by Julian Spivey As we welcome October with its cool breezes, and - now socially distanced - festivities, we often think of scary movies, pumpkin patches and killers in masks. Rarely, if ever, do you hear anyone say what they’re looking forward to most about the season, is the music. Granted, Halloween music has nowhere near the mega-market that Christmas music has, but it seems that quality trumps quantity in this particular situation. With songs like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” Halloween season is a heavy hitter when it comes to music! That’s why we’re celebrating 31 Days of Halloween Hits here at The Word for the entire month of October. Every day we’re going to bring you a great song that fits right in on your Halloween playlist. Some are songs specifically written for the holiday, but others are great selections you can listen to year-around but have a great theme for the spookiest of all holidays. Some of these songs you’ve certainly heard and some are lesser known that we hope to familiarize you with. Gotta have more cowbell, baby! Blue Öyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” has been an excellent song for Halloween playlists long before being featured in quite possibly the greatest “Saturday Night Live” sketch of all-time in 2000. The song off the group’s fourth studio album Agents of Fortune in 1976 has remained the rock band’s most famous and highest charting song topping out at No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in late ’76 (how did 1981’s “Burnin’ for You” barely crack the Top 40?). “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” with lyrics that aren’t quite as scary as its title, deals with eternal love and the inevitability of death and was written and sung by Blue Öyster Cult’s lead guitarist Buck Dharma while picturing an early death for himself (there’s some creepiness for you – Dharma is still alive to this day though). The song, which Rolling Stone included as one of its Top 500 Songs of All-Time in a 2003 issue, references such tragic love stories as William Shakespeare’s classic Romeo and Juliet, which has led to some listeners over the years believing the song to be about a murder-suicide pact instead of eternal love as Dharma intended. The song also includes a line about “40,000 men and women every day,” which was Dharma’s guess at how many people on this planet die on average every day, but that number – according to a Boing Boing fact-checking mission of the song in 2014 is about 100,000 lower than actuality. One thing is for certain, “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” is without a doubt one of the most unique and strangest love songs of all-time and mix in the band’s mysteriously creepy name it’s a good mood for Halloween. Get out your cowbell and bang along!
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by Julian Spivey As we welcome October with its cool breezes, and - now socially distanced - festivities, we often think of scary movies, pumpkin patches and killers in masks. Rarely, if ever, do you hear anyone say what they’re looking forward to most about the season, is the music. Granted, Halloween music has nowhere near the mega-market that Christmas music has, but it seems that quality trumps quantity in this particular situation. With songs like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” Halloween season is a heavy hitter when it comes to music! That’s why we’re celebrating 31 Days of Halloween Hits here at The Word for the entire month of October. Every day we’re going to bring you a great song that fits right in on your Halloween playlist. Some are songs specifically written for the holiday, but others are great selections you can listen to year-around but have a great theme for the spookiest of all holidays. Some of these songs you’ve certainly heard and some are lesser known that we hope to familiarize you with. “Black Magic Woman” was originally recorded by Fleetwood Mac when they were a blues-rock group in their early days of the late ‘60s, before Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined in the mid-‘70s and the group turned to a more pop-rock sound, as it was written by the band’s guitarist Peter Green. Released as a single it didn’t receive much fanfare until Santana covered it in 1970 and took the song to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in early 1971. “Black Magic Woman” is still heavily featured on classic rock format radio stations to this day and is arguably considered Santana’s biggest hit, or at least was until 1999’s “Smooth” with Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty took pop culture by storm. The tale of a voodoo lady trying to seduce a man and “make a devil out of me” belongs on any Halloween playlist with its soulful vocals by Gregg Rolie and Carlos Santana’s excellent, haunting guitar playing. “Black Magic Woman” would also pair extremely well on your Halloween playlist with the band’s previous top-10 hit from the year before, “Evil Ways.” by Julian Spivey As we welcome October with its cool breezes, and - now socially distanced - festivities, we often think of scary movies, pumpkin patches and killers in masks. Rarely, if ever, do you hear anyone say what they’re looking forward to most about the season, is the music. Granted, Halloween music has nowhere near the mega-market that Christmas music has, but it seems that quality trumps quantity in this particular situation. With songs like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” Halloween season is a heavy hitter when it comes to music! That’s why we’re celebrating 31 Days of Halloween Hits here at The Word for the entire month of October. Every day we’re going to bring you a great song that fits right in on your Halloween playlist. Some are songs specifically written for the holiday, but others are great selections you can listen to year-around but have a great theme for the spookiest of all holidays. Some of these songs you’ve certainly heard and some are lesser known that we hope to familiarize you with. As we’re now almost 10 months into the year from Hell that has been 2020, doesn’t it seem like the visuals of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s apocalyptic 1969 hit “Bad Moon Rising” could occur at pretty much any moment? Like if someone just stopped me on the street and said: “Don’t go around tonight/Well it’s bound to take your life/There’s a bad moon on the rise.” I’d be like, “Yeah, that figures!” That’s probably how things felt in the late ‘60s too when CCR frontman John Fogerty wrote the song following the Hell that was 1968 in America with the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, the civil rights struggles and the protests revolving around the Vietnam War. Or maybe Fogerty simply got the idea from watching a movie, as he told Rolling Stone in 1993. Fogerty reportedly wrote “Bad Moon Rising” after watching the 1941 film “The Devil and Daniel Webster” and being inspired by a scene involving a hurricane. He told the magazine the song was about: “the apocalypse that was going to be visited upon us.” Maybe he was 50 years too early? by Julian Spivey
All weekend long artists streamed shows live from independent venues across this great nation that have been struggling to survive amidst the COVID-19 pandemic that has essentially shut down live music since mid-March. The benefit known as Save Our Stages featured artists like Foo Fighters, Reba McEntire, Miley Cyrus, Macklemore, Kelsea Ballerini, Phoebe Bridgers, Brittany Howard, The Roots, Little Big Town, Dave Matthews, The Lumineers and many more performing from great and truly historical venues from around the country like the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville and the Troubadour and Whisky A Go-Go in Los Angeles. The sets have been streamed at both saveourstages.com and YouTube and links to donate to the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) in an effort to keep many of these venues from disappearing have been up throughout the sets. One of my favorite bands since their 2012 debut has been the Americana/folk/indie group The Lumineers based out of Colorado. The Lumineers have released three albums since coming onto the scene and I feel like every one of them: The Lumineers (2012), Cleopatra (2016) and III (2019) have been excellent from start to finish. I was thrilled to catch their brisk 11-song, 45-minute set from the Boulder Theater in Boulder, Colo. streaming as part of the Save Our Stages benefit on Sunday, Oct. 18. It truly showed how talented of performers and songwriters band members Wesley Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites are. The only negative aspect of the show is it just made me want to be there in person to see, as The Lumineers are a band I haven’t had the privilege of seeing live as they really haven’t come around my neck of the woods in Arkansas. Schultz spoke multiple times about how important independent venues are to the music industry and to the artists themselves. Schultz remarked that he even had his wedding reception at the Boulder Theater, that’s how much it means to him. The group spread the love around with tracks from each of their albums, with four songs from their self-titled debut, four from Cleopatra and two from their most recent album III and an exquisite cover of a Bruce Springsteen song. The Lumineers have a great many terrific songs that are named after women and these songs like the ear-worm “Ophelia,” “Donna,” “Cleopatra” and “Angela” were among my favorites of their set. But, I believe my two favorite performances were the cover of Springsteen’s “My City of Ruins,” from his 2002 album The Rising that started as a tribute to his adopted hometown of Asbury Park, N.J. and kind of took on a second life and meaning following 9/11, and the final performance of The Lumineers’ set, “Stubborn Love,” which is one of my favorites from their debut. “My City of Ruins” was a particularly touching choice for the group, who’s two original members Schultz and Fraites are originally from New Jersey like Springsteen, with it taking on a new life (once again) as a hope for these independent venues to remain alive and the pandemic to end soon so we can all get back to live music. One surprising omission from the group’s set was their biggest hit, “Ho Hey,” which was a top five hit for them in 2012. Maybe they’ve just grown tired of playing it so much throughout the years? If you would like to join The Lumineers in helping to Save Our Stages you can do so at saveourstages.com. by Julian Spivey As we welcome October with its cool breezes, and - now socially distanced - festivities, we often think of scary movies, pumpkin patches and killers in masks. Rarely, if ever, do you hear anyone say what they’re looking forward to most about the season, is the music. Granted, Halloween music has nowhere near the mega-market that Christmas music has, but it seems that quality trumps quantity in this particular situation. With songs like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” Halloween season is a heavy hitter when it comes to music! That’s why we’re celebrating 31 Days of Halloween Hits here at The Word for the entire month of October. Every day we’re going to bring you a great song that fits right in on your Halloween playlist. Some are songs specifically written for the holiday, but others are great selections you can listen to year-around but have a great theme for the spookiest of all holidays. Some of these songs you’ve certainly heard and some are lesser known that we hope to familiarize you with. If you’re anything like me you probably don’t concern yourself much with things like ghosts and ghouls and vampires and werewolves and the like but have one little spider crawl up your leg and all Hell is going to break loose. Maybe the greatest song ever written and recorded about spiders is The Who’s “Boris the Spider,” off their 1966 album A Quick One. “Boris the Spider” was The Who bassist John Entwistle’s time to shine – he’s one of the all-time greatest rock bassists – but he didn’t feature a whole lot in the band’s writing or on vocals. “Boris the Spider,” a fun little song about those creepy crawlies, was said to be Entwistle’s very first composition altogether. According to a 1971 issue of Crawdaddy, the song was written after Entwistle had been out drinking one night with Bill Wyman, the bassist of The Rolling Stones (because evidently famous rock bassists hang out), and the two were making up funny names for animals when Entwistle thought of “Boris the Spider” and wrote the track in just six minutes. The verses tell of a spider in the narrator’s home crawling up the wall, appearing above his head and the scariest of incidents for those afraid of the creepy crawlies – ending up out of sight in one’s bedroom. It’s interspersed with the simple three word chorus “Boris the Spider” sung in basso profundo by Entwistle giving the song a black comedy feel to it. Foo Fighters Play Terrific Acoustic Set at L.A.'s Iconic Troubadour to Help Save Our Stages10/18/2020 by Julian Spivey All weekend long artists have been streaming shows live from independent venues across this great nation that have been struggling to survive amidst the COVID-19 pandemic that has essentially shut down live music since mid-March. The benefit known as Save Our Stages has featured artists like Foo Fighters, Reba McEntire, Miley Cyrus, Macklemore, Kelsea Ballerini, Phoebe Bridgers, Brittany Howard, The Roots, Little Big Town, Dave Matthews, The Lumineers and many more have been performing from great and truly historical venues from around the country like the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville and the Troubadour and Whisky A Go-Go in Los Angeles. The sets have been streamed at both saveourstages.com and YouTube and links to donate to the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) in an effort to keep many of these venues from disappearing have been up throughout the sets. I watched the Foo Fighters set from the iconic Troubadour in Los Angeles on Saturday night (Oct. 17) and it was a ton of fun – which is something you can always expect from a Foo Fighters show. The band members all reminisced about their first time seeing shows at the Troubadours like frontman Dave Grohl meeting Poison’s Brett Michaels (the first rock star he claims to have ever met) and an absolute riotous story of guitarist Pat Smear’s first time at the Troubadour at a Go Gos show ending up with him fighting legendary singer-songwriter Tom Waits. Guitarist Chris Shiflett, a L.A. native, recalled his very first show with the Foo Fighters actually coming at the Troubadour in 1999. The band played a terrific five-song acoustic set that began with “Skin and Bones,” from the group’s 2006 live acoustic album (and a damn good title for an acoustic song). The rest of the set was pretty much a greatest hits showing from the band that featured some of the best performance of “My Hero,” which Grohl dedicated to Smear, “These Days” and “Times Like These” that I’ve ever heard. Like many of y’all I’ve been missing live music so damn much this year (my wife and I typically see 10 or more shows a year) and seeing Grohl and the band play so brilliantly just made that itch a bit worse. But it was also incredibly enjoyable to see. The set ended with Grohl playing alone my all-time favorite Foo Fighters song “Everlong,” off the group’s 1997 album The Colour and the Shape. There’s something special about seeing music in a small independent venue. It’s just different from large stadium and arena shows. It’s more intimate, more communal, and often the overall enjoyability factor of these venues is higher. It’s terribly sad that many of these venues around the country might not survive this pandemic. Please do what you can to help out your local independent venues so that one day when this world is better we can all enjoy live music again the way it was intended to be seen – in person and not via YouTube. And if you’re wanting to see it the only way you can these days – via streaming – check out day three of the Save Our Stages show today featuring Little Big Town (1 p.m. central time), Brothers Osborne (1:35 p.m.), Dave Matthews (2:05 p.m.), Monica (2:40 p.m.), Black Pumas (2:55 p.m.), Nathaniel Rateliff (3:10 p.m.), Reba McEntire (3:50 p.m.), The Revivalists (4:30 p.m.) and The Lumineers (5:05 p.m.). by Julian Spivey As we welcome October with its cool breezes, and - now socially distanced - festivities, we often think of scary movies, pumpkin patches and killers in masks. Rarely, if ever, do you hear anyone say what they’re looking forward to most about the season, is the music. Granted, Halloween music has nowhere near the mega-market that Christmas music has, but it seems that quality trumps quantity in this particular situation. With songs like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” Halloween season is a heavy hitter when it comes to music! That’s why we’re celebrating 31 Days of Halloween Hits here at The Word for the entire month of October. Every day we’re going to bring you a great song that fits right in on your Halloween playlist. Some are songs specifically written for the holiday, but others are great selections you can listen to year-around but have a great theme for the spookiest of all holidays. Some of these songs you’ve certainly heard and some are lesser known that we hope to familiarize you with. Yesterday (Oct. 17) was Country Music Hall of Famer Alan Jackson’s 62nd birthday, which got me to thinking about some of his greatest songs and one of those great Alan Jackson songs fits perfectly into our 31 Days of Halloween Hits series as it’s a ghost story – it’s also one of country music’s all-time greatest tribute songs to Hank Williams, likely the most influential musician in country music history. That song is “Midnight in Montgomery,” from Jackson’s 1991 album Don’t Rock the Jukebox, which was a No. 3 hit for Jackson when released as a single in 1992. The song, co-written by Jackson and Don Sampson, tells of a country singer (perhaps patterned on Jackson himself) heading to Mobile, Ala. to perform a New Year’s Eve show and stopping off in Montgomery, Ala. to visit Hank Williams’ grave and pay his respects. The ghost of Williams pops up to thank the musician for paying tribute before disappearing into the cool night air. There are numerous tributes to Williams within the song from the obvious references to his classic “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” to the more subtle like the setting being on the way to perform a New Year’s Eve show and Williams having died traveling to a New Year’s show in 1953. “Midnight in Montgomery” certainly isn’t a scary song to add to your Halloween playlist, but the ambience it creates should send chills down the spine of any country music fan. “Midnight in Montgomery” is not the first Hank Williams ghost song (David Allen Coe’s “The Ride” was a top five hit in 1983) and it likely won’t be the last either, but it is the best. by Julian Spivey As we welcome October with its cool breezes, and - now socially distanced - festivities, we often think of scary movies, pumpkin patches and killers in masks. Rarely, if ever, do you hear anyone say what they’re looking forward to most about the season, is the music. Granted, Halloween music has nowhere near the mega-market that Christmas music has, but it seems that quality trumps quantity in this particular situation. With songs like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” Halloween season is a heavy hitter when it comes to music! That’s why we’re celebrating 31 Days of Halloween Hits here at The Word for the entire month of October. Every day we’re going to bring you a great song that fits right in on your Halloween playlist. Some are songs specifically written for the holiday, but others are great selections you can listen to year-around but have a great theme for the spookiest of all holidays. Some of these songs you’ve certainly heard and some are lesser known that we hope to familiarize you with. “Southern Babylon” was one of many highlights from country singer Ashley McBryde’s 2018 major label debut album Girl Going Nowhere. Written by McBryde and Tommy Collier following a conversation about where musicians go when they die, “Southern Babylon” is the name of a bar – because as McBryde mentions in a behind the song video, of course a musician is going to go to a bar – that’s essentially purgatory. It’s interesting to find out that the song is actually about a musician dying in a car crash on the way to a gig and ending up in purgatory. I always kind of thought the musician ended up in Hell with the whole “Southern” aspect of the bar’s name, as well as the band being ready to play stuff like Charlie Daniels Band’s “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” and “Hotel California” by the Eagles. You can tell McBryde and Collier were really going for a “Hotel California” (which could be Heaven or could be Hell) with “Southern Babylon” and the track has a really nice Southern gothic feel to it that’s perfect for a Halloween playlist. by Julian Spivey As we welcome October with its cool breezes, and - now socially distanced - festivities, we often think of scary movies, pumpkin patches and killers in masks. Rarely, if ever, do you hear anyone say what they’re looking forward to most about the season, is the music. Granted, Halloween music has nowhere near the mega-market that Christmas music has, but it seems that quality trumps quantity in this particular situation. With songs like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” Halloween season is a heavy hitter when it comes to music! That’s why we’re celebrating 31 Days of Halloween Hits here at The Word for the entire month of October. Every day we’re going to bring you a great song that fits right in on your Halloween playlist. Some are songs specifically written for the holiday, but others are great selections you can listen to year-around but have a great theme for the spookiest of all holidays. Some of these songs you’ve certainly heard and some are lesser known that we hope to familiarize you with. “Runnin’ with the Devi” was really the world’s first taste of Van Halen, as the second single off their self-titled debut album in 1978 as the first single “You Really Got Me” was a rather straight-forward cover of a ‘60s hit by The Kinks. It helped usher in a new hard rock sound of the late ‘70s that would go into the ‘80s and essentially turn into the hair band music of that decade. Honestly the song is a good pick for your Halloween playlist simply because it includes “devil” in the title and, well, Halloween is the most devilish of Holidays (well, I guess that depends on how hardcore you’re into Columbus Day). It’s also a good pick in tribute to the recently deceased guitar legend Eddie Van Halen, who died on October 6 at age 65 from cancer. Some of the song’s lyrics have been misinterpreted as being satanic over the years, but “Runnin’ with the Devil” is merely a tale of a young band’s touring life and the freedom that comes with it. “Runnin’ with the Devil” is often played with “Eruption,” its B-side on the single (as well as with “You’ve Really Got Me,” as it segues into that song on the album), a minute and 42 second instrumental that many critics and fans alike believe to be one of the greatest, if not absolute greatest, guitar solos of all-time. by Julian Spivey As we welcome October with its cool breezes, and - now socially distanced - festivities, we often think of scary movies, pumpkin patches and killers in masks. Rarely, if ever, do you hear anyone say what they’re looking forward to most about the season, is the music. Granted, Halloween music has nowhere near the mega-market that Christmas music has, but it seems that quality trumps quantity in this particular situation. With songs like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” Halloween season is a heavy hitter when it comes to music! That’s why we’re celebrating 31 Days of Halloween Hits here at The Word for the entire month of October. Every day we’re going to bring you a great song that fits right in on your Halloween playlist. Some are songs specifically written for the holiday, but others are great selections you can listen to year-around but have a great theme for the spookiest of all holidays. Some of these songs you’ve certainly heard and some are lesser known that we hope to familiarize you with. If you’re looking for a song for a Halloween playlist that you’d also find pretty far up on a list of Greatest Songs of All-Time look no further than Stevie Wonder’s 1972 Billboard No. 1 hit “Superstition.” Rolling Stone magazine ranked “Superstition” as the 74th greatest songs of all-time in 2004. Seriously, is there a better lyric for Halloween than: “when you believe in things that you don’t understand then you suffer.” “Superstition” was the first single off Wonder’s Talking Book album in late 1972 and truly kicked off a decade of sheer dominance for the soulful singer that included Grammy Album of the Year wins for Innervisions, Fulfillingness’ First Finale and Songs in the Key of Life. “Superstition” was a collaboration between Wonder and Rock Hall of Fame guitarist Jeff Beck, who was an admirer of Wonder’s work. The spooky lyrics about struggling with superstitions were Wonder’s, but the music for the song came out of the opening drum beat created in studio by Beck with Wonder improvising on top of it and coming up with most of the song on the spot. |
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