I have mixed feelings about Halloween. Although I do love autumn and have a strong appreciation for cheap Gothic horror, the glee with which my fellow Millenials have embraced the holiday does give me pause. There's something about the mixture of premature childhood nostalgia, wittier-than-thou ironic costuming and hardcore drinking that makes the whole thing smack of the Peter Pan Syndrome that is one of my generation's least-appealing qualities. (Insert Peter Pan costume joke here.)
Of course, at a certain point you either have to shit or get off the pot and I know that the combined forces of candy lovers, costume mavens and a consumer society in desperate need of a post-back-to-school, pre-Christmas cash cow means that Halloween as we know it is here to stay, so I might as well enjoy it. With that in mind, I'm hereby presenting you with your official Halloween party mix. Take an hour and sample a celebration of serial killers, infanticide, kosher lycanism and cerebral consumption.
Does anyone actually LIKE Valentine's Day? Someone has to, right? Every year it approaches followed closely by groans and eye rolling, yet there it is on every TV show and coating every Walgreens candy aisle, seemingly stronger with with each iteration. How does that happen?
Some would say that it's merely the inexorable machinations of a capitalist system that demands seasonal grist for it's consumerist mill and they wouldn't be wrong, but I suspect there's more to it than that. February is a rough month, especially here in Chicago. It's cold, it's grey, the Bears are done and the Sox are not yet playing in Arizona. Given that the next holiday on the horizon is followed by forty days of fasting, it's fair to say that we could use a little psychic sustenance to pull us through. And what's better than l'amour to give succor to those suffering in the cold? Romantics get to gush over flowers, cynics get to look forward to some guarenteed lovin' and everyone else gets to mock it from afar.
Music is one of life's great mood regulators. When you're feeling good, music affirms you and when things are going well it alternately helps you wallow or find strength. This has been a tough week with minor illness personally, major health problems in my family and more things to do than time to do them in. Oh, and it's been cold and rainy all week. It's precisely this type of week upon which the foundation of modern popular music - the blues - was built. However, straight-up bluesmen are scarcer these days than scientists at a Rick Perry rally. Rock has mostly left its 12-bar roots behind for garage-y power chords and genre hopping while modern R&B is heavy on "R" with no time for po-faced done-me-wrong tales of woe. So in the 21st century we're left to take our solace where we can find it and for my money, there are few better modern blues songs than Big Boi's 2003 cut, "Unhappy".
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