As
the Halloween season gets into gear, I naturally start thinking about
how Disneyland could improve their Halloween offerings. If you've
been following me for a while, you might remember this
post. Or perhaps not. Either way, this week I've decided to focus
on an element of seasonal theme parkery* that I only touched on back
then: music loops.
The
great majority of themed areas in the Disneyland Resort include some
sort of background music loop that can be heard throughout all or
part of the area. During the winter holiday seasom, AKA “Christmas,”
several areas play a special seasonal loop in lieu of the normal one.
So with Halloween becoming as big a deal as Christmas in terms of
decorations, live entertainment, etc....why not shore it up with
music?
Part
of the problem, of course—maybe the biggest part—is that there
isn't a lot of immediately recognizable “Halloween music” out
there. Sure, there are a few hits that all the radio stations play in
October—“Monster Mash” by Bobby Pickett, “Thriller” by
Michael Jackson, and “Dead Man's Party” by Oingo Boingo being
some of the most noteworthy—but nothing like the dozens of standard
Christmas hymns and carols, which get covered and re-arranged into
every conceivable musical genre so that no theme park music designer
could fail to find what they're looking for.
So
is this a fruitless project, then? Of course not. I would hardly have
taken it far enough to post if it were. While the “canon” of
Halloween music is very slim indeed
and might seem too contemporary for the various historical and
fantastical realms present in Disneyland, a little research turns up
dozens of songs about
ghosts and goblins, witches and vampires, and assorted things that go
bump in the night, going right back to the Jazz Age and even earlier.
So
here, in (relative) brief, are some ideas for music that could be
used to enhance Disneyland's Halloween seasonal flair!
Main
Street, USA
If
you think it's a long shot to find Halloween music that would fit in
on Main Street, be prepared for a pleasant surprise—there is no
shortage of ragtime and early jazz tunes with the right sort of
motif—my own collection boasts the American Quartet recording of
“Skeleton
Rag” (recorded 1912), the Victor Military Band's cover of
“Spooky
Spook” (1917) and “The
Boogie Man Is Here” by Tom Gerun (1929). Disney's own “Skeleton
Dance,” also dated 1929, would fit right in. Yes, the 1920s are
technically out of period for Main Street, but that has never
bothered the designers of its area music loops before—they'll go
for anything that sounds “old-timey” enough. If they made some
clean new recordings of these and similar tunes, mixed them with
existing light orchestra pieces whose titles reference autumn, and
threw in the music box version of “Grim Grinning Ghosts” here and
there, I think it would be lovely.
Adventureland
Adventureland
goes without a music loop even during the rest of the year, so it
doesn't necessarily need one during the Halloween season. I've seen a
track listing for an Adventureland loop that supposedly plays during
the Halloween parties
(the special events), but it's not very atmospheric—it seems to
comprise a fake radio broadcast of mostly fairly contemporary pop and
rock hits whose only connection to Adventureland is that the titles
reference vaguely tropical imagery.
What
they might do instead is wait for nightfall and then play spooky
jungle sounds like crunching foliage (at least we hope
that's just foliage), animal growls, and distant tribal drums,
emanating from speakers on the “jungle side” of the area.
New
Orleans Square
You're
probably thinking this one will be easy,
since we've got the two undead-iest rides in the entire Disney theme
park canon right here, and they both have an eminently hummable song
associated with them, right?
Well...it
is easy. Although strangely enough, I would choose music from the
Pirates
of the Caribbean
film scores over “Yo Ho,” since the films are where most of the
zombie associations come in, and some of those score tracks are
genuinely eerie, unlike the bouncy sea chanty made famous by the
ride.
Which
is not to say there's no room for bouncy here. I would just want it
to come in the form of period-appropriate jazz. Believe me, we did
not exhaust all the Halloween-themed jazz with Main Street. No less a
light than Satchmo
himself
could be featured in this loop.** We could also bring in some classic
blues here, such as Victoria Spivey's “Spider
Web Blues.” Unlike on Main Street, we might actually want to
use the original, crackly recordings here for a bit of extra spook
factor.
At
the risk of being a bit controversial, I might
recommend including songs that reference voodoo in this loop even if
they are of more recent vintage than the Jazz Age. In the plus
column, there's the New Orleans connection. In the minus
column...it's rather gauche to appropriate people's actual religion
and treat it along the same lines as clearly fictional monsters such
as vampires. I think I'm mostly assuming that if such a loop existed,
it would include songs in that vein.
Critter
Country
I
have a feeling that if Critter Country really did get a Halloween
loop, it would consist of nothing more than the song tracks from this
album. This would make it unacceptably short
for an area loop, and I would prefer something more rustic. Lacking
many specific ideas, I think I would just have it share a loop with
Frontierland, so keep reading.
Frontierland
Country
and bluegrass music seem to dip into Halloween-esque themes more
rarely than other musical genres, but off the top of my head I can
think of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” (which has been
performed by Billy Hill and the Hillbillies!) and “Ghost Riders in
the Sky” and I'm sure there are more. The loop could also be
plumped out a little with mariachi music for Mexican Day of the Dead
celebrations (although if shared with Critter Country as I suggested
above, this might be kinda weird) and/or countrified covers of
established Halloween songs, if such could be found.
Fantasyland
Fantasyland being animated film territory, music loops in this land
tend to consist solely of music from said films...and other Disney
animated films that don't have attractions as such. On the great Venn
diagram of entertainment, the intersection of Disney Animation and
Halloween is pretty clearly labeled Villains. I know from experience
that it is possible to build a music loop of respectable length out
of nothing but “Villain songs” and wickedly evocative score
tracks from Disney's animated portfolio. Even more so than Main
Street, we'd really want this one to be new instrumental recordings
(rather than “needledrop” straight from the soundtrack albums, as
they say), not only to avoid the distraction of famous Disney
characters' famous voices as they sing, but so it could blend with a
companion loop played entirely on calliope for the area right around
the Carrousel.
Mickey's
Toontown
I
addressed my ideas for this in some detail in the post linked near
the top, but that was like two years ago. No harm in restating it. I
would love to give this area a loop consisting of Halloween songs
from the swing era mixed up with Halloween songs from Disney's own
library (most of which qualify as swing anyway). For the latter,
consider “Trick
or Treat,” “Disney's
Halloween Treat,” “The
Headless Horseman,” and of course “Skeleton
Dance,”*** which is already used in the regular area loop!****
For the former, my picks would include Jack Hylton's “Bogey
Wail,” the Boswell Sisters' “Heebie
Jeebies,” and Louis Prima's “Mr.
Ghost Goes to Town,” all of which have a light bouncing rhythm
that puts them at home in the Toony environment.
Tomorrowland
Tomorrowland
is one of the few places in Disneyland that doesn't even have a
special Christmas loop, let alone one for Halloween. I've long
thought that Mannheim Steamroller's Christmas albums would have the
right sound for the former, and as for the latter...well, it turns
out Mannheim Steamroller has some
Halloween
albums
too. I don't know if there are enough unique tracks between the three
to make a full loop, but there's lots of theremin-like
instrumentation, Tomorrowland-esque titles such as “Z-Row Gravity”
and “Crystal,” and I'm sure there's more Halloween music out
there compatible with such an aesthetic.
And
with that, I'm afraid this blog will have to go on an indefinite
hiatus. A bicycle accident has left me with only one working knee for
the time being, and life in general takes a lot of extra time when
you only have one working knee—I need to take hobbies like this off
my plate for an as-yet undisclosed period. The Disneyland Dilettante
will be back just as soon as possible, never fear!
* It is too a real word.
You can't prove otherwise. Spellcheck is not a credible authority.
** The song in the second
link greatly post-dates the period in question, but it's still in the
right style.
***
It can be in two loops.
****
But not “This is Halloween,” even though it is the
most famous Halloween song composed for a Disney property. It just
doesn't have the right vibe for Toontown.
No comments:
Post a Comment