October 26th, 2007
1. Bauhaus, "Bela Lugosi's Dead" (available on Crackle: The Best Of Bauhaus)
Arguably the first true goth song, Bauhaus' 1979 debut single "Bela Lugosi's Dead" honors the memory of the B-movie actor who immortalized Dracula onstage and onscreen in the '20s and '30s. Lugosi himself probably would've crapped his pants had he ever heard it, though: The song is a tense, horrific nine minutes of doom-laden bass, scraped guitar strings, and ghoulish lines from frontman Peter Murphy, like "The bats have left the bell tower / the victims have been bled." It all sounds like good fun to desensitized ears, but even the most jaded hipsters of the night have the sense to bow low before the lord of all Halloween anthems.
2. Roky Erickson, "Night Of The Vampire" (available on The Evil One)
Nobody gives a song about monsters quite the sense of authenticity that cult legend Roky Erickson does. In the '60s, Erickson helped invent psychedelic music, but by the '80s, his mental health had deteriorated and he was almost exclusively recording songs about horror movies, demons, alligator men, and other paranoid delusions. Still, those songs had plenty of punch, thanks to the inimitable intensity of his vocals and the wholehearted glee and sincerity he brought to the material. "Night Of The Vampire" is one of the high points of Erickson's classic The Evil One; it drips with midnight-movie warnings about the approaching bloodsucker, along with some practical advice for any potential vampire victim: "If it's raining and you're running / don't slip in mud / 'cause if you do / you'll slip in blood tonight." Sensible footwear is key!
3. Concrete Blonde, "Bloodletting (The Vampire Song)" (available on Bloodletting)
The title track from what's arguably the career high point of singer and songwriter Johnette Napolitano, "Bloodletting (The Vampire Song)" was inspired by the vampire novels of Anne Rice and Sting's song "Moon Over Bourbon Street" (itself a Rice homage, from the days when Sting was still worth listening to). Though steeped in goth imagery ("they used to dance in the garden in the middle of the night") and set in Rice's New Orleans, "Bloodletting" avoids falling into embarrassing cliché, thanks to a roots-rocky riff and a shuffle beat that sounds more than a little like Los Lobos.
4. Hot Blood, "Soul Dracula" (available on Disco Dracula)
This German-made oddity from the height of the disco era was a hit single in its day, but it now serves as a weirdly catchy but mostly just weird example of how low disco music could sink in its search for novelty themes to shore up a shaky foundation of dance beats and shallow fashion. (Only The Lawrence Welk Show was a more hilariously cringe-worthy cultural co-optation machine.) The entirety of Hot Blood's lone album was vampire-themed, including songs like "Even Vampires Fall In Love" and "Terror On The Dance Floor." It certainly proves that what the punks used to say is true: Disco sucks.
5. Allan Sherman, "My Son, The Vampire" (available on Dr. Demento Presents: Spooky Tunes & Scary Melodies)
One of a long line of songs in the tradition of "My Son, The Folk Singer" and "My Son, The Nut," the vampire entry from Allan Sherman's canon feels like a B-side form start to finish. After an unrelated 20-second drum solo, the song kicks into gear as Sherman dresses down his son, the vampire. Over an abrupt, repeating piano phrase, he warns listeners not to dine with his vampire son, and he shows no paternal protectiveness in disapproving lyrics such as "My son the vampire / He'll make you a wreck / Every time he kisses you / There'll be two holes in your neck." Nevertheless, Sherman does concede that blood is pretty tasty. Like father, like son.
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