When Rusty started coming up with lyrical ideas for this music he'd written, he first started adlibbing in a German accent, followed by a British vampire accent (not to be confused with the normal British accent), which lead to writing a Halloween song (or at least a song set during Halloween night, featuring a ghoul). Unlike the first two Strawberry Explosion songs, Carrie was happy with Rusty's first version of this one.
The karaoke version was business as usual, but instead of the a capella version, we opted for the backing tracks, since the former was kind of dull and redundant. But the backing tracks are freaky-cool. And of course the chipmunk version was inevitable by this point.
For this single, we decided to do other Halloween songs, rather than just mixes of "Baby, Baby, Boo!" We felt the need to do "The Monster Mash," that other poppy doo-wop novelty hit. Carrie did a good impression of Boris Karloff. Then we did The Shaggs' "Halloween," since we'd been singing it during non-Halloween periods over and over anyway. Rusty had a laughter fit during this recording, citing "My tickle box got turned over" as the reason. After doing the vocals, Carrie added all the instruments, out-Shagging the Shaggs. There are pictures of the actual recording at the bottom (as staged as some of them may look, they're real). Carrie originally wanted to do the theme song to Casper the Friendly Ghost, but Rusty misunderstood she wanted to do the Daniel Johnston version (which she'd never heard). He decided to do the Johnston song in the end since he "had no personal connection" to the other.
The idea to do an old movie poster for the cover was Carrie's idea. Rusty extended it and paired up other girls and ghouls for the inside and back (including himself and Carrie, har har--note the adorable pumpkins).
This album was made around Halloween and is perfect for this holiday, but you can feel free to listen to it any other time of the year. We won't tell.
Copyright (c) Oct 2004 by The Strawberry Explosion and Love and Letters Music