OFF-TOPIC: Bauhaus - Bela Lugosi’s Dead

With Halloween coming up, I went to go get the radio edit of Bauhaus's "Bela Lugosi's Dead."

...Except, the song didn't even crack the Hot 100 back in '83 when it was featured in that vampire movie with David Bowie, so there's no listing in the database, and when you go to Discogs, you find a promo 45 WAS released... but no time is listed.

If it truly ran at 45 RPM, there's no way you could fit the whole 9 & 1/2 minute song onto one side!

So, I rolled my own edit. I'm pretty pleased with the results. I kept every vocal element, and all but one of the edits near the beginning is inaudible unless you have the song memorized. It times out at 4:13, and fades.

Having done this, it re-occured to me that there likely WAS an edit on that 45.

Does anybody have it, or know the length / edit points for the promo version of this Halloween classic?

lol.. he does do a OT of that, doesn't he? :)

In trying to chop it down, I was originally going to try to avoid all out of tune notes and apparent mistakes (since it was all done in one take).

I found there wasn't going to be much song left if I did. :-D

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who's tried to research this; it would be interesting to compare edits!

Where I work, we have a company that supplies bundles of music for play over the speakers located throughout the building, including themed packages for certain holidays, one of them being Halloween. So each year, for roughly the 6-8 weeks leading up to October 31, we often get to hear the Halloween package played during our shift - and I must say, the people who put this stuff together did a really impressive job, researching & digging up many obscure/forgotten tunes. And they're all the original hit recordings by the original artists, too, w/ a few later cover versions also thrown in for good measure. (Haven't yet heard "Bela Lugosi's Dead" or Pendulum's "Gypsy Spirit", though...)

While few of the songs were recorded specifically for Halloween, until I started hearing them all together, I guess I never really thought about just how many hits over the years actually have topics/themes that could easily be associated w/ the holiday - and in most cases, the music itself fits right in, too! Many are old "kiddie" songs from movies and TV shows dating all the way back to the '50s & '60s (including the themes from "The Munsters", "Addams Family", etc.), as well as some instrumentals from the same period which I recognize, but don't necessarily know the artist/title to (hey, before my time, lol). There's probably enough music in the Halloween package to be played over two full shifts w/o any repeats (not counting multiple versions of a few songs), so if I had to guess, I'd say it has at least 200 songs on it; maybe even upwards of 250...

In chronological order, here's a sampling of about 60 heard on the package, all of which I was able to positively i.d. (oh, and bold = top 40 hits, by Pat's standards):

1958 "The Purple People Eater" - SHEB WOOLEY
1958 "Witch Doctor" - DAVID SEVILLE
1959 "The Caretaker" - JOHNNY CASH
1962 "Monster Mash" - BOBBY "BORIS" PICKETT AND THE CRYPT-KICKERS
1964 "Dead Man's Curve" - JAN & DEAN
1965 "I'm Henry VIII, I Am" - HERMAN'S HERMITS
1966 "Season of the Witch" - DONOVAN
1966 "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" - NAPOLEON XIV
1967 "People are Strange" - THE DOORS
1968 "I Put a Spell on You" - CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL
1968 "My Baby Must Be a Magician" - MARVELETTES
1969 "Bad Moon Rising" - CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL
1972 "The Witch Queen of New Orleans" - REDBONE
1972 "Witchy Woman" - EAGLES
1973 "Boogie Man" - JACKSON 5
1974 "Spiders & Snakes" - JIM STAFFORD
1974 "Tubular Bells" - MIKE OLDFIELD
1975 "The Time Warp" - ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW
1975 "Welcome to My Nightmare" - ALICE COOPER
1976 "Strange Magic" - ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA
1978 "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" - LEWIS LEE
1978 "Psycho Killer" - TALKING HEADS
1978 "Runnin' with the Devil" - VAN HALEN
1978 "Supernature" - CERRONE
1978 "Werewolves of London" - WARREN ZEVON
1979 "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" - CHARLIE DANIELS BAND
1979 "Planet Claire" - THE B-52'S
1979 "Spooky" - ATLANTA RHYTHM SECTION
1980 "Devil in My Car" - THE B-52'S
1980 "Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)" - DAVID BOWIE
1980 "Twilight Zone/Twilight Tone" - THE MANHATTAN TRANSFER
1981 "Charlotte Sometimes" - THE CURE
1982 "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" - DAVID BOWIE
1982 "I Want Candy" - BOW WOW WOW
1983 "The Fanatic" - FELONY
1983 "She Blinded Me with Science" - THOMAS DOLBY
1983 "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" - EURYTHMICS
1983 "Twilight Zone" - GOLDEN EARRING
1984 "Ghostbusters" - RAY PARKER, JR.
1984 "Send Me an Angel" - REAL LIFE
1984 "Somebody's Watching Me" - ROCKWELL
1984 "Thriller" - MICHAEL JACKSON
1985 "All You Zombies" - HOOTERS
1985 "Dead Man's Party" - OINGO BOINGO
1985 "Freaks Come Out at Night" - WHODINI
1985 "Slime Creatures from Outer Space" - "WEIRD AL" YANKOVIC
1985 "Weird Science" - OINGO BOINGO
1988 "A Nightmare on My Street" - DJ JAZZY JEFF & THE FRESH PRINCE
1989 "So Alive" - LOVE & ROCKETS
1991 "Fear (Of the Unknown)" - SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES
1994 "Monsta' Rap" - ELVIRA (MISTRESS OF THE DARK)
1994 "Zombie" - THE CRANBERRIES
1996 "Devils Haircut" - BECK
1996 "Don't Scream (It's Only Halloween)" - ANDREW GOLD
1996 "I'm Your Boogie Man" - WHITE ZOMBIE (sinister version of 1977 KC&SB hit)
1996 "Spell on Me" - REVEREND HORTON HEAT
1998 "The Creature Stole My Surfboard" - DEAD ELVI
2000 "Voodoo" - GODSMACK

The above list is by no means complete, but you get the idea. A wide variety, for sure, but I find the dearth of tunes from the last 15 years or so to be quite interesting (although to be fair, there were a few additional songs I know were recorded in the past decade, but didn't know the artist/title, so they aren't included); I feel it just goes to show how little the music industry has to offer nowadays. But on the flip side, I must say, how refreshing to actually get to listen to some old forgotten favorites that I just don't hear anywhere else outside of my own personal music collection, such as "The Fanatic", "Send Me an Angel", or "Dead Man's Party" - geez, and while they've never ranked in my top 10, hearing Manhattan Transfer's "Twilight Zone/Twilight Tone" certainly brings back memories (got a lot of play on top 40 radio in SoCal, where I lived at the time, even though it wasn't a huge hit). I realize at this point there's only three more days till Halloween, but many of the above are definitely worth adding to anyone's playlist, if you hadn't already thought of them...

"Don't be afraid - it's only me..." :-)

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Must-play '80s song of the day (chart hit, but not necessarily top 40 - and if you don't already have it, track it down, lol) (also heard in the Halloween package above, but intentionally left off the list - a classic FUN song, if you've never heard it!):

"What can you do?/
You're in a stew/
Hot pot, cook it up/
I'm never gonna stop/
Fancy a bite/
My appetite/
Yum yum, gee, it's fun/
Banging on a different drum..."

(clues: 1983; female vocals)

Don't forget Bobby Boris Pickett's mid-80s "Monster Rap".
What about "Monster"--Fred Schneider (of the B-52s).

A few favorite "treats":

1959 "The Mummy" - Bob McFadden & Dor

1964 "I Want My Baby Back" - Jimmy Cross

1971 "For Madmen Only" - Steppenwolf (B-side of "Ride With Me.") I'd play this at 33 1/3 while handing out candy.

1996 "The Devil's Radio" - Robin Hitchcock (from Moss Elixir)

Edited by Yah Shure