The Serpent's Wisdom

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Hrm. I could probably give a different answer to this every time you ask.

I'm going to go with "And Your Bird Can Sing".

Rush lead singer Geddy Lee is the son of Holocaust survivors. The song "Red Sector A" reflects his mother's accounts of her time at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, making it one of few rock songs describing the Holocaust.

Though "Red Sector A," like much of the album from which it comes, is set in a bleak, apocalyptic future, what Lee calls "the psychology" of the song comes directly from a story his mother told him about the day she was liberated.

"I once asked my mother her first thoughts upon being liberated," Lee says during a phone conversation. "She didn't believe [liberation] was possible. She didn't believe that if there was a society outside the camp how they could allow this to exist, so she believed society was done in."

from How the Holocaust rocked Rush front man Geddy Lee

Ok, time to banish the melancholy ear worm... by sharing it with everyone else of course!



ETA: Oddly, this song provides perfect accompaniment to the Unhappy Hipsters blog.

Lately I've been listening to a lot of early goth. Some of this is music I haven't listened to in 10-20 years, but all of it was important to me during my teen years. It's interesting to revisit this stuff at this stage when it feels both new and familiar.

There's been a lot of, "Wow, I remember really digging this song, and now it just sounds like hackneyed dreck." Also, remembering that I came to that conclusion even back then. The biggest offender in this regard is Bauhaus. Some of their music had moments of brilliance but most of it sounds like some stuff they spent 5 minutes making up. No wonder they were so prolific in the 3 years they were actually together. (It's interesting that in 26 years since Bauhaus broke up -- IOW 9/10ths of his musical career -- Peter Murphy has released seven albums of nuanced, complex, often quite stunning music, but people still think of him as "the former lead singer of Bauhaus.")

Another interesting thing is seeing how all of the early goth bands had notable improvements in musical maturity and quality within a couple of years of their first album. For some it was sudden: for example, Joy Division grew noticeably from Unknown Pleasures to Closer. For other bands it was more gradual (The Cure, Killing Joke, Siouxsie and the Banshees).

The most edifying thing though has been finding an online copy of Christian Death's Ashes. It's the one good album this group released, but it's also been incredibly scarce. I haven't listened to it since the last time I had a working turntable, which means the early '90s. Particularly the song "When I Was Bed" -- I've never heard another song that has the same emotional timbre.

I can't imagine any reason one would be sad or upset about the arrival of May. In honor of Beltane i'd like to share one of my new favorite songs, which i discovered not long ago, despite being a long-time fan of Jethro Tull. Heavy Horses was never one of my favorite albums, and so for years i missed this gem, which i discovered almost by accident a couple of months ago. I am aware that "Cup of Wonder" is more commonly thought of as their Beltane song (although there was an outtake titled, plainly, "Beltane"), but i like this new one better than either of those, and anyway it's about outdoor fucking, so who can argue. So here, without further ado:

Jethro Tull's "Acres Wild"


May Day is also the International Workers' Day, except in the United States where we celebrate Labor Day at the beginning of September. That's so no one confuses *our* labor day with that other, more red-hued, labor day when the Commies used to hold their parades.

Thank you to everyone who wished me happy birthday. I had a great weekend.

I took Friday off, as a bit of a gift to myself -- and i actually went out (*gasp*!) I learned Thursday afternoon that Blue Oyster Cult would be playing in the area Friday night, and they have been one of my favorite bands forever. (So, an excuse to use my BOC icon.) Tickets were cheap, so i didn't wrestle with myself long over this decision.

They put on a great show. To be honest i am not, in general, a fan of "heavy metal virtuoso" music. I do enjoy hearing the work of skilled and talented guitarists of course, but to understand my opinion of overblown heavy metal guitar solos, picture Jeffrey Jones as the Austrian Emperor in the movie "Amadeus" telling Mozart that his compositions have "too many notes." They just seem... imbalanced and disconnected somehow. Part of me can't move along with the guitarist from the riff to the screaming thousand-notes-a-second solo. Which is really where my appreciation for Buck Dharma takes off, because his genius as a guitar virtuoso is in doing solos that seem to grow organically from the emotional tone of a song, that emerge from the core of the song and seamlessly blend back into it.

Consider, for example, their most well-known song, "(Don't Fear) The Reaper." It wouldn't be the same song without the haunting, heart-stopping guitar solo. To see him play live, you come to understand that a solo like this comes as naturally and easily to him as doodling.

Speaking of "(Don't Fear) The Reaper," i was amused to see that the band included a couple of nods to the famous "more cowbell" SNL sketch in their performance of the song -- such as having the roadie who plays the cowbell front and center for part of the song.

On Saturday i dragged my sweeties out to see the remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still," which generated a lot of interesting discussion. There are numerous things i could say about it good and bad, but i'll just say that we found it entertaining and watchable enough, and i was pleased to see a new addition to the short list of SF movies where the heroes are smart people -- something i've learned to watch for since lady_babalon pointed out to me how often SF film reflects a deep-seated cultural mistrust of smart people.

We had dinner out and my birthday celebrations also included some lovely quality time with a couple of my sweeties. *grins*

One of the more moving videos i've seen in a while references MK-ULTRA, but on another level is an excellent illustration of the Discordian hodge-podge: Eris vs. the Aneristic principle.

[Error: unknown template qotd]Without a doubt i'd have to say Dead Can Dance, October 5, 2005. The Orpheum was unusually hot inside and the old wooden seats were cramped and uncomfortable. But the theatre had a classic look which made it a perfect venue for DCD and their heavenly sounds.

After that... hmm... there was the Love and Rockets show in a small bar in south Austin in 1987. The opening act blew us all away; a small, quirky band from L.A. no one had ever heard of, by the name of Jane's Addiction. I went out and bought their album the next day.

A couple of months later i saw Sonic Youth, and understood immediately that some bands are just meant to be heard live. I haven't since been able to listen to any of their recorded music, knowing what a pale imitation it is of their truth.

Jethro Tull, Miami, 1992, that was a good show. Then there was the touring band Joe Bouchard of Blue Oyster Cult put together and hit the road with, i caught them in South Florida around the same time. In their heyday BOC sold out arenas, and here was one of them playing a small bar in Florida. Took them a couple of songs before they hit their stride, but once they did, you could tell they were having a blast, and that is probably the best thing a band can share with the audience.

Psychic TV put on a reasonably memorable show in Charlotte, NC, in 1988. My friend Brent and i caught them at a club which had in a previous life been an elevator factory, in the run-down old industrial part of town. Can't beat *that* ambiance. We saw the Swans there, too.

So, back in the 80's when i was an angst-y teenage shut-in trying to sort out things like gender and reality, i found the music of Depeche Mode and Siouxsie and the Banshees very soothing. So it's kind of neat to know that every once in a while there is still new music being sung by those familiar voices.

Dave Gahan and Siouxsie Sioux both released albums this month, and both are notable.

Gahan's Hourglass is a better album than Paper Monsters was. The previous album was, i thought, listenable with some great moments, but overall too conventional and too plodding. Gahan wanted to stake out some new ground musically, but i don't think it really worked. Hourglass is a return to a bit more familiar territory, which is code for "it sounds like Depeche Mode, but you know, i don't have a problem with that." The first two songs, "Saw Something" and "Kingdom," are fantastic and bolt straight to my list of all-time DM/Gahan favorite songs. It then hits kind of a doldrum (i didn't care for "Deeper and Deeper," and the next two songs are mediocre) but the remainder of the album is quite good, and ends on a strong note with "Endless," "Little Lie" and "Down."

Siouxsie's Mantaray has drawn comparisons to Garbage, which i think is apt. Musically it's kind of all over the place - it's like we're getting a peek at Siouxsie's musical exploration journal now that her 25-year collaboration (and marriage) with Budgie have ended. So the songs come in different styles, but there's an overall bounce which is optimistic and contagious. Play it loud for best effect. "Like a Swan" and "About to Happen" open the album with good momentum. The rest affected me differently on subsequent listenings, so my comments might be premature. But the songs which seem to be drawing the most praise ("Here Comes that Day," "Drone Zone," and "Heaven and Alchemy") were my least favorite. "Loveless," "If It Doesn't Kill You," and "One Mile Below" were favorites, reminiscent of previous work but drawn in a new light.

In completely other news, now that cowgrrl and i have finished watching Babylon 5 (i should really write about that someday, it's beyond the scope of this) we have moved on to watching Torchwood season 1 so we'll be ready for Doctor Who season 3. I want to like this show, i really do. It got off to a good start: textbook melodrama, interesting, campy, mindless, and a lot of fun, very much like the show of which it is a spinoff. I'm still willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, but after two awful episodes in a row, we're underwhelmed.

At a Halloween party this weekend, i caught most of Hostel Part 2. I wasn't intending to, but it was appropriate enough Halloween party fare (and the "let's tie up Sabrina" portion of the evening hadn't happened yet). I had read a fair bit about how "torture porn" is the most recent sign of the decline of western civilization, blah blah blah, but... okay, what i want to know is, how is Hostel Part 2 fundamentally different from what Troma Entertainment has been doing for 30 years now?

ETA. Another recent listen was the new Hooverphonic album, The President of the LSD Golf Club. I suppose they've been listening to critics who have complained they were too eclectic. They shouldn't have; they gave up some of the elements of their sound that really worked in favor of a more limited, and more predictable, downtempo retro kind of feel. At points i thought i was listening to the Moody Blues. All of the songs are good, but only good; two ("Stranger" and "Strictly Out of Phase") stand out as superb.

I guess it's kind of silly that i get frustrated with young goths because they don't respect their elders.  We were wearing black lipstick and slamdancing to Bauhaus when they were still watching Sesame Street and now they sport around in $300 vinyl boots and $200 corsets snubbing us and laughing at us.  But then, it is a youthful form of rebellion, right?  Well, except for the fashion industry and professional modelling and high-profile porn outlets, i guess.

They stole my freakiness from me.  You know why ripped fishnets became a staple of goth fashion?  Because in the old days (before "goth" was even goth) we didn't have the money to replace them when they ripped.  Or, we lived in the Bible Belt where you could only buy fishnets in October.  Once they ripped, that was that until next Halloween.  Or both.

A lot of the older goths i know are queer and i half-suspect that the mainstreaming of goth was, to some degree, also the misappropriation by the dominant culture of yet another form of cultural dissent from moneyless queers.  Think i'm off my rocker?  Look at what the word "punk" meant before 1976.  Look at where "voguing" came from before Madonna made millions off of it.  Look it up.

(Ha, i almost talk as if i was penniless myself.  I was never destitute.)

I'm worried for queer youth and young people of color, and particularly young queer people of color, but i know they'll be able to create their own new forms of cultural dissent.  They're smarter than you think.  It won't look like goth and it won't look like punk and it will be promptly put down by the self-appointed guardians of cultural good-taste, but that's okay because it's not intended for them anyway.  Then when they're my age they'll vary between frustration that wealthy straight kids stole their clothing out from under them and large record companies snatched up their most prominent artists, and their memories, and the thought that, okay now, it's time to come up with something else.