Halloween is once again upon us. Being from Australia and not celebrating this holiday as a youngster, I’ve found this to be a peculiar American tradition. Best I can tell, it’s some sort of ancient spiritual practice commemorating our departed loved ones and also marking the end of the harvest season, celebrated by the women dressing up as sexy nurses.
Even since moving to the US, and being a musician, I never paid particular interest to this holiday—on the basis that nobody hires a band for Halloween, so there ain’t no gigs. (I’ll take a Christmas party or a good Bar Mitzvah any day.)
And—side note—what’s with those bloody pumpkin spice lattes? Let me ask you, what sort of maniacal sadist wakes up one day and says to themselves, “You know what this coffee needs? Some pumpkin.”
But I digress. And it’s not that I have anything particularly against Halloween, mind you. I actually quite like the idea of dressing up and celebrating the things that frighten us to help trivialize and therefore better deal with our fears. It’s just that Dracula or Freddy Krueger just doesn’t get my heart racing (although a sexy nurse can, albeit for entirely different reasons).
To the casual observer, we jazz musicians may appear to be the epitome of confidence and fearlessness. Not true. It’s just that the things that scare us don’t necessarily scare ordinary peopl
