Happy Halloween, Pumpkins

Halloween has never been one of my favorite holidays, although most people I know tend to really get into it. As a result, I find myself imbued with just a little more Halloween spirit with each passing year. I started Halloween costume contests at two of my previous law firms and they seemed to be among the most popular workplace events of the year. Lately, I've been filing away whatever interesting Halloween-related songs and audio I run across in anticipation of putting together a special Halloween mix one of these days. Until then, here's a sampling of Halloween music to help celebrate this most ghoulish of holidays tomorrow:

Listen to a Selection of Halloween Songs from the Jazz Age

Listen to a Selection of Halloween Songs from the 1950s and '60s

Listen to a Selection of Halloween Songs from the 1970s

Here are two versions of an especially moving song from Lou Reed's 1989 album New York called "Halloween Parade." It's about the festivities held in New York's Greenwich Village each Halloween, which regularly attract a large contingent of gay revelers, among others. Written at a time when gay men were falling ill to HIV at an unbearable pace, the song is an homage to some of the regular parade participants Reed knew from previous years who, although unable to attend the parade, are nonetheless not forgotten.

Listen to the studio version of Lou Reed's Halloween Parade
Lou Reed performing Halloween Parade with his wife, Laurie Anderson, in Paris:




Finally, here's a Halloween music playlist posted recently by Roger Wilkerson, who bills himself as "The Suburban Legend." His tumblr blog offers a most amazing blend of pictures, music and ephemera from the 1950s and '60s, and he adds delightful new stuff pretty much every day. Roger's Halloween mix is posted on PodOmatic, a service I'm not familiar with that claims to feature "millions of free mixes from the planet's best independent podcasters." If Roger's posting his stuff there, that's good enough for me! But you can listen to his mix from this very site by pressing PLAY on the app that appears below. (Thanks, Roger!) Enjoy yourselves tomorrow, and please don't eat all of your children's candy.