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Rating: Hello dear ones, here I am with my fourth review, yet another Gothic concert, but this time an old VHS called Nocturne by Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Brief introduction to Siouxsie & co.: a band born during the very first Albion new wave, forging a sound that would then be called Gothic rock, a child of post-punk, new wave with horror movie keyboards, and an hallucinated voice. The band would then become less punk and more pop, partially following the fashion of the eighties.
The Banshees with Robert Smith of the Cure on guitar. They release their first live double album, a testament to the two concerts held at the Royal Albert Hall in London on September 30 and October 1, 1983.
A VHS was also released from this album, which is exactly what I will talk about.
Here's the concert setlist:
At the beginning of the VHS, you see fans entering the theater, and it warms my heart to see goths and ordinary people crowding the Albert Hall, considering the Gothic movement was already waning but the hardcore remained. The lights go out, and in comes our barefoot heroine, with heavy makeup and raven hair, moving through the concert like a tormented soul, like a damned in the infernal circles. It starts with Israel, and believe me, I have never heard a piece so bare (guitar, bass, drums) yet so suggestive and evocative. Robert Smith proves to be an excellent guitarist with his skeletal and abrasive riffs hitting the mark. Budgie's drumming is also very dry but precise, and Severin gives the bass an important role. Musically the VHS is this: guitar, bass, drums, and voice with an exploration of all the Gothic genres of the eighties (post-punk, pop, new wave, gothic).
This concert, in my opinion, is the manifesto of Gothic. Siouxsie is its queen, and with her voice, she takes you into the vampiric heart of cold England of those years.
In conclusion, an excellent musical manifesto and shivers under the skin for those orphaned from a context that other musical genres will wipe away,
To be continued.......
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Dear Prudence (04:01)
Dear Prudence, won't you come out to play
Dear Prudence, greet the brand new day
The sun is up, the sky is blue
It's beautiful and so are you
Dear Prudence won't you come out and play
Dear Prudence open up your eyes
Dear Prudence see the sunny skies
The wind is low the birds will sing
That you are part of everything
Dear Prudence won't you open up your eyes?
Look around round
Look around round round
Look around
Dear Prudence let me see you smile
Dear Prudence like a little child
The clouds will be a daisy chain
So let me see you smile again
Dear Prudence won't you let me see you smile?
03 Paradise Place (04:20)
Sioux: vocals, rhythm guitar
Severin: bass
Budgie: drums
Jones: lead guitar
Look to the hills-now look at my face
Do you notice my eyes-are they in the right place?
There's a Mantovani backdrop-to pucker-up a tummy tuck
A voice soft as lint-mashed up with shades of pink
You can hide your genetics under drastic cosmetics
But this chameleon magic is renowned to be tragic
Look to the hills-now look at my face
Do you notice my eyes-are they in the right place?
04 Melt! (03:42)
You are the melting man
You are your situation
There is no time to breathe
And yet one single breath
Leads to an insatiable desire
Of suicide... in sex
So many blazing orchids
Burning in your throat
Making you choke
Making you sigh
Sigh in tiny deaths
So Melt!
My lover, melt!
She said melt!
My lover, melt!
You are the melting man
And as you melt
You are beheaded
Handcuffed in lace, blood, & sperm
Swimming in poison
Gasping in the fragrance
Sweat carves a screenplay
Of discipline... and devotion
So Melt!
My lover, melt!
She said melt!
My lover, melt!
Can you see?
See into the black of a long, black car
Pulling away from a funeral of flowers
With my hand between your legs
Melting...
05 Cascade (04:47)
Oh the Air was shining
Shining like a wedding ring
Barbed like sex
I felt 10,000 volts
My chest was full of eels
Pushing through my usual skin
I opened up new wounds
Pouting, shouting-
Oh Love -- like liquid falling
Falling in cascades
Oh Lovelorn victims
Laughing in cascades
The Sun was rich
Rich with a song of sin
My breath melted my words
Into strange alphabets
Tormenting my tongue
Pouting, shouting -
Oh Love -- like liquid falling
Falling in cascades
Oh Lovelorn victims
Laughing in cascades
The heartbeats were echoing
Echoing the revolver
Emptying into my mouth
I pulled a face from my pocket
And smiled a Leper's grin
I felt somebody close
Pouting, shouting -
Oh Love -- like liquid falling
Falling in cascades
Oh Lovelorn victims
Laughing in cascades
06 Pulled to Bits (03:51)
Tongues are clacking words of one vision
One tiny incision and teeth are cracking
on thin air, on thin air
And teeth are cracking on thin air
Pulled to bits--in silence
left rotting on the ground
Slowly pulled to bits--in silence
without a sound, without a sound
Buildings bleached with shatter-shatter-clatter
fill their senses with cement
watch the people scatter
one by one, one by one
Pulled to bits--in silence
left rotting on the ground
Slowly pulled to bits--in silence
without a sound, without a sound
Young lungs snapping coming up for air
the mindless ones yapping, slashing through the thoroughfare
one by one, one by one
oh one by one without a fucking care
Pulled to bits--in silence
left rotting on the ground
Slowly pull to bits--in silence
without a sound, without a fucking sound
Pulled to bits, yackety-yackety-yack-yack-yack
Pulled to bits, shatter-shatter-shatter-clatter
Pulled to bits, yap-yap-yap-yapping
Pulled to bits--without a sound
07 Night Shift (06:24)
Only at night time I see you
In darkness I feel you
A bride by my side -- I'm inside many brides
Sometimes I wonder...
What goes on in your mind, always silent and kind
Unlike the others...
Fuck the mothers kill the others
Fuck the others kill the mothers
I'll put it out of my mind because...
I'm out of my mind with you
In heaven and hell with you...
My Night Shift sisters
Await your nightly visitor
They don't bother me
No they don't bother me
The cold marble slab submits at my feet
With a neat dissection...
Looking so sweet to me -- please come to me
With your cold flesh -- my cold love
Hissing -- not kissing
A happy go lucky chap -- always dressed in black
He'll come to you, he'll come to you
My Night Shift sisters
With your nightly visitor
A new vocation in life
My love with a knife
Fuck the mothers kill the others
Fuck the others kill the mothers
I'll put it out of my mind because...
I'm out of my mind with you
In heaven and hell with you...
08 Sin in My Heart (03:43)
Sin in my heart
Sin in my heart...
Sin in my heart flying like a dart
Oh sin in my heart
It's beginning to start...
When you're lying like a tart
Oh sin in my heart
When you grovel at my feet
Oh sin in my heart
It's short and sweet
Sin in my heart...
Swift as a dart sin in my heart
Oh sin in my heart
When you grovel at my feet
Keep it short and sweet
Sin in my heart...
09 Slowdive (04:03)
Get your head down to the ground
Shake it all around -- a dirty sound
Put your knees into your face
And see if you can race -- real slow
It's a slowdive -- when you die slow
Oh it's a low jive -- do the slowdive
Now you jump back like a hound
Emit a howling sound
Dig those limbs into the floor
And holler out for more
And you revel in the dips
When your backbone slips
Taking honeysuckle sips
From your rolling hips
It shifts and it shifts
It's a slowdive -- when you die slow
When you come alive it's a low jive
Do the slowdive
10 Painted Bird (04:17)
On lead-poisoned wings -- you try to sing
Freak beak shrieks are thrown -- at your confusing hue
The peacock screaming eyes -- show no mercy no mercy
Painted bird -- it's absurd
Just a tainted bird -- hurting their twisted nerve
The flock will make you choke -- on this sadistic joke
And the whippoorwills -- they make a din
In laughing unison -- you're hitchcock carrion
In laughing unison -- you're hitchcock carrion
Carry on
Painted bird -- it's absurd
Just a tainted bird -- hurting their twisted nerve
I hear your sorrow -- maybe tomorrow
You'll lose your sorrow
When a fated weather will cleanse away
That painted feather -- and all that sorrow
A coquette in fur purr for the painted bird
Confound that dowdy flock -- with a sharp-honed nerve
Because we're painted birds by our own design
By our own design
And there's no more sorrow
Have you heard -- about the painted bird
Just a tainted bird -- hurting their twisted nerve
We've lost our sorrow -- now it's tomorrow
No need to hide your feather until a fated weather
No more sorrow...
Now we're painted birds -- mocking that twisted nerve
It's absurd...
11 Happy House (04:12)
This is the happy house -- we're happy here
In the happy house -- oh it's such fun
We've come to play in the happy house
And waste a day in the happy house
It never rains
We've come to scream in the happy house
We're in a dream in the happy house
We're all quite sane
This is the happy house -- we're happy here
There's room for you if you say you do
But don't say no or you'll have to go
We've done no wrong with our blinkers on
It's safe and calm if you sing along
This is the happy house -- we're happy here in the happy house
To forget ourselves -- and pretend all's well
There is no hell
12 Switch (07:48)
Different lives
In different places
Familiar problems
Same old faces
Shuffle lives
Into wrong categories
Cross the wires
And fuse humanities
Watch the muscles twitch
For a brand new switch...
Scientist G.P.'s
With patient guinea pigs
Curing their headaches
With drastic side-effects
Watch the muscles twich
For a brand new switch�
Doctor rectorates
Condescending from on high
For all hallucinators
See druggist in the sky
Vicar experiments
But 'tis blasphemy
Dismissing thought of progress
As the mark of devilry
Switch
People walk
And even talk
People listen
Then they halt
Something blows up
Won't come down
Scattered muscles twitch
Too late to switch
13 Spellbound (03:17)
From the cradle bars
Comes a beckoning voice
It sends you spinning
You have no choice...
You hear laughter
Cracking through the walls
It sends you spinning
You have no choice...
Following the footsteps
Of a rag doll dance
We are entranced
Spellbound
And don't forget
When your elders forget
To say their prayers
Take them by the legs
And throw them down the stairs
When you think
Your toys have gone berserk
An' it's an illusion
You cannot shirk
You hear laughter
Cracking through the walls
It sends you spinning
You have no choice
Following the footsteps
Of a rag doll dance
We are entranced
Spellbound
14 Helter Skelter (03:41)
When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
Till I get to the bottom and I see you again.
Do you, don't you want me to love you
I'm coming down fast but I'm miles above you
Tell me tell me tell me come on tell me the answer
You may be a lover but you ain't no dancer
So look out
Helter skelter
Na la la la la la
Helter skelter
Na la la la la la
Helter skelter
Will you, won't you want me to make you
I'm coming down fast but don't let me break you
Tell me tell me tell me the answer
You may be a lover but you ain't no fucking dancer
When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop...
16 Voodoo Dolly (08:43)
She's your little voodoo dolly
And she's gonna make you lazy
Like the little drum in your ear
Transfixes you to your fear
And now she's transfixed in your fear
And you know she's gonna stay there
Because her nails are deep in your hair
And she made you so... unaware
Are you listening to your fear
The beat is coming nearer
Like that little drum in your ear
Transfixes you to your fear
She's such an ugly little dolly
And she's making you look very silly
And when you listen in to her ear
You get paralyzed with her fear
Oh down... down in your fear
Now this little voodoo dolly
Has made you very lazy
You're anaemic from her sucking
And when you're dead she'll find another
Better break that little dolly
And sling her in the corner
Now she's a sorry little dolly
Such a sorry little dolly
Are you listening to your fear
The beat is coming nearer
Like that little drum in your ear
Transfixes you to your fear
Listen....
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