When there are so many to choose from, so many that mean more to me. The song my eldest son was born to, the song I first fell in love to, the song that reminds me of my late Dad, the song that means the most for myself and my wife. The list is endless to try and pick one that epitomises your life in such succinct detail.
So why this tune?
I’ve thought long and hard about this and I think there has always been an undercurrent of goth about my musical tastes. Might be because I fancied a couple of Goth girls at school, Sue Player and Janice Mollineaux. To be honest I fancied most the girls. dark eyeliner and back combed hair or not.
I’ve managed to trace my musical (gothic) mainline through my early exposure to Stranglers because my brother and his mates were into them, a lad in street next to ours followed them round Europe so much so he became mates with Hugh Cornwell. I grew up listening to Black and White, No More Heros and Rattus as the backdrop and musical education from being 9 to around 12.
At 12 I put down my Punky/gothic musical tendencies for a few years in favour of Smiths, New Order and China Crisis. Music which matched my Farahs and flick combination.
When 17 and experimenting with various herbs and resins I picked up the dark musical lineage again and started listening to The Doors and the Velvets mostly before the Acid House explosion. I think Velvets are the band that made the most impact on me and what I like or don’t like.
My most recent foray and discovery weaving in and out of this Velvet/Stranglers inspired gothic highway has been “Krautrock”. I knew of Kraftwerk and heard the big tunes that were played and sampled but that was it. It wasn’t until I started listening to Can and Neu particularly that I realised that this too was all fruit from the same strange tree. All twisting their way back to the repetitive crunching sound of the Velvets chemical induced sadomasochistic gothic vibes.
So why Dirge? For me its one of the tunes that incapsulates the whole lineage of this music. They have a little bit of it all, a grinding beat and build up, dark brooding look and style, an air of we’re all wired to the tits on speed, a smattering of gothic romanticism, little bit of acid and techno to a lullaby of horror movie eery out-there vocals.
The vocalist distant, emotionless, in time with the beat, feeling it, but not succumbing to the grinding rhythmic chaos unfolding behind her. The driving bass and drums, ever intensifying sequencer being strangled to death by Fearless. Fucking brilliant.
More fruit from the Velvets tree…
Doors
Stooges
Glamrock
Punk
Krautrock
New Romantic
Synth
Goth
Newwave
Grunge
Death in Vegas
Horrors
Billie Eilish (yes mental, I know) I think she’s got the goth gene. Not my cup of tea but some of her tunes drip in gothicness. And she looks like my lovely wife.
Also bizarrely she reminds me of Dot Allison the cool/sexy as fuck feather haired singer on DIV on the Jools Holland show, my first exposure to Death In Vegas.
So here they are in all their Velvet/Kraut inspired gothic sexiness on Jools Holland in 2000.
Pure brilliance.
Even has some lyrics for you meat and two veg lot.
Not everyone’s cup of char but that matters not. It’s a tune that helped sculpt and hone my musical appreciation landscape and that’s ok with me.
Vive la difference.
