rfg XL - "Black roses in the cemetery"

When it comes to my Hallowe'ens, half of the chills and thrills arrive in the form of spills.

As I prepared this week's show — all about spooky music with a mix of some campiness and some outright horror — I was getting frustrated with trying to fill 90 minutes of airtime, which usually comprises of 75-80 minutes of music. I fretted over the final cuts on Sunday and set myself up for a pretty solid show. I figured I had a reasonable backup plan in the form of the Dawn of the Dead soundtrack — graciously provided to me by a co-worker on his original vinyl — in case I wanted to swap a few songs, though that score wound up somewhat less ethereal than I was expecting.

Never did I expect to jump on the air a half hour early though, as the previous host never made his shift this week (I should email him and check to see how he's doing). Once I arrived at the station, I found out what the deal was and dove right into the show at 7pm. The basic plan I had was to run with the show as it was and then somehow come up with the last half hour based on my extra tracks and those that were left off.

Whatever my intentions were...well, you can hear that the seams were roughly sewn, especially as I juggled around my tracklist during the last hour and switched sloppily from my iPod to the laptop when I ran out of the homebrew. (Please don't ask what I was thinking when I started snapping my fingers, or tried to snap said fingers, ugh.) There was a quick fade-out of the Throbbing Gristle song halfway through as I finally clearly heard the rather gruesome story being told, which would generally fly all right on a campus radio station though not during primetime. Actually listening to the lyrics, or at least reading them beforehand, is going to be a new habit to learn, considering I was already slightly leery about the Golden Palominos song later on, a track that has bolted me awake one night as I heard Nicole Blackman's eerie tale of a kidnapping.

One thing I wish I had done was feature the original song by Delia Derbyshire I had selected; a long piece featuring a woman talking about the ocean. A quirky tale would have provided a little break from the increasingly ominous latter half of the show, though Derbyshire's an artist who deserves her own profile very soon.

All in all, this episode should definitely raise the hair on the back of your neck, intentionally or not. I had reluctant expectations going into this show, and I adequately met them at times.

I present to you now your playlist. Please inspect each song for possible razors and other spikey objects before listening.