Top 10 Zappa songs to listen to for Halloween

Looking for alternatives to Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” or Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D minor” to stick in your Walkman this Halloween? Consider some Frank Zappa. With a recorded output totaling more than 1,000 songs, there’s something to horrify everyone. Err, if you know what I mean.

1. Cheepnis (Roxy & Elsewhere, 1974)
Zappa had a long running fascination with B-grade sci-fi themes and imagery. This track is his tribute to the genre (“I simply adore monster movies, and the cheaper they are, the better they are,” he says in the song’s preamble.) Like all of Roxy & Elsewhere, Cheepnis is an involved, shape shifting affair that pulls you through a hair-raising set of changes and textures.

2. The Torture Never Stops (Zoot Allures, 1976)
Several versions of this number exist, but this is the most sinister. While some of the songs on this list are set with tongue-in-cheek goofiness, Torture sounds dark like its lyrics. Frank could obviously evoke any mood he liked through composition and arrangement, but production also plays a part in this haunting, the close-miked vocal lending a creepy quality to the narration.

3. Zomby Woof (Over-Nite Sensation, 1973)
This song (as with Over-Nite’s Fifty-Fifty) gains much of its character from the otherworldly vocal performance of the late Ricky Lancelotti. His lupine diction and lycanthropic delivery push the track over the top. It’s a helluva lot more jarring than Zombie by the Cranberries, let me tell you.

4. The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny (We’re Only In It For the Money, 1968)
This is an instrumental piece. And it is fucking scary. Bleak and grave, Megaphone sonically depicts Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony,” a short story about a torture device which Zappa suggests reading before listening to the music in the WOIFTM liner notes. Play a loop of this to keep trick-or-treaters away.

5. The Dangerous Kitchen (The Man from Utopia, 1983)
Who the fuck wants to clean it? This bit features Steve Vai unison-doubling FZ’s Sprechstimme vocal. And that may be even more terrifying than the horrors in the sink.

6. Goblin Girl (You Are What You Is, 1981)
She’s black ‘n green, ‘Cause it’s Halloween. Tis a rather silly number, but it must be included in this playlist. Like a lot of Zappa songs, this one kind of sneaks up on you—listen to it on a Monday morning and just see if it’s out of your head by lunchtime Wednesday. Goblin Girl also creeps up musically: the culmination of the song becomes more and more layered right up until the end of the phrase, “Scales all over their body,” which immediately gives way to the (also rather spooky) Theme From the 3rd Movement of Sinister Footwear.

7. Transylvania Boogie (Chunga’s Revenge, 1970)
Shake your ass like Dracula to Aynsley Dunbar’s boogaloo. Transylvania houses one of Zappa’s feistiest guitar solos. Mmm yeah.

8. Who Are the Brain Police? (Freak Out, 1966)
19-fucking-66, people. From the Freak Out liner notes: “At five o’clock in the morning someone kept singing this in my mind and made me write it down. I will admit to being frightened when I finally played it out loud and sang the words.” It is very weird, ominous music about mind control. Play it after sundown.

9. Spider of Destiny (Sleep Dirt, 1979, 1991)
I cite two dates on Spider of Destiny because there are two variations which are both colossal. The original was a moody and austere instrumental while the remixed rendition which surfaced on CD in ’91 features vocals by the amazing Thana Harris. (The relationship between Sleep Dirt and the other albums of this period is very confusing, stemming from Zappa’s troubled relationship with Warner Bros.) Suffice to say, both versions are chill-inducing in their own way.

10. Drowning Witch (Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch, 1982)
Death! Radiation! Pollution! Water snakes! Tourists! Stravinsky jokes! Oh, the horror!

The Rack - Meditations on a Music Collection is what Troy Van Horn is thinking of when you assume he’s just staring at the wall.