I’m currently rocking out to the groovy ghouly retro sounds of George Van Orsdel’s Monster Spookshow Radio – you should too!

For a few years now, me and Missus Savage have put together a vampire mix CD (or two)  for select friends and partygoers in October. We had a solid well from which to draw going into it, and cultural phenomena like True Blood and Twilight certainly helped augment the musical pool from which to draw.

But man, 2010 has been a banner year for kick-ass vampire music. Besides at least 10 different versions of Cry Little Sister from The Lost Boys, the True Blood: Seasons 1 and 2 soundtracks and The 69 Eyes – Back In Blood album, I’ve been finding all kinds of awesome songs in my own collection that I’d either simply overlooked (Genitorturers’  – Vampire Lover and Lords of Acid – Kiss Eternal) or that I’d never considered as vampiric, but have reconsidered (Nine Inch Nails – The Hand That Feeds, for instance).

But I gotta say, since Cry Little Sister became a Vampire Anthem in 1987, I don’t think any single song has encapsulated everything that is awesome about vampires (and make no mistake: Vampires are AWESOME) like The Burning Brides’ Flesh & Bone. Watch the video below and be impressed that they crammed everything that is AWESOME about the movie SUCK, Burning Brides, the song Flesh & Bone, vampires and vampire movies into less than 4 minutes*.

*The lead singer for The Burning Brides wrote the song and performs it in this video. Notice how the vampires in this video look awesome? That’s because VAMPIRES ARE AWESOME.

After a perfect crisp, cool September day where every other store we drove past featured its 2010 Halloween decorations and wares, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I broke out the Halloween Music Collection for The Season.

This is no small thing. I’ve been making Halloween mix-CDs since 1999 and, with the advent of MP3s and websites dedicated to the Halloween Ephemera of Yesteryear, any given year could produce a huge amount of music and up to 5 mixes for that given season. Eleven years hence, and it’s safe to say I have a ginormous collection of Halloween-themed and Halloween-related music, sound effects, audio-dramas, stories and related recordings.

And whoa, I’m small potatoes. Jonathon over at Rotting Flesh Radio claims a Terabyte of pure Halloween Goodness, and I believe him. That’s a LOT of Halloween music.

BUT! Because of the way I was raised, I won’t listen to any of it outside of September/October. I usually wait until later in September, but the day was just SO PERFECTLY SEPTEMBER-Y, and the Halloween stuff was JUST SO HALLOWEEN-Y, that I couldn’t stand it. So I’m rocking out to 11 years’ worth of Halloween awesomeness. This year I have the added benefit of FINALLY understanding the importance of properly labeling and tagging ones MP3s, so besides listening to any given year’s mix, I can set the music player to play Genre HALLOWEEN on random, and I’m good to go for the next… oh, say, 200 hours.

I’ll post highlights here periodically, if I can. This is my busy season, after all, but I refuse to miss the season I love because I’m so busy during the season I love. Y’know?

I’ve listened to this song on September 1st for more years than I can remember, and just thought I’d share. It’s David Sylvian’s “September”, from “Secrets of the Beehive”, an excellent album. Click the title below to hear the song; if you’re reading this outside of http://savagesinister.com , this may not work for you.