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Creepy songs
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Subject: Lyr Add: DEVIL'S HOOTENANNY From: lompocan Date: 01 May 09 - 04:26 PM I got these lyrics from youtube. I know nothing of the performer, but it was creepy enough for me to cut/paste the lyrics. Devil's Hootenanny I was walking through the snow When I saw a distant glow Of a farmhouse nestled down beneath the trees With a guitar on my back I thought it sure can't hurt to ask If I could stay the night And sing a pretty song for free I walked up to the house And then I knocked hard on the door That old dark piece of wood She fell right in there on the floor And as she did a fire burst out on all sides I wondered what the hell was going on inside Then the music that I heard It was bizarre, it was absurd Like no banjo fiddle bass I'd ever seen I stepped into a room of flames Shook my head and looked again It was the kind of company to make you scream It was a devil's hootenanny An old-time fire band A drunken whiskey choir singing Round me you understand And then they said, "We've been searching near and far For a thing like you to sing and play guitar" |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: Gurney Date: 01 May 09 - 04:21 PM I gave my niece Tawney's 'Children's Songs from Devon and Cornwall' when she was little. The scream at the end of 'LADY ALL SKIN AND BONES'(?) so frightened her that she played it just once! |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: GUEST Date: 01 May 09 - 03:08 PM I once did a version of "How do you solve a problem like Maria?" from the Sound of Music in the style of Leonard Cohen in a folk club. That went down well, as you can imagine! |
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Subject: Lyr Add: ANNIE (parody:Bob Kanefsky/Fred Small) From: oldhippie Date: 16 Nov 08 - 08:20 PM This parody of Fred Small's song by Bob Kanefsky fits the bill. ANNIE (parody) Annie's up at seven on a work day, Blinking at the sun, recently set. A quick check for mail from her terminal Hooked to the net. Writing esoteric kinds of software: Cross-compilers, decryption, and more. All the folks in the biz will tell you she's a wiz, But her co-workers whisper near her door, Saying, «Chorus:» What we gonna do about Annie? Pretty little thing, looking so petite, Shouldn't work through the night. She needs fresh air and sunlight. And when does she find time to eat ? Christmas comes with questions of families. How did they raise you, and where? Avoiding any question that would date her, She asks them why they care. Looking for some dinner in the City, An extra wisp of fog that no one heeds. Man or woman, what the heck. It's only a neck. Sixteen ounces — that's all she needs. Tell me, «Chorus» Never getting too close to a mirror. Never letting down too much of her hair. Nor allowing guests to see the bedroom furniture Hid in her lair. Annie walks in late to the Christmas party. Her friends tell her, looking disturbed, "You're so pale and so thin. Why not splurge and dig in? Why, the garlic bread's simply superb!" Thinking, «Chorus» Work that you love is hard to come by, And places where they let you work at night. So she grabs a couple morsels to be quietly Tucked out of sight. But at dawn, as she flaps toward her coffin, She glares back at the cold angry glow, And dreams of the day, many decades away, When the world will be ready to know. She'll tell them: Chorus: Don't you worry about Annie. She won't waste away to bone. If she stays out of the sun, She may live to be five hundred. Annie's stronger than you'd known. |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: GUEST,Volgadon Date: 16 Nov 08 - 08:37 AM Long Lankin. Shudders. |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: Jayto Date: 15 Nov 08 - 02:46 PM All of my life by Steve Earle was actually written for the remake of the movie Psycho. Vince Vaughn played Norman Bates and it was released a while back now. So it being creepy is right on target. I agree lyrically it is creepy. I think What's he builing in there? by Tom Waits is creepy especially with that video. Someone said that Waits was the paranoid one and nothing was really up with his neighbor. To me that is the creepy part of it. It could happen to anyone. You are going about your daily business and some paranoid freak is convinced you are up to something and has acquired an obsession about what they think you are up to. That is creepy I think. Then again I have had stalkers. If you are lucky enough to never have one this song may not hit you the same way. |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: Mrs Scarecrow Date: 15 Nov 08 - 01:28 PM 'When you're in your beds at night Who knows where the scarecrow goes' |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: John Hardly Date: 15 Nov 08 - 12:16 PM This gives me the creeps when I can finally stop laughing. [Another dead link! Please give us song titles, folks! I could have fixed the link if I had known what song was meant!--A Mudelf.] |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: reggie miles Date: 15 Nov 08 - 11:49 AM Don't know if creepy is the right adjective to describe these two, The Devil and Grosssosity but it may be as close as I come in my writing attempts in that direction. Each of these can be found online to listen to as MP3s at my EZ Folk site. http://ezfolk.com/audio/bands/143/music.php |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: VirginiaTam Date: 15 Nov 08 - 08:06 AM In The Pines or Black Girl Is a brilliantly creepy song fatB****rd. Heard it performed at Blackmore (in exile) club by Lanfranc. I am going to seek that one out now. |
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Subject: Lyr Add: ALL OF MY LIFE (Steve Earle) From: Brian Peters Date: 15 Nov 08 - 07:06 AM Agree that 'The Well Below the Valley' is seriously creepy, not least because of the jaunty tune. I'll second 'Lamkin', too - it always used to scare me witless when I sang it. Has no-one mentioned 'LUCY WAN' yet? For a modern one, how about this from Steve Earle? It's followed on the disc by 'Over Yonder', a song about a man on Death Row which humanises the condemned killer. The combination of the two tracks really makes you think... ALL OF MY LIFE (Steve Earle) I guess I don't get out too much If it wasn't enough I hear all these voices Always tellin' me that I'm bad But it's all in my head - like all those scary noises chorus I've been waiting all of my life All of my life I've been waiting all of my life All of my life Some nights when I'm laying in bed Wish I was dead - and I know you'd never miss me But I know where you go when you dream Strange as that seems 'cause I never even kissed you chorus Everybody wants to be somebody's somethin' Ain't nobody wants to be blue Ain't nobody anywhere ever loved nothin' Half as much as I love you Somebody somewhere said "love is a prison" But no one really wants to be free I'd have to be crazy to ever think someone Could love a nobody like me I'm here alone in the dark But I know where you are 'Cause I can hear you breathin' Come a little closer you'll find You were meant to be mine 'Cause you're the only reason chorus |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: My guru always said Date: 15 Nov 08 - 03:55 AM JENNY GREENTEETH by Nicole Murray of Cloudstreet is a good one! I've sung it during a couple of power-cuts at Clubs and it worked so well that occasionally we turn the lights off when I sing it! |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: topical tom Date: 14 Nov 08 - 09:39 PM One of the creepiest songs of all- "Bringing Mary Home" by Charlie Waller and the Country Gentlemen. |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: GUEST,maple_leaf_boy Date: 14 Nov 08 - 09:21 PM I agree about "Mercy Seat". (At the end, when he says: "But I'm afraid I told a lie." and with the rising intensity of the Cash version. Throughout the lyrics, the narrator keeps saying that he told the truth, and at the end, he says he lied; and when you imagine about being in the chair. It's chilling.) I'd have to say that Lead Belly singing "Goodnight Irene" can be kind of creepy. He sings "I'll GET you in my dreams" rather than "I'll SEE you in my dreams" as many other singers would sing that phrase. It makes you wonder what he means by "Getting" her in his dreams. Get her as a lover? Get revenge on her? / Catch her? Get her as in understand her, like "Oh, I getcha."? Does anybody know why he says he'll "get" her? |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: CupOfTea Date: 14 Nov 08 - 11:11 AM The song that gives me the creeps the most intensely is Anne Lister's Song of the Knife. Part of the intensity comes from talking to Anne on a very hot day at Old Songs. As she told me how the song came to be written I went all over chilled in gooseflesh in startling contrast to the sullen mugginess of the day. Almost any ghost or revenant songs are creepy in my book, but who sings them and how they're sung can amp up or down the creepy factor. Cindy Mangsen has a goodly stock of creepy songs she does, but her matter-of-fact delivery keeps them from making your hair stand up - they take some time to sink in, and you need to be listening carefully. Her version of THE WALKER OF THE SNOW is like that for me, yet when she and Anne Hills do LOST JIMMY WHELAN it's just as prettily sung, but the harmonies create a creepier mood. Phil Cooper & Margaret Nelson (and later with Kate Early) have always done a good line in bloody murder & revenge ballads and can creep me out every time with DEATH OF YOUNG ANDREW or LORD ABORE AND MARY FLYNN, among dozens in their repertoire. Joanne in Cleveland |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: GUEST,Captain Colin. Date: 14 Nov 08 - 07:52 AM "DEATH COME CREEPING" would take some beating for creepiness I reckon. |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: Piers Plowman Date: 14 Nov 08 - 07:21 AM "'Oh bloody woman, we once were thine" That's no way to talk to your mother! |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: GUEST,Suffolk Miracle Date: 14 Nov 08 - 07:12 AM Biggest frissant I ever got from a folksong was in THE CRUEL MOTHER One day she walked by her father's hall And saw two bonny boys playing ball. 'Oh bonny boys if you had been mine I'd have dressed you all in silk so fine'. 'Oh bloody woman, we once were thine But we ne'er saw none of your silk so fine. All we saw was your penknife When you slit our throats and took our life' If it doesn't work on the page, get the recording of Lucy Stewart singing it. |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: the pom Date: 14 Nov 08 - 06:56 AM How about DELIA'S GONE by Johnny Cash Delia, Delia, Delia all my life If I hadn't have shot poor Delia I'd have taken her for my wife. REALLY? Then it goes something like:- first time I shot her, shot her in the leg Next time I shot her shot her in the head just to hear her beg...Gawd! |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: GUEST,redriveroldbroad Date: 13 Nov 08 - 10:00 AM re: SALLY GO ROUND THE ROSES - if memory serves me right, comes from an old English children's rhyme traced back to the plague or death in general and the origin of flowers at funerals to mask the smell in pre-embalming days - most children's rhymes when traced are pretty creepy just heard "you think I'm psycho mama" for the first time on the radio and am trying to find the writer and/or singer - yanked me right out of my coffee and the times online morning routine |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: jacqui.c Date: 01 Sep 08 - 01:48 PM THE CROW ON THE CRADLE. |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: GUEST Date: 01 Sep 08 - 01:45 PM What you said in your post is true McGrath. I have been sitting here singing nursery rhymes to myself very slowly and they do sound pretty damned creepy. Also, THE WALKER OF THE SNOW/The Shadow Hunter mentioned in a previous thread on this topic is quite spine-chilling! I have never actually heard this song though and do not know the tune. Amber |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: Jayto Date: 01 Sep 08 - 01:22 PM Country singer Marty Brown had one on a CD back in the 80's called SHE'S GONE. I used to play with Marty some and his brother and I were good friends. Mike (his brother) told me that his Grandmother died and it really tore Marty up. Marty wrote it one night sitting by her grave. You can really sense the emotion in it and it is pretty creepy. It was released by MCA records and you can probably find it online. I haven't heard it for years so if you do find it and it is not as I remember, let me know. I remember back in the day though I thought it was really creepy. I loved it though. It was never released for airplay and to be truthful I can't believe Nashville would let him put it on a CD because it was in no way shape or form what commercial. Nashville is bad about killing anything that doesn't have a chance at airplay. |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: Willa Date: 01 Sep 08 - 06:47 AM LAMBKIN |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: alison Date: 01 Sep 08 - 02:27 AM Here's another one of those "dead guy gets you out of a fix" songs CAMOUFLAGE by Stan Ridgeway. [Lyrics] he was an awfully strange marine!! anyone remember the one about the blue faced tribesmen with the cans? its driving me nuts slainte alison |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: Herga Kitty Date: 31 Aug 08 - 06:54 PM Kevin McG - there's the Halliard's version of THE WORKHOUSE BOY, too. Tim Edwards singing CHILD OWLET gives me goosebumps, though. Kitty |
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Subject: Lyr Add: THE LEGEND OF THE PALE-EYED COMPANION From: GUEST,DWR Date: 31 Aug 08 - 05:38 PM I posted this back in '99, revived it because of another Lawrence Hammond song in '02. In the intervening years, we have found that Lawrence Hammond is a Medical Doctor in the Pacific Northwest. ^^ His telling of this is sufficiently creepy. THE LEGEND OF THE PALE-EYED COMPANION (Lawrence Hammond Desert Jewel Songs BMI, 1972) as sung by Lawrence Hammond, Coyote's Dream, Takoma 1047, 1976 They say a New Mexico winter will drive old Satan from his home and the poor cowboy who's caught in the blizzard well he knows that he's never alone Cause the Devil's on the range in the winter His eyes are the color of snow And they call him the Pale-Eyed Companion He's got the shape of a wolf 'round his soul I ain't a man of superstition But there are things beneath the sky that can make a long-time cowboy lay down in the cold snow to die He feeds on the flames of your campfire to stoke up the fires of his soul And he'll creep up when the wind starts to howlin' Lord he'll leave you at the mercy of the cold Now a blizzard it caught me north of Clayton I had fifty head to go up to Raton The prairie dogs they froze down in their burrows and every step another steer was gone I ain't a man of superstition But there was something caught their eye that made them longhorns sure get edgy when I built me a fire for the night The blizzard it sang The cowbells they rang The note in the wind got so strange ... When I turned 'round in fright two eyes in the night put the winter right into my veins I drew out my rifle and I sighted I whispered a prayer to the skies But I found I could only stand and shiver In the light of his pale snowy eyes And them longhorns they'll die if you run them too fast in the high drifted snow But I saddled my pony and I drove them just as fast as any longhorn can go I ain't a man to run from danger Many's the time I've walked Boot Hill But the ghost of the Sangre de Christos never blinked as he closed for the kill I never have rightly remembered how I rode myself in from the range But I remember that trail boss a-swearin' as I left just twenty head on his hands I stayed drunk the rest of the winter Now they say that I'm touched by the moon But it's because there's a Pale-eyed Companion who waits for me outside the saloon Nobody wants a drunken cowboy But whiskey's warm and friends are cold Now they say I'm just tellin' stories 'Cause I rode them longhorns down in the snow . . . |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: fat B****rd Date: 31 Aug 08 - 06:57 AM IN THE PINES or Black Girl as it is sometimes called. |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: Jay777 Date: 31 Aug 08 - 06:35 AM Terry McDonald mentioned Paul Simon's "A Most Peculiar Man". Paul sings it on The Paul Simon Song Book album, CBS, 1965, which remains one of my top ten best albums ever. Judith Piepe's sleeve notes about that track say: "Epitaph for a suicide, what a shame he's dead, but wasn't he a most peculiar man? A memorial to the face in the crowd, to you, to me,the face of the sound of silence". This album is well worth a listen. It includes beautiful, simple, versions of "The Sound of Silence" and "I am a Rock". Also, "A Church is Burning", about the KKK, and P. Kane's "The Side of a Hill", for which Piepe's notes say: "An anti-war song with a difference, it waves no tired flags at us but state simply: what is the life of a child worth?...A sad-gay lullaby for dead children and the dead consciences". Simon & Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair" has "Side of a Hill" in the background. |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: GUEST,lox Date: 30 Aug 08 - 05:27 PM Was just about to mention the well below the valley ... ... on the subject of my earlier post, the guy in question wasn't beng deliberately creepy ... ... he was just a creepy guy! |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: Cluin Date: 30 Aug 08 - 05:23 PM Every breath you take, Evetry move you make, Every cake you bake, I'll be watching you. |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: Lonesome EJ Date: 30 Aug 08 - 05:09 PM THE LITTLE GIRL AND THE DREADFUL SNAKE is a song I find creepy and yet irresistible, especially when the singer runs to the aid of his fatally snake-bitten daughter and voices the line "the snake was watching us from close by". IMAGINARY TROUBLE, for some odd reason, raises the hackles on my neck. THE KNOXVILLE GIRL. Particularly because it is usually performed in an up-tempo way that makes the graphic description of the murder seem even more grotesque. THE FROZEN GIRL, with its air of doom, and the knowledge that the entire tragedy would be avoidable if the moronic sleigh-driver and Charlotte had enough sense to put a coat on her. |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: Suegorgeous Date: 29 Aug 08 - 07:41 PM THE WELL BELOW THE VALLEY |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: Bill D Date: 29 Aug 08 - 06:22 PM Why, of course..ON THE AMAZON! or maybe MRS. RAVOON *grin* |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: kendall Date: 29 Aug 08 - 04:10 PM BRINGING MARY HOME is creepy. |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: fat B****rd Date: 29 Aug 08 - 03:17 PM Come to think of it, A LYKE-WAKE DIRGE isn't much fun. |
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Subject: Lyr Add: TURN AROUND (Carl Perkins) From: GUEST,cStu Date: 29 Aug 08 - 02:42 PM lox that's so true. So many 50s love songs are sung by a stalker character. My favourite is by Carl Perkins:
TURN AROUND
1. When you're all alone and blue
CHORUS: Turn around; I'll be waitin' behind you
2. Maybe God will make you see |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: GUEST,Bob Ryszkiewicz Date: 29 Aug 08 - 09:50 AM Big Al: No, I haven't written anything. Pretty much stayed quiet about it. The song is a collaboration with Gideon "Moses Child" Cohen of Montreal via New York. He came over to my studio to help and set up the tekkie stuff since I was pretty much of a newbie. He installed and began experimenting with a program called REASON to get the drum parts. We then used "psycho piano" on one of the tracks using Cubase. Files were imported as Apple loops to get the bass parts. Gideon, to me is durn near close to genius level using these programs, aw, let's say genius... Most people like to build up tracks and add more and more..I work in the opposite way, like a sculptor or woodcarver, releasing the art from the block of raw material...I take away rather than add... Lyrics are my thing, and in order to tell you the truth of how I work gets into the realm of the psychic, which turns a lot of people off, but since you asked...Al, I basically go into a meditative state and RECEIVE the song. I sort of copy it down when it comes through. It comes in pieces and I whittle away at the words and maintain a "minimalist" viewpoint in that when you tell a story you don't need FULL lines. They can be pieces of thoughts, hooks, that intrigue the listener and from that comes a complete story. With the stuff I've done so far, it demands that the listener be intelligent and involved in the song. He/She has to think. And this stuff was created as an experiment to see if there is a market for this kind of music. Ya don't know till you try... It took about an hour for the words and story to come through as I was concentrating on the melody to pick up the words. I ask for guidance when I do this stuff... That's about it...Thanks for your interest. Hope it helps... bob |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler Date: 29 Aug 08 - 07:55 AM "any of those "someone in the middle of nowhere gets saved from whatever fate by someone who we find out in the last verse died several weeks / months/ years ago" " That's not just folk songs:- it happened to my first father-in-law during WW2. |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: Bryn Pugh Date: 29 Aug 08 - 04:21 AM THE SUFFOLK MIRACLE, or THE HOLLAND HANDKERCHIEF |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: alison Date: 29 Aug 08 - 03:27 AM any of those "someone in the middle of nowhere gets saved from whatever fate by someone who we find out in the last verse died several weeks / months/ years ago" - this is all very vague - but there is another song somewhere in the DT about a blue man or tin man. Someone goes to an exotic location to see this "blue man" and ends up meeting a very nasty end. hopefully someone else will remember the title - its driving me nuts- but it certainly gave me "the willies" the first time I read it slainte alison |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: Big Al Whittle Date: 29 Aug 08 - 02:19 AM Amazing stuff Bob. Have you writen about your work - somewhere. I'd love to read about how you work etc. al |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: GUEST,Bob Ryszkiewicz Date: 28 Aug 08 - 09:34 PM Or, this song... THE SOUL EATER OMG, it's ME, what SHAMELESS self-promotion! And, I'm nice, a joy to be with, witty, charming, etc. etc., but, like Alfred Hitchcock, you can still be a fun guy (not fung wa, from Chinese Dim Sum, but you must try fun guy sometime) and do this stuff... bob |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: GUEST,Bob Ryszkiewicz Date: 28 Aug 08 - 09:23 PM Hi Kids: Let us not forget... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGzRuARH3a0
[That's a dead link as of June 2018. I suppose we'll have to forget now.. |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: oldhippie Date: 28 Aug 08 - 08:47 PM "WHAT'S HE BUILDING" really amounts to who's paranoid, the singer, not the character he's obsessed with watching. "Do you think I'm psycho, Mama....", now that's creepy. |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: Jim Carroll Date: 28 Aug 08 - 11:48 AM There's a wonderful line in Martin McDonagh's 'The Beauty Queen of Linane' where the character says - "The Spinning wheel - bloody creepy song, that". Jim Carroll |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: kendall Date: 28 Aug 08 - 11:06 AM It's odd how different songs affect different people. I haven't seen anything in this list to compare with the MISTLETOE BOUGH. |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: Jayto Date: 28 Aug 08 - 10:38 AM Bobad you beat me to the draw I was going to put WHAT'S HE BUILDING by Tom Waits as well. Check out the video on youtube it is great. RED RIGHT HAND by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds is a great creepy non-folk song as well. I really love that song "you'll see him in your nightmares you'll see him in your dreams" "your just a microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan designed and directed by his red right hand" Man Nick Cave is great I love his writing. Another one is DO YOU LOVE ME by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds "I met her on the night of fire and noise. Wild bells were ringing in wild skies. I knew from that moment on I'd love her until the day that I die. So I kissed her with a thousand tears. My lady of the various sorrows. Some begged some borrowed some stolen. Some kept safe for tomorrow." That is also one of my favorite band names of all time. The Bad Seeds man that is just too cool I wish I had thought of that one. I wish I could have written the majority of Nick Cave's songs as well. Johnny Cash did a real creepy song of Nick Cave's. THE MERCY SEAT is the name of it and it is GREAT. I actually like Johnny's version better than Nick Cave's but then again I kinda like Johnny's version of HURT better than Nine Inch Nails. Oh man, I hate to admit that one let's just keep that between us lol. I perform some of Nick Cave's songs in an Appalachian Folk style. I do a dark minor groove and change the melody some to fit. Most of it though I don't have to change much at all. Check out BROTHER MY CUP IS EMPTY oh man, I am blanking when the names come back to me I will put them up. Need Coffee! Cya JT |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: Melissa Date: 28 Aug 08 - 09:57 AM PIED PIPER and TEDDY BEARS' PICNIC have always creeped me out. |
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Subject: RE: Creepy songs From: Big Al Whittle Date: 28 Aug 08 - 09:38 AM Do you have to be a creepy person to sing a creepy song. Does anyone remeber that Sherlock Holmes film with Rondo Hatton as The Creeper - The Pearl of death. Boy! he was creepy! |
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