When it comes to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, most of these sort of playlists begin and end with “Time Warp”, and that nearly makes me puke my guts out.

Let me back that up a bit…

Going to see midnight screenings of RHPS during your teens and twenties, every Saturday night for God knows how long, was absolute religion for many lifeless automatons, myself included. And why not? It was loud, interactive, strange, open, intimidating for newbs, and a highly-charged sexual atmosphere for all that didn’t involve taking your clothes off (unless you were in the floor show, or wanted to be in the floor show, or just bored). Honestly: if you couldn’t get lucky after going to a RHPS midnight screening (with a floor show), you were probably already dead.

As an aside: one of my Bucket List items is to perform the role of Frank in a RHPS floor show. Soon…

I love almost all the music (“Time Warp” included, but I mean really…), and “Sweet Transvestite” is a karaoke tradition for me, but I think the most truly Halloween-ish and downright spookiest song in the film is Over At The Frankenstein Place, an ode to Brad and Janet holding on the last glimmers of goodness and hope, unaware that the Transylvanian Castle’s “unconventionalities” will eventually overpower them. Even Riff’s lament holds an element of Quasimodo-esque wistfulness.

And the freakin’ Virgins still never put out their lighters (or phones, these days, sheesh) when the song calls for Darkness. Yeesh.

The Darkness must go down the river of nights dreaming
Flow Morpheus, slow, let the sun and light come streaming
Into my life
Into my life…