Season of the Witch

Ten Songs for a Fright-Filled October, Pt. 1

Francisco de Goya, “Mucho hay que chupar (There is much to suck)” (1799)

At a time of encroaching fascism, rapidly escalating global warming and the ever-widening gap between haves and have-nots, few endeavors feel more pointless than nursing a pet peeve. And yet, I have to admit that few things make my molars grind involuntarily these days like the term “Spooky Season” (or even worse, “Spooky Szn” for short), which for whatever reason has become popularly applied to this time of year. What happened to just good old Halloween, people? Is that term somehow not Instagrammable enough for you?

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays; and if I must ascribe a seasonal nickname to it, I’ll go with “Season of the Witch,” thank you very much. (Or maybe “Season of the VVitch,” in honor of the 2015 film starring Anya Taylor-Joy, which remains one of my favorite horror flicks of this century.) To me, this expression does a much better job of capturing the mystery and menace of these days when the shadows grow longer, leafless tree limbs begin to reach out against the grey sky like the wizened hands of ancient crones, and I try to cram as many horror films — and as much horror literature and written accounts of “true ghost stories”— as I can into a single month. Of course, I can enjoy these things all year ‘round… but they taste particularly good in October.

Of course, I also listen to plenty of seasonally-appropriate music in October, which made me think that I should post a JTL piece about my Top 10 favorite Halloween jams. I quickly realized, however, that I have way, way too many serious Halloween faves to whittle them down to a mere ten. Therefore, I’ve decided to break ‘em up into a few different posts — beginning with this one, which compiles my ten favorite cuts pertaining to those most misunderstood beings known as witches. Light a candle for protection, and read on!

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Lou Rawls — Season of the Witch

So yeah, big props to Donovan for writing the classic song from which this post takes its name, even if the “beatniks are out to make it rich” line always cracks me up. Lotsa folks have covered it over the years, but give me Brother Lou’s slow-burning, David Axelrod-produced take every damn day of the week and twice on the Sabbath. That fuzz guitar and Hammond organ just sound so damn sweet together, the groove is funky as hell, and Lou’s cautionary asides about “that dirty, dirty witch y’all” makes him sound all too familiar with that of which (witch?) he sings.

The Shades — Voodoo Woman

I first bought a repress of this insane 1963 doo-wop banger back in the mid-’90s from the Norton Records catalog; I purchased it without having ever heard it, because I figured I couldn’t go wrong with a Norton-approved song about a voodoo woman — and my instincts once again proved correct. Not sure what I love more about this recording — the woozy vocals, the backing track that’s so poorly recorded it melts into a semi-audible blur of jungle rhythms, or the singer’s request that the titular witch sprinkle a magic powder around his unfaithful lover’s bed so that she’ll “Wake up in the morning and GOT NO HEAD”. Good lord [choke]!

The Rattles — The Witch

German band The Rattles have existed in one form or another since 1960, but their lone international hit was this freaky 1970 psych-rocker in which singer Edna Bejarano is tormented by the presence of a witch that only she can see. The video adds an extra level of creepiness and intensity to the whole affair.

The Kinks — Wicked Annabella

Like many eccentric old women before and after her, Wicked Annabella is the subject of local rumors about broom-riding, brew-mixing, child-snatching and demon-enslaving, all of which Dave Davies recounts with an appropriately spooked vocal on the freakiest track The Kinks ever recorded.

“With Village Green Preservation Society, obviously the songs are mainly Ray’s songs, but we worked on them very closely together,” Dave told me in a 2018 interview looking back at that album’s 50th anniversary. “Because the concept — the idea of an album about a village green — it touched on a lot of characters we knew that weren’t too dissimilar to the people in the fictitious version of Village Green: the shopkeepers, the neighbors, the crazy old woman that lived down the road. ‘Wicked Annabella’ is based on the crabby old lady that didn’t like kids running on her lawn, that kind of thing.”

The Lollipop Shoppe — You Must Be a Witch

“You Must Be a Witch” bears more than a little resemblance to “7 and 7 Is”-era Love, both in its slashing attack and in the tense, haunted vocals of Fred Cole, who would much later re-emerge with Portland cult faves Dead Moon. There’s definitely some Beck-era Yardbirds in the mix as well; and even though the song wasn’t a hit back in 1968, it is rightly regarded today as a garage classic.

Kiriae Crucible — Salem Witch Trial

“Lucifer invades the town through their eyes — they are condemned to die!” could be the tagline from a particularly lurid 1960s horror film, but it’s actually a lyric from the fantastic (and fantastically rare) “Salem Witch Trial” by Wisconsin garage quintet Kiriae Crucible. Eerie organ, way-out wah-wah and spooktacular sound effects make the song a perfect Halloween spin, but the sincerity of the vocals keeps things from veering into the campy end of the spectrum.

Sharon Tandy — Daughter of the Sun

The late Sharon Tandy cut a number of wonderful ‘60s sides in a Julie Driscoll/Dusty Springfield kind of vein, but my two favorites are the hard-rocking “Hold On” and the witchy “Daughter of the Sun,” both of which feature backing from the killer British freakbeat band Les Fleur de Lys. I especially dig “Daughter of the Sun” because there’s no shame in Sharon’s game; damn right she’s a witch, she says — and in fact, she’s gonna hop right on her broomstick to be with you soon!

The Sonics — The Witch

Pacific Northwest garage legends The Sonics definitely spent some time on the macabre side of the avenue; “He’s Waiting” was one of the first rock songs to mention Satan, while “Strychnine” and “Psycho” are pretty self-explanatory. And then there’s this slamming number, wherein frontman Gerry Roslie descends into gibbering madness at the mere mention of the woman who made him itch — The Witch!

Motorhead — I’m Your Witchdoctor

Male witches gotta be represented here as well — and I can think of no one better to rep them than Lemmy Kilmister, if only because he certainly enjoyed a potion and powder or two in his day. This track was originally cut by British blues legend John Mayall back in 1965 (with Jimmy Page producing), but I love the primal rawness of Motörhead’s 1977 version even more.

Carl Douglas — Witchfinder General

1968’s Witchfinder General is one of my all-time favorite folk horror flicks, but it’s also so intense and disturbing that I really have to be in the right mood to watch it. Vincent Price gives a brilliant performance in it as self-appointed witch hunter Matthew Hopkins; but unlike so many of his other horror roles, he plays this one completely straight and full of evil — there’s no campy scenery chewing or humorous twinkles in his eye, which is one of the things that makes his performance as Hopkins so completely chilling and repellent.

Flash forward six years, and soul singer Carl Douglas — he of “Kung Fu Fighting” fame — is apparently so impressed by Witchfinder General that he decides to write and record a song of the same name. The song captures absolutely none of the film’s creepy atmosphere or nihilistic darkness, but it does have a great mid-’70s blaxploitation-style groove, a chorus that sounds suspiciously similar to Telly Savalas’s “Who Loves Ya Baby,” and the immortal couplet, “Says he’s got a thing about burning witches/Ooh some of these were mighty fine bitches.” Vincent Price surely couldn’t have put it better himself.

All right then — got a favorite witch song which (witch?) sounds especially good around Halloween? Please drop it in the comments. And as long as we’re on the topic… any of y’all play Which Witch back in the ‘70s? I loved that game…

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