Asking: Amanda Palmer, Queen's Hall Edinburgh 2015

Hello again! This isn't such standard blog fare for me, but I'm getting better at informing you guys with what's going on in my life. Bear with me.

My course officially finished on friday! At least, for the summer. I went to see Mad Max to celebrate, then headed off to Edinburgh to join the long line of awkward and excited looking teenagers attending Amanda Palmer's gig at the Queen's Hall.

I've been a fan of AFP's for a couple of years now; I've not been the most attentive one, and my love's fluctuated over that period of time (most notably when I put myself off her music by overplaying it during a particularly rough period in my second year of medical school), but it's always been humming away in the background. Reactions when I mention this fondness vary from solidarity to ignorance to an eye roll accompanied by the statement 'of course you do' - thanks, Lewis - but it's never been something people are surprised by, not like if I mention one of my favourite bands is ABBA or that I like knitting.

Music: She's Lost Control

It's certainly not an original pick for a Joy Division song, but I was finishing some work late last night (to blame for this late post), and 'She Lost Control' came on. It's a good song, even if I tend to avoid it because of how overplayed it can be, but this time, given my current teaching block is neurology, it made me pause.

Curtis was a well known epileptic, and contrary to popular belief actually wrote this song about a girl with epilepsy whom he saw fitting, and later discovered had actually died as a result of a seizure. His own condition being poorly controlled, I can't imagine how terrifying that was for him.

I had to tell a (simulated) patient on thursday that he had to give up the job that was keeping his family of six out of debt because he wasn't safe behind the wheel of his van. Like psychological illness - which Curtis also experienced - epilepsy is perhaps more frightening than any physical illness because it is your own brain turning against you; you are utterly alone. This is even before you factor in the stigma faced by patients, or the all the limitations placed on them. It's disabling and isolating, which really comes across in the song. I wish it could have gone better for him.




Fee

The Curious Professor's Homework Assignment: Inspiring Songs

First off, apologies for not having this up on time. I could talk about how I was seeing Fringe shows at the weekend, packing for university and working during for the week, but excuses aren't usually of interest to the reader and the reality is that the events of Ferguson really did a number on me. Anyway. Onto business.

Surprisingly, this was a really hard challenge for me. Despite being a great music enthusiast, I must admit something I'm very embarrassed about; I haven't listened to any new music in a long time. And I do mean a very long time.

New music is a very difficult thing for me; I take a long time to warm up to anything I haven't heard before, even if I eventually grow to love it. Added to that the overwhelming labyrinthian network of bands that's out there (which I'm apparently expected to know?), and it's just too much to do.

I find the term 'inspiring' very non-specific; inspiring for what? Swing dance? Swooping about in black lace? Joining an anarchist collective and shouting about the inequality in society? Different music affects so many different facets of my life, in many different ways. However, there are certain songs which affect me in ways others can't, and make me feel like something more, an escape from reality; this was one of the things that so enamoured me about post punk when I first began listening to it. Some of these are very typical hits, but hits are hits for a reason.

Track List
Bauhaus - She's in Parties
Kuuntele Ääniä - Kuudes TuntiJoy Division - 24 Hours
Sisters of mercy - Poison Door
Sex Beat - Sex Beat
Siouxsie and the Banshees - Into the Light
Joy Division - Disorder
The Damned - Smash it up


In reality, I could write an essay on each of these selections (maybe I will sometime?), and why they are so significant, but I'll let the songs speak for themselves. The chemistry of these songs really do inspire my appearance, mindset and mood. Within them, I can find a certain synergy within myself that I can't find solely through other means. My aspiration for next year is to have added more music to this list.

I hope that this selection awakens the same feelings in you - maybe not, because of the individuality of music, but these songs represent a large part of my psyche (sorry if that sounds pretentious). I may check the order later, but I'm tired currently and may have to wait until the morning. Good night, all!

What do you find makes a song personally affect you? Any song suggestions for a musical stagnate? Please do let me know!




Fee

Music: Only Lovers Left Alive

Source.

Several weeks late, I finally went to see the Jim Jarmusch vampire film Only Lovers Left Alive this week; contrary to the mostly horror/paranormal foundations of the majority of vampire films, Jarmusch's film (starring Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston) ignores all tropes and is a quietly paced love story at heart. A love story like no other, as the many-thousand years old vampire couple Adam and Eve go through their life, showing us a brief snippet of their ageless existence.

I won't talk about the themes or the ingenuity of the film and aesthetics (the commentary on humanity's fragility, the stark contrast between how Eve and Adam relate to the human race - shown in their clothing and interiors - and how this shapes their attitudes), or the characterisation, or even how it deconstructs the genre, because that's been talked about many times before me. I will, however, talk about the music; I would probably love the film anyway because of the dream team combination of Swinton and Hiddleston, but it's the soundtrack that makes it for me.

Only Lovers Left Alive is, at heart, a film by a depressive music nerd for depressive music nerds. Music features prominently through the film, with a slowed down version of the dizzying Wanda Jackson's Funnel of Love starting the film off, and the two vampires dancing and listening to both snatches of 20th century and underground rock as well as classical and the Lebanese artist Yasmine Hamdan. Jim Jarmusch also includes music from his own band SQURL, which is full of heavy, intense noise walls and broken guitars. The gamer (who went to see the film with me) hates it, calling it terrible, new wave rubbish, but it's my catnip - the perfect soundtrack for an immortal brooding vampire couple.

You can buy the soundtrack here - also available on vinyl, which I desperately want - or listen to it on YouTube first here (I would recommend buying it and supporting independent cinema and artists, but the album doesn't feature all songs, and try before you buy is never a bad thing).




Fee

Music versus Fashion: The Eternal Goth Debate

Egads. Here we go again. Music or fashion? Is it more important that you wear a Bauhaus t shirt, or know all their B sides?

Since goth music started branching out from post punk, we've been having the debate over whether the clothing or the crooning is more important to the scene. Varying opinions are seen, from Jillian Venters belief that it must be fashion, as turning your wardrobe over to the dark side takes a lot of effort (whilst this is true, I could argue that collecting my gothic rock LPs has taken just as much time and money to amass) to the oft repeated assertion that music is 'the backbone' of the subculture and came first. Every goth is expected to have an opinion on it, even if it's just to say that it's a dumb dichotomy and holding one over the other isn't going to make any difference to goth as a whole.

Just because I like feeling self important, I'm going to buck the trend and say that not only can one be held over the other, but for me they are intrinsically linked.

I mentioned the issue to a friend of mine jokingly sometime ago, and what came out was a quite heated discussion. He asserted that goth wasn't equal to other genres such as punk or rock, because fashion was such an integral part of it. To this I replied by hitting him around the back of the head with a pair of my Dr Martens and pointing out that the fashion evolved naturally from the music scene (and it did, according to the original post punkers), and to look down on something because it focused more on fashion was ridiculous (also, extreme amusement for holding rock above goth or punk, when one of the reasons punk came about was because rock became too self important).

I don't like this kind of fashion phobia. It's the kind of belief that is rooted in centuries of sexism, which says taking an interest in what you wear is frivolous and womanly. I can understand some people just aren't interested in fashion as much as others and music takes precedence when picking your favourite bands, but to criticize something or someone as vapid or self obsessed because they like coordinating their shoes with their bag? That's just playing 'my values are better than your values'. There's also a lot of snobbiness in the music side of the debate, as if it makes you 'greater' or more sophisticated in your enjoyment of the scene. I don't believe that because something came first that it's automatically worth more. Equally, though I wouldn't ever tell people not to take part in the subculture, I do find it odd that some can only enjoy the fashion and not listen to the music, and it's undeniable that goth is a music based subculture.

I find the music/fashion debate irrelevant to me, because not only do I love both parts (it's like asking me do I prefer breathing or pumping my heart more) but, for me, you cannot have one without the other. I mentioned it briefly in a previous post, describing why goth fashion is such an important thing to me -

"I could relate it to dressing for the occasion, but it's more central than that; it's dressing for how you feel."

As someone who likes fashion, I enjoy dressing to match how I feel. This applies to everything for me; if I'm dancing swing, I will pull out the pearls and the seamed stockings. If I'm feeling lazy, it will be jogging bottoms and a t shirt. Goth has heavily influenced my world view - not only that, but the music itself is incredibly moving; you can't help but get into the dissonance and the morbid romanticism of the whole thing. I can't express how strongly the music resonates with me. It takes you up in it.

And because I dress for how I feel, this is expressed through my clothing. This is the reason, I believe, that goth encompasses so many styles - from the winklepickers and the back combing of the early post punkers, to the hair falls and the leg warmers of the cyber goths. Obviously outside influences do play a part (e.g. the lifestyle and availability of clothing, the eighties fashion trend for mahoosive hair), but for me this is the core concept.

For goth, I don't believe in a music fashion dichotomy. I feel that people should have a choice in the matter, and they don't have to like one over the other or even either. It's a personal decision to each and everyone of us, and we shouldn't be telling one another which we feel is more important to the subculture as a whole, because whatever the answer it's not true for everyone.





Fee

Music: Kuudes Tunti

I really need to listen to more Scandanavian Post Punk. This is currently my favourite song, as it has so much energy and just makes you want to get up and go; I plan on pursuing the rest of Kuudes Tunti's album (and more Finnish goth!) to see if it's just as good.





Fee

The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing: A Very Steampunk Christmas EP

Tired of generic sugar Christmas carols? Like dark humour, steampunk and snark? The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing's punky A Very Steampunk Christmas EP is right up your cobbled alleyway then, guv.

Though it was released in 2010, I finally got around to buying it and it didn't disappoint. Ebenezer's Carol should appeal to the cynics amongst you, and their rendition of Silent Night is anything but calm and bright. It can be found on iTunes, Soundcloud and Amazon.

I will warn you that it is very short (the EP is only four songs, one of which is thirty seconds), and if you're left wanting more I suggest you check out The Everyday Goth's Alternative Christmas Compilation here.

Have a great Christmas Eve, folks!


Fee

Music: Bauhaus 'Boys'

'Boys' is the lesser known B side of Bauhaus' first and most famous single 'Bela Lugosi's Dead'. I love it for two reasons - one, it's actually quite good, and two, as the top voted comment on the youtube video points out, it really shows how heavily they were influenced by Bowie, which is amusingly ironic considering the lyrics.

Fee

P.S. I may be feeling it, but I'm not dead. I didn't have the energy to get together a post about my dorm room for today, as my health has been poor, but I'll resurface from my cocoon like a butterfly, sticky, confused and suffering total amnesia, next posting day.
 

Snot and sneezes, and a blogging update

Whilst I did anticipate the workload on coming back to Dundee, what with being a medical student and all (read; overworked lackey), I'd forgotten the additional time drainers at the start of the year (see; trying to run a society of over two hundred members with only one other person, starting back whilst everyone else was enjoying fresher's week, etc.). Notably, I'd forgotten the one thing the first semester of university is famous for, other than a dramatic rise in fatty liver disease - fresher's flu.

Instead of preparing for the post which I was due to publish on Monday, I instead spent the weekend chugging soup, playing Fester's Quest and hacking up germs over everything in the flat of some other infected friends. However, now that my vocalisations have improved from '90 year old smoker' to 'Marlon Brando at his huskiest' and I'm no longer bedbound pathetically whining for strepsils and junk food, I can actually get back on track with my posting.

Due to the above mentioned workload, I have been planning on changing my posting schedule for going back to university, and I'm currently planning on posting once every five days; I will undoubtedly end up breaking this rule as the year goes on, but I'll work out if this is suitable for me when I'm back in the saddle proper.

Until my next post, have one of my favourite songs ever, by London After Midnight; like a true gothic rock song, it has subterranean roots in punk, the brooding atmosphere of an abandoned cathedral and a dark, twisting melody so beautiful it's painful.

Much love to all of you, and I hope the start of the autumn is going well.





Fee

Music: I'm the Wild One

Don't mind me; I've just been listening to a lot of Suzi Quatro recently. ;)

The importance of Quatro in rock music cannot be overstated - she was the first female bass player to become a popular artist, and she opened the door to many more like her, including Joan Jett (who was heavily inspired by Quatro), Chrissie Hynde and many more. She is the spiritual grandmother of the Riot Grrl movement, and I could not love her more.

Fee



Punk's not dead - it just smells a bit: The Damned, Glasgow 2013

WARNING - This post features bad outfit photos and even worse camera phone stage photos, and goes into minute detail about and features some major fangasming over a fairly short gig by some aging punk rockers who now all have grey hair and beer bellies. Proceed at your own risk. ;)

Oh my god, you guys. Whilst most of you won't be aware of this, given most of my warbling was on facebook, but I went to see the Damned at the 02 ABC last night, and it was amaaaaaaazinggggg.

This is a slight deviation from my posting schedule, but I will probably start annoying people if I post anymore about it on the book of faces or gabble about it to my family, so where else to sigh about it than my blog?

Links and gigs from around the web

Happy birthday, Siouxsie!

Whilst I do have outfit photos in the works, for various reasons (crappy camera, no one to take photos) they aren't quite top notch and I doubt I'll post them just yet - plus, you're likely to be sick of my face by now, so I'm trying to get a little more variety into my posts. :P


So in lieu of a blog round up, here's a list of many a silly post on the interwebs and Scottish gig I found during exam leave -

 

Interwebs

• Buzzfeed's post 'BEAUTY DARE: Siouxsie Sioux Eyeliner' made me giggle - compared to original banshees lead's make up it looks a little heavy and clumsy to me (the look could have been softened with thinner lines and far more eyeshadow, personally), and the statement 'for most of us, this isn't exactly an everyday look' was amusing. Still, the tips that they recommend are useful, and I can testify that gel liner is glorious stuff for dramatic looks.
• Buzzfeed do, however, have the glorious photo sets Goths of the '80s and Goths of the '80s, Part 2, which have some magnificent pictures of our trad ancestors. For a more complete collection of photos, I recommend the Post Punk Project, an amazing collection of photos and memorabilia of all things dark and post punk from the 80s. 

 

Scottish Tour dates

• The Damned have new UK tour dates! Well, not brand new, but I'd recommend getting your grubby little hands on them regardless. I went to see them in December last year, and I can honestly say that it was the best gig I've ever been to; my uncle has nabbed me tickets for their Glasgow gig, and you can bet your skinny arse that I'll be saving for the Edinburgh one in December too.
•  Peter Murphy is coming to the Oran Mor on the 15th June. I won't lie; for £20, I am indeed tempted. I'm not entirely certain if I'll be on holiday during this or not, but there's also an Amanda Palmer Edinburgh gig on the 17th, so we'll see.
• The Edinburgh Fringe is springing up in Edinburgh (oddly enough) over the 2nd to 26th August in various venues. While some of the shows do require you to buy a ticket, as far as I'm aware they're still running the 'Free Fringe' programme, which includes many amazing free of charge shows (from memory, the steampunk bands The Mechanisms and The Men Who Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing both played in the free fringe, but don't quote me on that). I'm going to scour the programme and check for anything of interest and blog about it later. :)

Now, Game of Thrones is calling, so I'm off to go bond with the family over brutal fantasy violence. Ta for now!



Fee

Happy World Goth Day, chumps!

I've resurfaced from exams and discovered today that I have successfully passed first year medicine (whoop!), so I have a chance to celebrate World Goth Day!

... Which I did by putting on my favourite playlist and dancing about like a loon while I applied daft make up.

Ah well. Danse Macabre isn't until tomorrow, and my go to fellow spooky folks aren't back in Glasgow for a while yet. Still, I'm sure there's nothing gothier than applying eyeliner while singing along to Bauhaus.

The quality and light of these photos are terrible, being taken on my phone, but at least it hides the fact I've ran out of foundation! Still, now that I'm home I can start using the better camera.

Surprisingly, I wasn't terribly worried about exams - not because I thought I had done well (far from it), but because the medical school is fantastically terrible at communicating with students and told us we'd get them two days earlier, only admitting their mistake when students were frantically calling the office asking where they were. So I got the panic out the way early.



Ah, there's the acne.

This is actually something of a new look for me; black lipstick is always something I've been wary of, as it's quite difficult to pull off (plus I wasn't sure if it would suit my hair), so this was an experiment. I toned down my eye make up - usually it's far darker, with more eye liner involved - though given I was more interested in the lip it's rather messy here anyway. My outfit was just a black tank with shorts and tights for moping about my room, so nothing special on that front either.

All in all, I'd say it was a success! My lips aren't too thin for black, it turns out, and despite a few smudges and a lack of materials (this was done with eyeliner and clear gloss, so I didn't have to fork out for lipstick I might not use), I think it turned out not too bad. Black lipstick has something of a bad rep in the alt community, but I think if you avoid the 'sulky teenager in a hoodie' cliches and stick to a simple classy it work very well.

I'm thankful for world goth day because it reminds me of how awesome this subculture is - while I often get frustrated because nothing I wear seems to work or irritated because the course I'm doing doesn't let me experiment with my appearance to the limits, it's easy to forget that to other people I look strange, unusual and occasionally even magical. Indeed, I've been told by people on my course that they enjoy seeing the bizarre variety of clothes I turn up to classes in, and surprisingly several girls have admitted that they are jealous of the different hair styles I wear (lord knows why, as I rarely manage any of them particularly well).

We goths, like everyone else, are special. We're a bit darker than most, and we get dog's abuse sometimes, but at over thirty years we're still going strong, and from Kenya to Ireland, from Hungary to the US, from Columbia to the UK there's spooky folk out there like me that I have a connection with. So I hope you enjoyed your day, folks.

Three cheers for World Goth Day, and for not having to resit the year!

 

 

Fee

 

P.s. I couldn't talk about my experiences with black lipstick without mentioning Sincerely, Boot's posts How do you wear black lipstick? and her review of the Portland Black Lipstick Company.