It's another Halloween in New York City. You find yourself on a surprisingly deserted street on your way to see one of the many rock shows scheduled for this most sinister of all nights.

You're excited but feeling a little spooked as you make your way to the club.

Up ahead in the dark is a lumbering figure with what appears to be a large orange head. You squint to get a better look; it could be a local freak out for the evening's much-hyped Jane's Addiction or Cure holiday shows, you tell yourself. Or maybe it's a trick-or-treater who has lost his way.

Then again, it could be the hard-core Halloweener Mike Watt, decked out in his traditional pumpkin head or some other ghastly ghostly costume. The former Minuteman, famous for his sense of the holiday spirit, is playing Tramps in the Big (Razorbladed) Apple this Halloween, and following an 18-year tradition, he'll be all decked out for the occasion.

And while he loves to dress for his fans on Halloween, the tricks have not always been exclusive to his audience. He's played a few on himself, albeit unwittingly.

"The year before last I almost missed (the Halloween gig)," recalled Watt recently before heading out on tour. That year, at the last minute, the bassman wound up playing a duet with former Black Flag soundman Spot at the Alligator Lounge in Santa Monica, Calif.

"I did that gig with a fuckin' pumpkin on my head," Watt said. "I just cut the bottom out of a pumpkin and stuck it on my head."

For the entire show?

"Oh, fuck, I drove up there like that," Watt laughed. "I couldn't get it off! I put it on at my house. It was kinda dangerous, in a way." In a desperate effort to free himself of the pumpkin prison, Watt ran his head into a pillar. The massive gourd finally smashed to bits, leaving Watt covered in stringy pumpkin pieces but free to do his show.

"It was hard to see, too, 'cause the little triangles I made were too small," he said. "I couldn't really see worth a shit. And stringy! I didn't clean it out, 'cause I was just trying it on. It fit just right -- sssshhhckkk! But I didn't break my string of Halloweens, so in a way it was OK."

Of course, Watt's not the only rocker to maintain All Hallows Eve traditions. When you're the Cramps, Halloween is like Christmas.

"It's the holiday for the Cramps," said that band's singer and founder Lux Interior. "I wish Halloween lasted all year round." This year, like last year, the original psychobilly rockers will be haunting San Francisco's Warfield Theater in full ghoulish regalia. "Last year our drummer went as Elizabeth Taylor," Interior said. "I couldn't find a good dress last year, so I was just some sort of hooded maniac. Your basic Wes Craven hooded killer."

If fans are lucky, the Cramps may just play their fiendish cover of John "Cool Ghoul" Zacherle's 1958 top-10 hit, "Dinner with Drac." "That song had to have two sides, one with the real lyrics, and one with the censored lyrics," Interior said. "It talks about eating the veins of a mummy named Betty ('with ketchup on them, it tastes like spaghetti'). It's got all kinds of gruesome lyrics like that."

Although last year the Cramps played with San Francisco's hometown horrors the Groovie Ghoulies, this year the Ghoulies are taking their spooky set to Antwerp, Belgium on Halloween.

But with the Ghoulies, every day is like Halloween, even if it's in a foreign land.

While the band will be limited this year in how much they can celebrate, Ghoulies singer Kepi said that they still intend to show the European Union a thing or two about trick or treating -- with an emphasis on the trick. "I sent a box of toys over to Italy already, and they're gonna bring it to the Halloween show," Kepi said.

"Rubber spiders, space ships, little toys and stuff. It's gonna be cool," he added. Years past have seen the Ghoulies made up as spacemen, bats and other creatures.

"We kind of have that fun all year round," Kepi said. "We preach that you should have the most fun like everyday was Halloween or Christmas or your birthday, or whatever the hell excites you. That's Ghoulie philosophy." [Wed., Oct. 29, 1997, 9 a.m. PDT]