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Happy spooky season, Tiny Desk Contest community. The Tiny Desk isn’t usually a very scary place — that is, unless you have a fear of small spaces, cluttered shelves, the skulls that Cypress Hill brought, or the germs that have surely accumulated on the food and drinks that artists so graciously left us as gifts. But we do celebrate frivolity, creativity and performance — all things that feel central to Halloween.
Credit: Photo: Elizabeth Gillis
To commemorate the season back in 2019, Tiny Desk co-founder Stephen Thompson rounded up Our 5 Favorite Tiny Desks In Costume, which includes Neko Case dressed in a gorilla suit, among others. And since then, we’ve had a handful of artists make their costumed Tiny Desk statements. Perhaps the most elaborate among them: GWAR. As Tiny Desk editor Lars Gotrich wrote, “For nearly four decades, GWAR has terrorized planet Earth with its gratuitously blood-soaked stage shows and grotesque satire.” The group’s Tiny Desk was no exception. And if you’ll let us stretch the costume idea to include puppets, we’ll mention 31 Minutos, the Chilean group that stopped by the Desk earlier this month. Its Tiny Desk featured dolls, bubbles and a certainly spooky-season-certified smoke machine. (That Tiny Desk was part of our recent El Tiny Latin Music Month takeover.)
This Contest community is, of course, also a fountain of creativity, and those of us who review your entries see some pretty festive productions. This year, the members of Clickbait dressed up as pants (yes, you read that right) for their entry, “Pumpkin Spice.” A group named charliehorse performed its entry, “a bird,” on an eerily deserted Coney Island. And the lead singer in [ahem] Throat Piss performed "Intergalactic Space Kush" wearing corpse paint makeup.
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On All Songs Considered last week, Contest judge Robin Hilton tried to determine who is the Mariah Carey of Halloween, sharing 15 songs that belong in the canon. And if this season makes you feel nostalgic or reflective, we recommend revisiting one of our roséwave playlists: 30 Introspective Songs For Autumn.
What’s been happening in your world this October? Send us updates about your music and we’ll share them in next month’s newsletter. Oh, and if any of you are dressing up as the Tiny Desk this Halloween (we’ve seen it done before), send us a photo.
From the Desk,
NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest team
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