The Darkity Dark Darkness of It All
A Life Less Lived: The Gothic Box is a 3 CD/1 DVD compilation set of gothic music cutely laced into a leatherette "corset," though that makes it somewhat hard to file with your other stuff. For whatever reason, the CD/DVD/companion book folder itself has a stylized octopus drawn in red upon its black background, so Goth approves of tentacle porn?
With any compilation you always have artists/songs that people argue should have been left out or put in. A Life Less Lived doesn't sidestep that one.
The artists featured here weigh heavier on ones who started in the late 70s-early 80s, mostly British. (The companion book helpfully tells readers that Goth started in England. Yes, but it didn't just stay there.) Also, if you were ever a member of Bauhaus, you're more likely to get in here, since there's one Bauhaus song on a CD, one Bauhaus music video on the DVD, a Peter Murphy song, a Love and Rockets song on the CD, a Love and Rockets music video on the DVD, a song by Dali's Car, and a song by Daniel Ash off an album that even the book says was "the best Love and Rockets album Love and Rockets never made." A lot of 90s Goth gets passed over--you'd think almost nobody started making this music in the 90s--and you get the feeling that AFI only got on here for the included cover of The Cure's "The Hanging Garden." And that Cleopatra and its artists never existed.
Where's Voltaire? Switchblade Symphony? Rosetta Stone? Wolfsheim? Sunshine Blind? The Crüxshadows? Lacuna Coil?
Dead Can Dance is Goth? Really? "The Arcane" sounds pretty much as New Agey as a lot of Dead Can Dance. The book argues that Skinny Puppy and Ministry started out Goth and turned industrial, though they sure sound industrial here, and maybe I'll give the leeway on that, but Einstürzende Neubauten is Gothic? No. No. No. Blixa Bargeld also being in Nick Cave's Bad Seeds does not make Einstürzende Neubauten Gothic. Einstürzende Neubauten is music with a Gothic sensibility that Goths listened to but was not itself "Gothic music," and I would include Skinny Puppy and Ministry in there. Those are all industrial. If you want to rope in Music With a Gothic Sensibility That Goths Listen To But Was Not Itself "Gothic Music," the set could have included The Smiths, Morrissey, Depeche Mode, Type O Negative, White Zombie, Nine Inch Nails, Shriekback, Machines of Loving Grace, Genitorturers, Concrete Blonde (watch everyone in the goth club get up and dance when the DJ put "Bloodletting (The Vampire Song)" on), Pigface, KMFDM, Stabbing Westward, Leonard Cohen....
Then you'll always have folks be unhappy with the song choice made for bands they're very familiar with. The very repetitive "Tomorrow's World" for Killing Joke instead of, say, "Love Like Blood" or "Turn to Red"? "Temple of Love" for The Sisters of Mercy instead of something sharper and more hypnotic like "Floorshow"? (Though I was thrilled to get the music video for "Lucretia My Reflection" on the DVD. Look at Andrew lipsync badly as he struts around like the white version of 80s' Michael Jackson! I'm not being sarcastic.) I would have preferred to get "Persephone" for Cocteau Twins instead of "Blood Bitch," even if "Blood Bitch" does underscore the book's point that some people thought Cocteau Twins were a Japanese band instead of a Scottish band whose "gibberish" lyrics were a distorted mix of English and old Scots. I don't really like much Cocteau Twins, but I'm not a fan of ethereal or shoe-gazing in general, so some bands in that vein on this box set were just lost on me. Whyyyyyyy "Morning Dew" for Einstürzende Neubauten? I heard a Clan of Xymox album once about eight years ago and remembered liking it but lacked the patience to get through A Life Less Lived's pick of "Muscoviet Musquito." And can someone tell me if Mission UK rips off Sisters of Mercy melodies and even arrangements all the time or if it's just "Wasteland" that blatantly steals? I expected Andrew to start singing, "I hear you calling, Marian...." any second. (Can you imagine the bandwank that would have gone on around these guys' fans if the internet had been a publicly available thing back then?)
Sometimes you find out that you can't go home again. I loved Alien Sex Fiend's "Now I'm Feeling Zombified" when I was in high school/college but listening to it now I found it to be too long and repetitive. But that's my fault, not the set's.
The DVD of music videos has videos mostly showing the bands playing and lipsyncing. To me, that's boring. But, hey, "Lucretia My Reflection" and The Cure's "Lullaby"! Plus, I could just listen along to Siouxsie & the Banshees' "Cities in Dust" and Echo & the Bunnymen's "The Killing Moon."
Bitching out of the way, I can say that there are a lot of songs I really liked on here, stuff I never heard before, mostly because I became a Goth in the early 90s. (Yes, I never heard The Cure's "Charlotte Sometimes" before, although I was aware it existed. I'm lucky nobody took my union card away from me.) For example, Suz tried to get me into Christian Death ages ago but it mostly put me to sleep, yet A Life Less Lived's selection of "Romeo's Distress" made me very happy. There are a lot of the forebears of Goth here--Bauhaus, The Cure, The Damned, Throbbing Gristle, Christian Death, Joy Division, The Sisters of Mercy, Virgin Prunes, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, Fields of the Nephilim, The March Violets, Gene Loves Jezebel, Tones on Tail, The Birthday Party, Misfits, Specimen, Alien Sex Fiend, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, and much much more--and the odds are good that you don't have them on CD (or MP3, as I have now loaded my favorites into my iMini).
The companion book has some moments I want to smack the contributors for, like the unnecessary jab at EBM, but it's mostly entertaining, with histories of the bands, some photos and quotes, and an amusing guide on how to dance Goth, in which moves have a difficulty rating and names like "Ow! I Cut My Wrists," "My Artificial Hip Joint," "Testing the Scratching Post," "Changing the Light Bulb," and "With Catlike Tread." The goths I knew in Pennsylvania in the early 90s had a great, twisted sense of humor about life and were very inclusive, and everyone gleefully danced like dorks, so this section is right up my alley.
At least all of the above was my Goth experience. Your mileage may vary.
With any compilation you always have artists/songs that people argue should have been left out or put in. A Life Less Lived doesn't sidestep that one.
The artists featured here weigh heavier on ones who started in the late 70s-early 80s, mostly British. (The companion book helpfully tells readers that Goth started in England. Yes, but it didn't just stay there.) Also, if you were ever a member of Bauhaus, you're more likely to get in here, since there's one Bauhaus song on a CD, one Bauhaus music video on the DVD, a Peter Murphy song, a Love and Rockets song on the CD, a Love and Rockets music video on the DVD, a song by Dali's Car, and a song by Daniel Ash off an album that even the book says was "the best Love and Rockets album Love and Rockets never made." A lot of 90s Goth gets passed over--you'd think almost nobody started making this music in the 90s--and you get the feeling that AFI only got on here for the included cover of The Cure's "The Hanging Garden." And that Cleopatra and its artists never existed.
Where's Voltaire? Switchblade Symphony? Rosetta Stone? Wolfsheim? Sunshine Blind? The Crüxshadows? Lacuna Coil?
Dead Can Dance is Goth? Really? "The Arcane" sounds pretty much as New Agey as a lot of Dead Can Dance. The book argues that Skinny Puppy and Ministry started out Goth and turned industrial, though they sure sound industrial here, and maybe I'll give the leeway on that, but Einstürzende Neubauten is Gothic? No. No. No. Blixa Bargeld also being in Nick Cave's Bad Seeds does not make Einstürzende Neubauten Gothic. Einstürzende Neubauten is music with a Gothic sensibility that Goths listened to but was not itself "Gothic music," and I would include Skinny Puppy and Ministry in there. Those are all industrial. If you want to rope in Music With a Gothic Sensibility That Goths Listen To But Was Not Itself "Gothic Music," the set could have included The Smiths, Morrissey, Depeche Mode, Type O Negative, White Zombie, Nine Inch Nails, Shriekback, Machines of Loving Grace, Genitorturers, Concrete Blonde (watch everyone in the goth club get up and dance when the DJ put "Bloodletting (The Vampire Song)" on), Pigface, KMFDM, Stabbing Westward, Leonard Cohen....
Then you'll always have folks be unhappy with the song choice made for bands they're very familiar with. The very repetitive "Tomorrow's World" for Killing Joke instead of, say, "Love Like Blood" or "Turn to Red"? "Temple of Love" for The Sisters of Mercy instead of something sharper and more hypnotic like "Floorshow"? (Though I was thrilled to get the music video for "Lucretia My Reflection" on the DVD. Look at Andrew lipsync badly as he struts around like the white version of 80s' Michael Jackson! I'm not being sarcastic.) I would have preferred to get "Persephone" for Cocteau Twins instead of "Blood Bitch," even if "Blood Bitch" does underscore the book's point that some people thought Cocteau Twins were a Japanese band instead of a Scottish band whose "gibberish" lyrics were a distorted mix of English and old Scots. I don't really like much Cocteau Twins, but I'm not a fan of ethereal or shoe-gazing in general, so some bands in that vein on this box set were just lost on me. Whyyyyyyy "Morning Dew" for Einstürzende Neubauten? I heard a Clan of Xymox album once about eight years ago and remembered liking it but lacked the patience to get through A Life Less Lived's pick of "Muscoviet Musquito." And can someone tell me if Mission UK rips off Sisters of Mercy melodies and even arrangements all the time or if it's just "Wasteland" that blatantly steals? I expected Andrew to start singing, "I hear you calling, Marian...." any second. (Can you imagine the bandwank that would have gone on around these guys' fans if the internet had been a publicly available thing back then?)
Sometimes you find out that you can't go home again. I loved Alien Sex Fiend's "Now I'm Feeling Zombified" when I was in high school/college but listening to it now I found it to be too long and repetitive. But that's my fault, not the set's.
The DVD of music videos has videos mostly showing the bands playing and lipsyncing. To me, that's boring. But, hey, "Lucretia My Reflection" and The Cure's "Lullaby"! Plus, I could just listen along to Siouxsie & the Banshees' "Cities in Dust" and Echo & the Bunnymen's "The Killing Moon."
Bitching out of the way, I can say that there are a lot of songs I really liked on here, stuff I never heard before, mostly because I became a Goth in the early 90s. (Yes, I never heard The Cure's "Charlotte Sometimes" before, although I was aware it existed. I'm lucky nobody took my union card away from me.) For example, Suz tried to get me into Christian Death ages ago but it mostly put me to sleep, yet A Life Less Lived's selection of "Romeo's Distress" made me very happy. There are a lot of the forebears of Goth here--Bauhaus, The Cure, The Damned, Throbbing Gristle, Christian Death, Joy Division, The Sisters of Mercy, Virgin Prunes, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, Fields of the Nephilim, The March Violets, Gene Loves Jezebel, Tones on Tail, The Birthday Party, Misfits, Specimen, Alien Sex Fiend, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, and much much more--and the odds are good that you don't have them on CD (or MP3, as I have now loaded my favorites into my iMini).
The companion book has some moments I want to smack the contributors for, like the unnecessary jab at EBM, but it's mostly entertaining, with histories of the bands, some photos and quotes, and an amusing guide on how to dance Goth, in which moves have a difficulty rating and names like "Ow! I Cut My Wrists," "My Artificial Hip Joint," "Testing the Scratching Post," "Changing the Light Bulb," and "With Catlike Tread." The goths I knew in Pennsylvania in the early 90s had a great, twisted sense of humor about life and were very inclusive, and everyone gleefully danced like dorks, so this section is right up my alley.
At least all of the above was my Goth experience. Your mileage may vary.