don't blow up their schools and the result is micro-managing parents breathing down their necks and ransacking their sock drawers at will. But today's kids are fighting back, finally. It's Wall Street they're going after now... where the money from Middle America flows and drops like a giant Coinstar. I watch these protesters on the news and for the first time in awhile I have hope. One day, we'll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun, but first, I guess, the darkness... like homework, must be endured. Give the darkness to Claude, let him smoke it; Matt Dillon, go on and create modern indie junkie comovage cinema with Gus Van and Francis Ford. Motorcycle Boy, YOU Live! We... we belong dead. We will go now, into the beyond. Never before has a bus ride to juvenile hall seemed like such a triumph, a march into Valhalla, on the rays of a beautiful sun, one day, when the world is much righter.