Music To Murder To: Countdown to Halloween (Day 13)

Every year I participate in this “Countdown to Halloween” I’m amazed by the sheer quantity and quality of my fellow Countdowners(?)—I mean, forget my little blog, check out what these fine folks are doing, etc.

And so, tonight, I’m making it a point to point out what I think are the most interesting and entertaining blogs participating in the Countdown this year!  And because I dig a good Halloween Tune, I'm only going to look at some sweet blogs that put their focus on the Sounds of the Season...

First up there’s this one dedicated to the great lost and little-heard Halloween songs that get swept under the Monster Mash tide every October by Jenny Barton.

Whatever Happened to the Transylvania Twist?

Then we have Spock's Record Round-Up which is a music blog that gets Halloweeny this time of year and we get compilations and other nifty music and sound finds that are bound to entertain!

Next up is a Podcast you can subscribe to all the time, but the genuine theme of the music and sound is horror (psychobilly, horror punk, demented surf, etc.) and it’s called Six Foot Plus!

And there’s also the not to be forgotten DestroyExist which is a very informative blog about each band they link to on sites such as YouTube and the like for each song of the day.  Some real gems are up here too!

My personal favorite this year is Halloween Hits which seems to have the ambitious goal to release one compilation mix per day for all 31 days of October!  There are 13 free to download right now and, I assume, many more to come!  Sure, there are plenty of songs I already have, but there are quite a few others that I’m new to  And the cover art on each download is classic stuff taken from classic horror films and pop culture!

CLICK ON

DOWNLOAD

 TURN UP

COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN: DAY 2

INTERIOR DESECRATION

When going about putting together this year's Countdown to Halloween blog, I got to thinking about dressing the place up a bit more for the occasion.

A little something extra to get into the mood.

So I tried coming up with alternate titles for my blog and the obvious one was "Count Blogula" as the focus of the thing is Dracula and all things vampire.  My nephew even helped come up with the idea.  But when I went looking around to see about the title, it appears that there already was a "Count Blogula"--a few, possibly.  Not really hard to believe, since it's kind of an obvious choice, and so I had to eliminate it as a faux title.

But not before I did some experimenting with the idea (and others):

Above, I wanted to try a kind of texture that was half welcome mat, half pumpkin and I think it came out pretty well.  Click to get a closer look.

This is more a neon sign approach which wasn't half bad--I try it out below with another possible blog title.

I have always loved the title of the Hammer film DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE more than any other title featuring the bloody Count and so I gave it a shot here with kind of a poster design minus the painting or photo.

I was playing around with lens flares here and kind of liked the way it almost looked like the sunrise--a clear sign that the good guys might just carry the day in your classic vampire flick!

 

Another experiment in the neon look with a different title--came up with this one last minute and have yet to take the time to see if anyone has this as their handle.  Maybe I'll get around to using it this year or next--we shall see.

And now a musical treat for all you kids out there--a little ditty about a whole different kind of vampire from Arctic Monkeys: