Scary Times

One of my favourite Halloween's was about 93.

For some reason, myself and The Big Man and my friend Mark had my house to ourselves on the evening. My sister was probably at her boyfriend's and my folks would have been in the pub and we found ourselves just hanging out and watching MTV. I don't even think any of us had thought of what night it was until the first under-10 fist tapped on the front door. At first, as we hadn't prepared, I was polite and turned everyone away. Then, after the 20th knock... I started to ignore the door.

The constant knocking was beginning to bug us. They were really cutting into the coverage of the season final of The Real World and accompanying Guns N'Roses videos. Parents clearly were coming back with accompanying children to the houses on our street that showed signs of life but also ignorance like us and we decided to take matters into our own hands. I rigged up a taped recording of the following snippet of MTV footage featuring the band Faith No More and played it through my mother's precious high quality stereo system, which I also plugged in an external mike. We lay in wait with soft lights and eeire music on the stereo. The parents approached our drive in anticipation and humoured the children on their approach as they heard the spooky sounds. As they approached, expecting the unexpected and chuckling away, they tapped on the door and announced the traditional tag line,

"Trick or Treat!"

I pressed play on the video, the sound ran through the stereo. I channelled the spirit of Mike Patton and his etheral grunting and added special vocals and waited for the reaction from all outside.... There was only one answer...

"Trick..."



The following year was a lot quieter.