ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Local Halloween party attendees were seen struggling to make it through all nine and a half minutes of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by goth band Bauhuas after host Darkwave-DJ Max Pendleton put it on, according to sources who just wanted to dress slutty and get drunk.
“I was into it for, like, the first 90 seconds but then minutes went by and it was still just like strumming,” said attendee Erin Fields, while waiting to use the bathroom for the second time before the song ended. “Then I was like… this is still happening. Is it going to stop? Everyone was looking around at one another, like, is someone going to say something? By the eighth minute, most of us were screaming at [Max] to switch to another song. Some left, others were looking at their phones, while others pretended to be engrossed in beer bottle labels.”
Pendleton, however, refused to skip the track no matter how much they complained.
“BLG is all about the vibe and the atmosphere it creates. I was setting a specific mood for the party. I thought people would appreciate that,” Pendleton explained, adjusting his black velvet cape even though he wasn’t dressed as a vampire. “It’s a classic, quintessential Hallowen track. Timeless. Iconic. Mysterious. People need to experience it in its entirety to fully get into the Halloween spirit, you know? Plus, it just went so well after eight and a half minutes of The Cure’s ‘Disintegration.’”
Dr. Meredith Collins, a professor of music history at Eastman School of Music, explained this all too common phenomenon.
“People love to throw ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ on their Halloween playlists because it feels like a necessary Halloween track, but they always forget just how long, tedious, and monotonous it really is,” Collins explained. “It’s almost ten minutes of eerie nothingness that drags on, which is great for introspection when you’re writing the screenplay for an A24 horror movie, but it’s definitely not suited for a lively party. By the time you hit minute five, guests are usually staring at the floor, wondering when, if ever, it will end.”
As of press time, Pendleton’s party officially cleared out when the very next track was the seven-minute long “Love You To Death” by Type O Negative.