![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/andrew_gold_halloween.jpg\")
Musician, singer and songwriter Andrew Gold combined a commercial (read: broadly accessible) sensibility with superb songwriting chops. With so many years having passed, many forget (if they knew at all) that Gold was Linda Ronstadt\u2019s band leader through one of her most creatively fertile periods.<\/p>\n
Speaking of forgetting, it\u2019s too often forgotten now, but his \u201cThank You for Being a Friend\u201d was a hit single long before it was repurposed as the theme song for television sitcom The<\/i> Golden Girls<\/i>. While that use may have helped Gold\u2019s pocketbook, it didn\u2019t do much for whatever hip quotient*<\/b> he might have had.<\/p>\n
Gold passed away far too prematurely in 2011, months before his 60th<\/sup> birthday. A new reissue of his forth solo album isn\u2019t likely to dissuade those who find his work unhip, but that reality doesn\u2019t make Andrew Gold\u2019s Halloween Howls<\/i> any less fun.<\/p>\n Originally issued in 1996 (on CD and cassette only), Andrew Gold\u2019s Halloween Howls<\/i> was a twelve-song set on the Music for Little People label (my kids were quite young then, and we owned more than a few MFLP titles, though I was unaware of this one).<\/p>\n Judged for what it is, this is an enjoyable record. With his vocal treated to sound like a monster, Gold introduces that album before launching into a bunch of silly tunes like \u201cIt Must Be Halloween,\u201d designed more to entertain than to terrify. Clean, simple and uncluttered arrangements go heavy on theatrical vocals, sound effects and catchy melodies.<\/p>\n Pals Stephen Bishop and Linda Ronstadt stop by to help out on a cover of \u201cThe Monster Mash.\u201d In Gold\u2019s hands the song doesn\u2019t really present anything new, but neither is that its intent. It\u2019s better-recorded than Bobby \u201cBoris\u201d Pickett\u2019s single, so there\u2019s that.<\/p>\n His cover of the theme from The Addams Family hews so closely to the original that listeners might thin it was lifted from Television\u2019s Greatest Hits<\/i>. All that\u2019s missing is the gravelly intonations of Ted \u201cLurch\u201d Cassidy.<\/p>\n The same is true for Gold\u2019s cover of \u201cGhostbusters,\u201d another near carbon copy of the popular original, right down to the synth drums and kid chorus. David Cassidy helps out on the Gold original \u201cHalloween Party.\u201d<\/p>\n The album\u2019s most popular track \u2013 a previous release is on Spotify, and this track has received nearly 18 million[!]] plays \u2013 is \u201cSpooky, Scary Skeletons.\u201d Doubling down on its popularity, the new LP reissue of the album appends the original track listing with an \u201cUndead Tombstone Remix.\u201d Apparently that mix \u2013 which, truth be told, might give listeners of a certain age a pounding headache \u2013 outpaced the original in number of plays online.<\/p>\n The new reissue replaces the original artwork with something a bit more kid-friendly. An opportunity may have been missed, though: the record isn\u2019t translucent orange; it\u2019s plain old black vinyl.<\/p>\n *<\/b>Postscript: Andrew Gold was in fact super-hip, damn it. Shortly after finishing this project, in 1997 Gold applied his prodigious talents to what may well be the crowning achievement \u2013 or at least the most unheralded gem \u2013 in his catalog. Still in one-man-band mode and dubbing himself The Fraternal Order of the All \u2013 an American answer to the Dukes of Stratosphear \u2013 he made an album called Greetings from Planet Love<\/i>. This retropsych masterpiece \u2013 with a spot-on pastiche of The Beach Boys\u2019 \u201cOur Prayer\u201d crossed with The Beatles\u2019 \u201cBeing for the Benefit of Mr. Kite\u201d called \u201cTuba Rye and Will\u2019s Son Balloon in the Sky\u201d \u2013 simply must be heard. But I digress!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Musician, singer and songwriter Andrew Gold combined a commercial (read: broadly accessible) sensibility with superb songwriting chops. With so many years having passed, many forget (if they knew at all) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21852,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,37,64,65,73],"tags":[192],"class_list":["post-21851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-childhood-development","category-holiday","category-reissue","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-andrew-gold","cat-15-id","cat-37-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21851"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21853,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21851\/revisions\/21853"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}