T-shirt #339: Dead Can Dance

T-shirt #339: Dead Can Dance

This shirt came from the concert that Liesel and I attended in Chicago at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park in August of 2012.

This was a memorable time as we had just met our baby, our boo-boo, Satchel, the tiny runt who was hiding away from the rest of the litter and when she climbed out from behind some old farm equipment, Liersel tossed aside the puppy she had been holding and decided to adopt our Satchel booness. However, we could not take her home right then because we had already planned to go to Chicago, and so I convinced Liesel to wait until we returned.

We actually stopped on the way home to pick her up and adopt her into our family. Neither Liesel nor I will ever forget it.

We were already fans of DEAD CAN DANCE WIKIPEDIA.

This is something Liesel and I had in common from before we met. I love that Liesel and I share a great deal of mutually loved music. She does not like the Cocteau Twins later years, about which she is clearly in the wrong, and she did not like THE SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS when I discovered them last year, though I think she would have liked them had she discovered them first. I like to tease her about these opinions, though my wife, Liesel, has incredible taste in all things. I like that we do not intersect in every way. How boring that would be.

DEAD CAN DANCE OFFICIAL SITE.

Dead Can Dance are described in Wikipedia as a English/Australian, neo-classical "dark wave" band. I guess this as good a description as any. Songs have a medieval style or are actual medieval songs re-imagined.

Though Dead Can Dance formed in the 1980s, I did not discover them until the early 1990s, probably around 1993.

This next video isn't from the show we saw, but it's from right around the same time during the course of that tour, so it's close enough to what we actually saw in concert.

This next video is one of my favourite Dead Can Dance songs.

Dead Can Dance Host of Seraphim Live Montreal 2012 HD 1080

I was not too impressed with the new Dead Can Dance material from the band's 2012 release promoted during the tour we saw: Anastasis. It's good because it's Dead Can Dance. But it's not great.

Many fans are clearly more heels over head in love with Lisa Gerard than Brendan Perry. The best Dead Can Dance song featuring Brendan principally is "American Dreaming," which I will add to the collection of videos that I share at the end of this entry.

Lisa Gerard also has produced solo work and has contributed to movie soundtracks.

Lisa Gerard's voice is like something from another world. The sound of an angel both beautiful and fierce, both lovely and frightening.

I think Dead Can Dance is a good subject to explore some other material, notably, the following PODCAST.


WELCOME TO NIGHTVALE

Okay, I know. It's about time I started listening to WELCOME TO NIGHTVALE. Actually, Josh Hall at Fanfare recommended it to me months ago, and it has sat on my "to do" list since then. I was reminded of its existence, again, by WARREN ELLIS, and opened the link to

COMMONPLACE BOOKS: WELCOME TO NIGHTVALE

in my browser, vowing to start listening to these podcasts once I finished my current audio book, GONE GIRL.

Welcome to Nightvale is described as

WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE is a twice-monthly podcast in the style of community updates for the small desert town of Night Vale, featuring local weather, news, announcements from the Sheriff's Secret Police, mysterious lights in the night sky, dark hooded figures with unknowable powers, and cultural events.

WELCOME  TO NIGHTVALE is a wonderful pastiche of mixed genre satire and fiction. As one reviewer characterized it: ""Welcome to Night Vale" is relentlessly witty, morbidly hilarious, chaotically unique and often unexpectedly profound. I'm pretty sure the restless soul of H.P. Lovecraft ..." I would add that Lovercraft's restless soul is propelling them onward, watching on with rapt but silent approval. I did not like the rest of what the reviewer wrote.

There are currently 41 episodes of twenty minutes each in length, so it's not too difficult to catch up as I am doing.

Here's some more information if you need to read up on it to be convinced.

Do Not Approach the Dog Park: Welcome to Night Vale
by ALEX BROWN: a snippet:

In the darkest spaces between nightmares and hallucinations is a place unlike any other. The town is populated by hollow-eyed messenger children and ominous hooded figures, haunted by non-existent angels and towers of roaches in deer masks, and tormented by a tiny underground army and wheat and wheat byproducts. A hellscaped sky stretches its gaping maw over the Sand Wastes and Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex, and citizens who aren’t busy battling their evil doppelgangers or being converted into buzzing shadowpeople defined only by the absence of light in the vague shape of a torso and limbs go about their daily lives and try not to get on the bad side of the City Council or the Sheriff’s Secret Police.
Welcome to Night Vale.

WELCOME TO NIGHTVALE WIKIPEDIA

THE STRENGTH OF NIGHT VALE'S LIVE SHOWS

WELCOME TO NIGHVALE: Where David Lynch meets the Twilight Zone

WELCOME TO NIGHTVALE: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

Check it out!
Trust me.
I'm a doctor.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Since I just wrote about the Lovecraftian inspired WELCOME TO NIGHTVALE, I also wanted to promote another Lovecraft influenced art thing I recently discovered: CTHULU SLIPPERS.

I must confess that Lovecraft is one of those authors at which I have taken several runs but have not fully invested. I have read a few stories, started and failed to finish others, but also I have not really applied myself. I am determined to rectify this oversight. It's time for some LOVECRAFTIAN absorption.

This comic, CTHULU SLIPPERS, is a very divertisement. Updates every Monday. Here's the latest reprinted without permission. I am sure creators Andrew Jack and Natalie Metzger would not mind. I am spreading the good word of the great work. ENJOY.

It's really good stuff.

Trust me.

I'm a doctor.

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GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn

I liked Gone Girl. I did not consider it "misogynistic." Fatal Attraction is misogynistic. But even so, ascribing to feminist politics does not mean never writing a woman as a villain. Sometimes I think reviewers write criticism just to stir up controversy and sell papers not because they actual believe the crap they espouse. Though it's overwritten and a bit too kitschy in places, Gone Girl is a taut and gripping thriller about the murder of Amy Elliott Dunne, Nick Dunne's wife, and what happens as Nick tries to defend himself as evidence consistently points to him as the lead suspect. The sound of the basic plot may not inspire, but the book is so full of twists and "gotcha" moments that I really want to share nothing about the plot beyond the one sentence I wrote. I am disappointed to read that Gillian Flynn chose to rewrite the ending of the story for the film. I may not even read these articles to get any sense for why she did this rewrite. "The ending is perfect," which is what my wife said to me when we discussed the book (as she recommended it to me), and I happen to agree. Great thriller, great page turner, a very strong read by a fresh new novelist. I will definitely read her other two books when time permits.

VARIOUS GONE GIRL REVIEWS AND ARTICLE LINKS

Gone Girl - NY Times review

Gone Girl - Chicago Tribune review

GONE GIRL on GOOD READS

GONE GIRL ON WIKIPEDIA

MARY GAITSKILL HATES GONE GIRL

Gillian Flynn on Gone Girl and accusations of misogyny

Gone Girl to be a movie

Gillian Flyyn rewrote book ending of Gone Girl for film

DEAD CAN DANCE VIDEOS

Sanvean (I am your shadow) - Lisa Gerrard

Dead Can Dance - Yulunga (Spirit Dance)

Dead Can Dance - The Arrival and the Reunion

Dead Can Dance - American Dreaming

Dead Can Dance - Towards the Within

Dead Can Dance - The Spider's Stratagem

COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 26 shirts remaining

- chris tower - first published - 1402.23 - 18:23
updated - 1402.24 - 20:32
final publication - 1402.25 - 10:04