SDP Halloween Audio Guide

I did my annual post on Halloween movies.  It's time to add another feature to the ever-expanding galaxy of services offered by SDP: Halloween audio.  If you want to put together a quick mixer disk for a Halloween party, I suggest the following:

1. Cat People, by Giorgio Moroder with the Theme by David Bowie.  It is dense, electronic music, perfect for the dark holiday.
2. The House on the Hill, by Audience.  Great spooky story told in a rock song (and I wouldn't go near that house on the hi-hi-hi-hill...)
3. Monsters in the Night, by Greg Abate.  Straight ahead jazz bop by an masterful sax and flute player.  The music isn't particularly spooky, but all the numbers have titles from the great 30's horror movies, like Dracula and Frankenstein.
4. And last, but not least, The Man Who Got No Sign, by Shell Silverstein.  Silverstein made his name writing very clever books for children.  The Freakers Ball album, on which this song is found, is strictly for adults.  The song is about the perils of superstition, but it is told in a deliciously spooky way. 

All of the above are available on iTunes.  You can have one or two Halloween disks burned in minutes.

If it's spooky stories you are looking for, podcasting has revived audio storytelling, mostly dead since TV eclipsed radio.  One site is so good that it's no use mentioning any other this year.  Pseudopod is a weekly horror podcast.  I am a devoted fan.  The stories are excellent and well-read, and each one will chill the blood to the recommended Halloween temperature.  You can download them to your iPod, but if you don't have one of those (who are you?), you can download from the website or into iTunes and burn it on a CD. 

I highly recommend Pseudopod 52: That Old Black Magic, a tale of demonic contracts and old girlfriends, told in a film-noir voice.  P51, Brothers, weaves the Jewish story of the Golum (a clay man animated by magic) together with the Holocaust.  P50 is a nice Lovecraftian tale with a Victorian science of the occult subtext.  My recent favorite is P49 Big Boy.  It is the story of a boy trying to save himself and a little girl from adults turned into murderous faux-zombies by a chemical plant explosion.  It opens in a day-care center rocked by a distant tremor.  This one pushes all my buttons.  And then there is P46 The Hanging at Christmas Bridge, another Lovecraftian piece about a bridge on a lonely road that you really shouldn't look at as you drive by.  If you are in the mood for a spooky story, and you have an internet connection, Pseudopod is your ticket.