You see, this week's Misanthropic Musicology focuses largely on the work of two great composers who somehow came into my mind at the same time, that being Mlle Clarke, and Siouxie Sioux. Do they have anything in common? Well surprisingly more than one might imagine. Siouxie is of course the original punk rocker par excellence, famous for her notoriety amongst the Bromley Contingent, a gang of punk rockers who followed the Sex Pistols everywhere, Siouxie thus becoming a household name in the UK after the swearing-on-tele incident incited by the host being a filthy pig towards her (at age 16 I may add) during an interview with the pistols.
Thing is though she also happened to be a musical genius, forming Siouxie and the Banshees around the time of this ridiculous film, a band whose incredible free improvised punk prayer "the Lord's Prayer" live in some dingy shithole in London or something inspired countless punk bands to form and go in new angles, directions, inflections, you effing rotter. The Banshees laid the blueprint (along with Nick Cave et al) for Goth, their lengthy discography is well worth a plunge, from the post-punk revelation of their debut The Scream, to the sophisticated multi-layered darkness of Juju and the in-between-these-two absolute fucking brilliance of Join Hands featuring one of my personal Banshees faves 'Love in a Void'. Here is not the Banshees playing it...
...a hint to next week's Misanthropic Musicology.
Anyway, listening still to Rebecca Clarke's works for cello and piano I sit, sweating and thinking of the similarities between Siouxie and Rebecca. Both grew up in Britain, both grew up in abusive households, both have been overlooked due to their sex/gender and given nowhere near the credit due as usual. Both also do Romantic, gothic, exotic, mysteriousness very very well indeed.
Rebecca looking forlorn and Gothy as fuck with her viola
Siouxie looking similarly forlorn.
Rebecca Clarke's compositions for viola have become, to an extent, standard rep for performers on that instrument, with a selection of inventive and beautiful viola sonatas well worth checking out. She also wrote this stunning hallucinatory ballad for violin and piano with the evocative title 'Midsummer Moon', sounding right out of the songbook of her contemporary British composers such as Ralph Vaughn-Williams, her French contemporaries such as Ravel, but with a voice all her own which is severely under-rated as I'd never heard of it until I started searching hard for it.
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Siouxie also has the interesting though not that appealing to this here writer band The Creatures, whose percussiony thump under Siouxie's trademark Goth wail is an interesting listen though nowhere near as revelatory as The Banshee's extraordinary legacy. What a legend.
Amen. So do yourselves a favour and delve deep into this. I'm going to go back to listening to Rebecca Clarke and bad underground cult heavy metal accompanied by a washing machine I did some very dodgy repairs to some years ago (and it still works thank you) and two pedestal fans, which despite their best efforts are doing very little to decrease the ever increasing heat as the sun beats down on Brisvegas at high velocity, intensity: total genocide of all living things. You think I'm joking, but think on this, 1/3 of an entire species of flying fox has just been wiped out by the heat in Victoria, and basically the entire fish population of the Murray-Darling basin has just died. None of these places are anywhere near Brisbane, but it's still a worry, actually think I might spend my arvo wading in the pool and looking up bunker-building on YouTube.
Next week...Gylve "Fenris" Nagell aka Fenriz...
AND IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT BOOM VACUUM BOOM VACUUM BOOM VACUUM 15 15 15 FIFTEEN AT JUNK BAR TOMORROW 30 JAN. BE THERE. 7PM.
And some bonus Doro Pesch...
Hahaha "Metal Tango"....
