Halloween is gone, but these scary songs play on


When I was 7 years old - yes, 7 years old - my mother took me to see Brian DePalma's ``Carrie,'' and when that final scene came around, in which Sissy Spacek's muddy, bloody hand comes shooting out of her grave to grab Amy Irving and yank her down to the bowels of hell, and the drunk in the back of the theater yelled out ``bloooowwwwwwwwwwhhhhhhhoooooooaaaaaackkkkkkkk!!! '' (or something to that effect) I vowed I would never go near another scary movie again in my life. Then I saw the decapitation ending to ``Friday the 13th'' one night on cable. With no sound. And I remember saying, ``This looks so fake. '' And my mother laughed. And I was angry that I had ever been scared in the first place. What does this have to do with pop music? Well, it's the same story. Surely everyone has their moments of terror - those times when you first heard a certain song that unexpectedly spooked the bejesus out of you and forced you to listen to nothing but Boston and the Carpenters for the rest of the month. Later, of course, you realized that it was just a song. And you could destroy it with a scratch from a needle. (CDs are another matter.) I've got plenty of these skeletons rattling 'round my brain. Most of them don't spook me as much as they used to, seeing as how I gravitate toward the macabre now. Here then, in alphabetical order, are some of the most terrifying tunes (OK, one's an album) I've ever heard. Some of them you'll laugh at. I don't care. Tell me when it's safe to come out from the covers. ``African Night Flight,'' David Bowie - Many won't know it, and they're better off. I love it, but I have to prepare myself. It's just so ... um, odd. The Thin White Duke has a way of speak-singing that dislocates him from everything at hand, while the strange doubling of his voice (one low, one shrieking) is the aural equivalent of insanity. Paranoid and petrified. ``Atrocity Exhibition,'' Joy Division - A case could easily be made for virtually anything ever uttered by Ian Curtis, but this frenetic, dissonant and ghoulishly inviting number does more to upset than all of his band's recorded minimalism combined. That chorus phrase - ``This is the way, step inside'' - still chills me. ``Bela Lugosi's Dead,'' Bauhaus - To be honest, ``Hollow Hills'' spooks me more now, but there is something undeniably menacing about this Goth-rock epic. Maybe it's the clacking drum sticks. Or Daniel Ash's screeching guitar. Probably it's (still) Peter Murphy's disturbed I'm-dead-I'm-dead-I'm-dead drone. ``The Candlelight Song,'' the Violent Femmes - If you don't know it, you're really missing out. The Femmes' leader, Gordon Gano, greatly plays at being psychotic and relates how everything is going to hell super-fast simply because his doll is dead. Couple it with Siouxsie's ``Voodoo Dolly'' (read on) for maximum fright. From ``The Blind Leading the Naked. '' ``(Don't Fear) The Reaper,'' Blue Oyster Cult - See, you have to understand that certain songs made a deep impression on me at a very early age. When I hear this now, especially when I'm in my car, I groove heavily and sing along loudly. When I was 11 and listened to it with headphones on in the dark and that galvanizing guitar break was unleashed, well, I had to sleep with the lights on for the rest of the week. ``The Downward Spiral,'' Nine Inch Nails - All of it. Brutally terrifying. Nothing compares. Nothing comes close. ``The Dreaming,'' Kate Bush - All my life I've been trying to figure out what Kate is singing about on this aboriginal heart-pounder - and I've seen the lyrics. The moment that jars me every time is when she goes into that stuttering bit - ``de-de-de-de-de, tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh, ah-ah-ah-ah-ah, muh-muh-muh-muh-muh. '' Makes me feel like someone's hiding in the next room. ``The End,'' the Doors - If your blue bus is really calling us, Jim, I'll hop a flight going the opposite direction. The heavy-duty Oedipal routine at this epic's center isn't nearly as mortifying anymore - not once you've heard it a dozen times or watched ``Apocalypse Now. '' But Robbie Krieger's Eastern guitar strains ... now there's something wicked! ``From Her to Eternity,'' Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Australia's favorite freak has made a career out of plundering the depths of demonism, both personal and external. Here, he caterwauls about his undying love to a woman who has so possessed him he's brought first to anger, then to tears - though Nick probably thinks it's romantic. The plinking piano gives just the right touch of tension. See also his horrifying ``Stagger Lee. '' ``Give Me It,'' The Cure - It's actually just a noisy punk song. But if you're not expecting it, Robert Smith's opening howl will make your hair stand on end. From ``The Top. '' ``God of Thunder,'' Kiss - I know. It's not scary. It's not even all that good. But when I was 8 my best friend told me the sound of the kids screaming at the beginning was real - those were the shrieks they let out as Gene Simmons ate them alive, he said. I've never been able to listen to it since. ``Heigh Ho (Dwarf's Marching Song),'' Tom Waits - Just looking at Tom Waits is frightening enough. Listening to him, often a divine nightmare. And this spine-tingling retelling of the classic happy-go-lucky Disney tune? Rapturously evil. God knows what work Tom is really off to do. From the 1988 ``Stay Awake'' tribute album. ``Helter Skelter,'' the Beatles - It's not just that Paul's deliberately out-of-tune bass is so off-kilter it unnerves. It's the second reprise that still does me in, where Ringo screams ``I've got blisters on my fingers! '' Even knowing the background of its recording doesn't make it go down any easier. And Paul sounds deliciously devilish. Couple it with George's haunting ``Long, Long, Long'' and its howling ending and you'll really get the shivers. ``Iron Man,'' Black Sabbath - OK, so no song parodied by Beavis and Butt-head can be all that scary anymore. But think back to when you first heard Ozzy's otherworldly voice. Pretty darn scary, right? And that robotic opening: ``I ... AM ... IRON ... MAN! '' ``The Rhythm of the Heat,'' Peter Gabriel - Spirituality as scare tactic. Gabriel's own warped chant of the everlasting skeletal family, as David Bowie might have called it, starts off uneasy, then gets your heart racing and refuses to slow down. At least, not until you've cried for mercy. ``Sister Europe,'' the Psychedelic Furs - The later ``President Gas'' is actually more lyrically terrifying, but this one spooks with seriously scarred atmosphere. A slow death-knell of a beat leads to creaking guitars and singer Richard Butler's husky drawl. Downright eerie. ``Venus in Furs,'' The Velvet Underground - I clamor for it now. It's usually the first track I click to whenever I put on the Velvets' debut. But the uncertainty I felt when I first heard Lou sing about shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather and his whip-lash girl-child in the dark overwhelmed me. I was petrified. Still am, I guess. ``Voodoo Dolly,'' Siouxsie and the Banshees - I prefer the version on the live album ``Nocturne. '' Actually, I prefer the whole of ``Nocturne'' to almost any fright around, including ``The Exorcist'' and ``Halloween. '' Even when it's being graceful, it haunts, and the majority of it will have you screaming for help louder than Lennon at the beginning of ``Revolution. '' ``Voodoo Dolly'' is merely the pinnacle of its pain.

  • By: BEN WENER The Orange County Register
    Date: 11/06/98