Our fall playlist is finally being posted here – a little late perhaps, but I hope you find it worth the wait. It begins with songs that inspired the ‘Fade-to-Black’ theme, segues into a rollicking femininomenon section with a couple of disco moments, and brings us all back to black in the end. Click and listen, preferably in the order in which they appear. (Apologies, I’m an anal-retentive Virgo after all.)

Paint It Black – Westworld version

Desperation – Steppenwolf

For What It’s Worth – Stevie Nicks

Paint It Black – Rolling Stones

Edge of Seventeen – Stevie Nicks

You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) – Sandra Bernhard

At Midnight – T Connection 

Gimme Gimme Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) – Abba

Hung Up – Madonna

Femininomenon – Chappell Roan

I Can Do It With A Broken Heart – Taylor Swift

Brave New Girl – Britney Spears

Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl – Chappell Roan

Chemical Sunset – Orville Peck 

Back to Black – Oscar and the Wolf

Your Heart is as Black as Night – Melody Gardot

Demons in My Sleep – Peaky Blinders

Bacchanal from ‘Samson and Delilah’ -Camille Saint-Saëns

When It Rains It Pours – Twiddle

Welcome to the Black Parade – My Chemical Romance

Paint It Black – Cello version

One of my favorite pieces of music is the Bacchanal from the opera ‘Samson and Delilah’. I’m not sure why it became a favorite, because it brings back bad memories of all the stress and worry and competitive ickiness of my time in the Empire State Youth Orchestra. That it contains one of the more celebrated oboe solos is one reason for how stressful those passages once felt, and I remember the first time we read through it – I think I had the solo and totally massacred it. 

The orchestra raced ahead before I even knew where we were in the score, and I was left behind, eventually taking the second seat after tryouts. In truth, I probably had no business even being in the actual Empire State Youth Orchestra – and as much as I learned there, as much as the experience hardened and honed me, I wonder if it was worth the social anxiety and stress at that time in my life. It still haunts me, and I question whether that was the best thing to do to myself as a kid (not that I was given a choice in those early days) – and did it really prove the tipping point at getting me into all of the colleges to which I applied? I doubt I’ll ever know – and there’s no point in dwelling here. Instead, let’s revel in the music at hand, and allow it to fuel this fall’s reckoning… 

If you stick it out and wait until about the 7:00 mark, you’ll hear when things really begin to soar – and it is here where I take all the trauma of the past and turn it into something else – anger, rage, triumph, revenge – and a power I’m still discovering buried within. Spreading the wings of a silky caftan, with a rope of pearls to harness the universe’s available energy, it feels like a moment ripe for flight.

The music is a seduction and a celebration in one, entrancing with its sensuous oboe solo, and then setting the scene for the destruction of a temple. Sexual symbolism and blatant hedonism brilliantly collide in a meeting of the minds and bodies of opposing forces. Prepare the way for aural ecstasy and orgasmic, orgiastic might. 

Who knew that opera could be so gorgeously filthy? It’s a perfect treat for the fall season. 

Ever since Dad died, this song has taken on a deeper meaning – and it was pretty deep before then, so this one goes far down. For our fade-to-black fall, it gets resurrected and brought back with even greater resonance. Life does that – it sharpens some things, dulls others, and reconfigures the world in a way that makes you realize it was all perception and perspective – and hopefully in that realization there comes a certain peace. 

When I was a young boy
My father took me into the city
To see a marching band
He said, “Son, when you grow up
Would you be the savior of the broken
The beaten and the damned?”
He said, “Will you defeat them?
Your demons, and all the non-believers
The plans that they have made?”
“Because one day, I’ll leave you a phantom
To lead you in the summer
To join the black parade”

A world that sends you reelin’
From decimated dreams
Your misery and hate will kill us all
So paint it black and take it back
Let’s shout it loud and clear
Defiant to the end, we hear the call

Ever since I was a boy, I’ve felt old. Not physically, just in my head. I had no patience for childish nonsense, and all the silly things the other kids were doing. I felt weary, like I’d done it all before, and I was already tired. I felt jaded, not better than anyone – never better than anyone – just like there was nothing new under the sun. I felt entirely too serious for my own good, and my earnestness was never taken at face value, jumbling things up in my head even more. I felt stressed and worried – about everything. And what should have been one of the only truly carefree times in a person’s life was never meant to be, at least for me. 

Do or die, you’ll never make me
Because the world will never take my heart
Go and try, you’ll never break me
We want it all, we wanna play this part

I won’t explain or say I’m sorry
I’m unashamed, I’m gonna show my scars
Give a cheer for all the broken
Listen here, because it’s who we are

Just a man, I’m not a hero
Just a boy, who had to sing this song
Just a man, I’m not a hero
I don’t care

We’ll carry on, we’ll carry on
And though you’re dead and gone, believe me
Your memory will carry on