Spooky Month gets funky.
They can't all be paranoid little pieces about haunting, ambient music and personal memories of leaves crunching on the ground, can they? Nah, I ought to switch things up. Stay fresh. Get moving. How about instead of a nostalgic bit on eerie tunes I give you a sonic blast of Halloween-themed goodness? Let's get a little funky. No, not horror-core. That's just bad all around. I'm talking about the furious funk of 'I'm Your Boogie Man'. Yeah, that kind of funk. To be honest, as much as I love the original flavor by KC & The Sunshine Band (with bonus points for being the soundtrack to the scene in Watchmen when The Comedian and Nightowl tame a riot) the version I want to put out the good word for is the insane re-grind by White Zombie.
White Zombie are...were...crazy. Largely the brainchild of Rob Zombie, the band made a pretty dynamic series of evolutions from a groove metal group in the late 80s to become the industrial funk outfit they were most known as by the time they dissolved in 1996. They had mainstream success with their last album, Astro-Creep: 2000, which of course unleashed the massive 'More Human Than Human' on the public. One of their last offerings to the masses before their dissolution (Rob Zombie spinning off to become a distilled entity of the band on his own) was this cover for the soundtrack to City of Angels, the disappointing sequel to The Crow. In one shot they sent out a blast of funky, grinding spooky madness that I make sure to include in any Halloween playlist/mix/
Kicking off with a dirty bit of distorted wah-wah guitar, 'I'm Your Boogie Man' jumps right into the thick of it with a heavy, somehow danceable combination of drums and minor bass notes that build the core of the song. Mr. Zombie layers on discordant keys and a chorus of excited kids screaming "The boogie man is coming! He's gonna get you" to build atmosphere and just be freaky in general. The verse rips open with a searing guitar to match the bassline while Rob's voice growls the words in an almost inhuman wash of distortion. Like the band or not, there's no denying they do this kind of thing incredibly well. I adore the synth lines that come in before the chorus that ape the horns in the original version. When the song breaks loose and tears into the hook, it's insanely heavy. The blasts of guitar and bass while Zombie screams the hook are full of menace and Halloween cheer, both dangerous and fun. Somehow it's totally danceable despite the madness comprising the tune.
Like I said, I love this crazy cover and throw it into any October entertaining I do. Not like a sit-down, wine glasses and fancy cheeses kind of thing, but more of going to a scary movie or having people over before a midnight screening at the Uptown Theater. White Zombie may have called it quits soon after releasing this cover but I'm glad they let us have this one before they did. It's Monster Mash, for sure.
They can't all be paranoid little pieces about haunting, ambient music and personal memories of leaves crunching on the ground, can they? Nah, I ought to switch things up. Stay fresh. Get moving. How about instead of a nostalgic bit on eerie tunes I give you a sonic blast of Halloween-themed goodness? Let's get a little funky. No, not horror-core. That's just bad all around. I'm talking about the furious funk of 'I'm Your Boogie Man'. Yeah, that kind of funk. To be honest, as much as I love the original flavor by KC & The Sunshine Band (with bonus points for being the soundtrack to the scene in Watchmen when The Comedian and Nightowl tame a riot) the version I want to put out the good word for is the insane re-grind by White Zombie.
