One Halloween weekend, back when I was a teenager and still living in a blur of amped-up lysergic adventurism, I saw Black Sabbath on a Friday and, barely recuperated, caught the Cramps the next night. If only I could have fit the Misfits in, I would have scored the Unholy Trifecta of Groovy Gloom and Punk Rock Doom. I am older now, as is Ozzy, who is so ghost-like these days that you can practically see through him. The Cramps are, sadly, real ghosts. And me, well, I just need a new kind of kick. I am finally done with having my ears pummeled by necrophiliac rock bands dripping in pancake make-up and mascara.
So as soon as I am done putting the razor blades in the apples and poisoning the punch, you’ll find me basking in the diabolic sounds of the One World Symphony, who are brewing a shrewdly sinister program for the benefit of their Brooklyn home, St. Ann and the Holy Trinity. What better place to spend Halloween than the hallowed halls of a gorgeous Gothic church?
One World, under the baton of evil genius Maestro Sung Jin Hong, will be twirling a subversively scarrrrry program including a slice of Mussorgsky’s Songs of Dance of Death, Schubert’s Erlkonig, a bloody bit from Hollywood sorcerer Danny Elfman’s Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack and my favorite, Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, also known as “Music to Dig Graves By.” The latter features St. Ann’s towering, truly terrifying Skinner organ and is worth the price of a dozen candy apples all by itself. It may not have the psychedelic swagger of “Electric Funeral,” but at least you won’t have to watch a translucent Ozzy plod around the stage in a drug-addled stupor.
>One World Symphony’s Halloween Benefit Bash
Oct. 30, St. Ann and the Holy Trinity, 157 Montague St. (at Clinton St.), Brooklyn, www.oneworldsymphony.org; 7:20, $25 (But come early to hear the Hungry March Band, who launches the Halloween parade from St. Ann’s)
