Halloween A Go-go

They Say...

Review by Mark Deming, All Music Guide

After compiling a handful of volumes of garage rock nuggets for Wicked Cool Records' Coolest Songs in the World series, Little Steven Van Zandt gets into a seasonal mood with his disc, which features 15 songs suitable for Halloween listening. How Van Zandt was able to put together a collection of spooky tunes without a single song by the Cramps or the Misfits defies logic, and there are a few songs here that seem truly out of place. Van Zandt has finally included a cut by his boss Bruce Springsteen on one of his comps, but "Restless Nights" (an outtake from the sessions for The River) hardly sounds like prime spook house material, and as great a tune as Carl Perkins' "Put Your Cat Clothes On" is, it's way too upbeat for this company (unless you read it as an encouragement to put on your trick or treating costume). For the most part, though, Halloween a Go-Go spans genres and decades with style -- Howlin' Wolf truly lives up to his name on "Howlin' for My Darlin'," legendary horror host John Zacherley gets suitably crazy on the classic "Dinner with Drac," the Pretty Things deliver some primo psychedelia with the moody "Walking Through My Dreams," Roky Erickson sounds like he means just what he says when he sings "I Walked with a Zombie," the Minus Five bring out the rock on "Lies of the Living Dead," the Chesterfield Kings, the Fuzztones, and the Stems lead the charge for modern day garage monsters, and while Donovan might seem a bit lightweight for this crowd, "Season of the Witch" closes out the set with a truly fitting note of dread. Halloween a Go-Go is far from the definitive horror rock collection, but it's better than most compilations following this template, and there's a welcome stylistic variety that should appeal to the thinking ghoul's tastes.