gloomy sundae
Crab On The Rampage
dem in disguise; looking for something to suck
Posts: 25
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Post by gloomy sundae on Aug 17, 2013 9:47:40 GMT
Adam Brent Houghtaling - This Will End in Tears: The Miserabilist Guide To Music (It Books, 2012) Cover design by Milan Bozic: Cover illustration by Greg Grabowy Author's Note Introduction
Song Essay: Lush Life - David Ackles - American Music Club - Angels of Light - Antony & the Johnsons - Arab Strap - Samuel Barber - Song Essay: Adagio for Strings - William Basinski - Andy Bey
Are You Ready to be Heartbroken? Heartbeats, Heartbreaks, and Artificial Hearts Black Tape For A Blue Girl - The Blue Nile - Jacques Brel - Bright Eyes - James Carr - Johnny Cash
This Will End in Tears: Teardrops, Sob Songs, and Crying in the Rain Cat Power - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Vic Chesnutt - Gene Clark- Patsy Cline - Leonard Cohen - Song Essay: Hallelujah - The Cure - Song Essay: Killing an Arab.
Breaking up, Breaking Down, Cheating, and Divorce Dead Can Dance - Depeche Mode - John Dowland - Nick Drake - East River Pipe - Echo & the Bunnymen - Eels
Born to be Blue: The True Color of Misery? Mark Eitzel - Marianne Faithfull - Felt - The Field Mice - Galaxie 500 - Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki - Richard Hawley
Oh, The Humanity! Disasters and Depressions Song Essay: Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? - Hayden - Billie Holiday - Song Essay: Strange Fruit - Skip James - Jandek - George Jones - Joy Division - Song Essay: Love Will Tear Us Apart - Lambchop
Seasonally Affected: Falling Leaves, Falling Snow, Falling Tears Mark Lanegan - Low - The Magnetic Fields - Morrissey - The National - Mickey Newbury - Nico
Decay, Disintegration, Disease Song Essay: d|p 1.1 - Stina Nordenstam - Will Oldham /Palace/ Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Roy Orbison - Pedro the Lion/David Bazan - Allan Pettersson - Edith Piaf - Portishead - Radiohead - Song Essay: How to Disappear Completely
Murder Ballads and Death Discs Johnnie Ray - Red House Painters/ Mark Kozelek - Lou Reed - Amália Rodrigues - Jimmy Scott - The Shangri Las - Jean Sibelius - Nina Simone
Suicide, It's a Suicide: Self-Harm and Song Song Essay: Gloomy Sunday - Frank Sinatra - Elliott Smith - The Smiths - Smog/ Bill Callahan - The Sound - Sparklehorse - David Sylvian
Keep Me in Your Heart for a While: Laments, Sung Weeping, and Deathbed Songs Song Essay: Taps - This Mortal Coil - Tindersticks - Townes Van Zandt - Scott Walker -Song Essay: The Electrician - Hank Williams - Robert Wyatt
Don't they Know Its the End of the World? Songs from the Apocalypse
The 100 Saddest Songs
Acknowledgments Incredibly, it's Vault's 8th (!) black funeral tomorrow, so what better to get us into the party mood than 400 pages of misery, heartbeak, disease and despair? For all i know, Mr. Houghtaling's gloompunk masterpiece may be the most exhaustive book ever written on the subject of morbid popular music - the only other one comes to mind is Adam Clayson's equally delightful Death Discs (Gollancz, 1992) - and yet, omissions there are several and chances are you'll search in vain for at least a couple of personal favourites. Maybe it's that one fellow's depressing dirge is another fellow's laugh-out-loud feelgood anthem, but there are enough untapped suicide songs and murder ballads (depending on your definition of same) for a second volume. Perhaps the author's finest achievement is settling on his '100 Saddest Songs' for long enough to let go the manuscript. Would have appreciated an index, but otherwise another non-fiction best of year contender. If anybody fancies a crack at compiling their own top twenty wrist-slitters, will do my very worst to reciprocate in kind. dem
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Post by Dr Terror on Aug 17, 2013 14:17:39 GMT
Anything by Hue and Cry or Jamiriquy usually does it for me. Actually they make me want to do more than slit their wrists. Yes, I know I've probably spelt Jamiriquy wrong, but I'm sure you know who I mean, and I ain't gonna look up the correct spelling.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Aug 17, 2013 14:29:26 GMT
I have a jolly tome entitled I HATE MYSELF & I WANT TO DIE which apparently contains 50 unbearably depressing song. It includes the original Jacques Brel version of Seasons in the Sun, which I understand is a major downer.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 17, 2013 18:42:10 GMT
Thanks for the warning. Lord P. For those with a fondness for this kind of malarkey, we're talking Tom Reynolds - I Hate Myself and Want to Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You've Ever Heard (Sanctuary, 2005), and the 53 dirges are named and shamed on Wiki. Not seen a copy myself, but the reviews suggest Mr. Reynolds' book is possibly something of a smug fest (see also Kenny Everett's World's Worst Record Show). I think it's fair to say that some of his selections are open to question, unless you equate 'depressing' with 'vomit-inducing.' Trying to compile a top twenty grim gems is proving a whole lot more difficult than i thought on account of the extensive gloompunk repertoires of most of the acts under consideration.
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Post by severance on Aug 17, 2013 19:33:39 GMT
When listening to music, which I do constantly, I find it impossible to automatically label things as both depressing and suicide-inducing - some of the, supposedly, most depressing songs, e.g. Joy Division's 'Love Will Tear Us Apart,' I could listen to over and over. In fact, it seems I have, for it's nigh-on 35 years old now, where does the time go!? Music like Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil, Cocteau Twins - all 4AD acts - might be mournful, bleak, intimidating. Doesn't mean that they're not powerful pieces of music that sends shivers down your spine and gives you goosebumps. How can vocalists like Liz Fraser, Lisa Gerrard, Brendan Perry, Gordon Sharp, Caroline Seaman, The Rutkowski Sisters ever make you think of suicide, when they have voices touched by heaven? The full-length version of 'Neverland' by the Sisters of Mercy is over 10 minutes of impossibly deep bass growling underneath Andrew Eldritch's vocals - depressing doesn't even start to describe it - still have it on my MP3 player though!
The only music that genuinely makes me want to take a nail file to my wrists is vacuous pop music - such as Whigfield's 'Saturday Night,' so I don't honestly see where the authors of these books are coming from. I'd rather dig my own brain out with a rusty spoon than listen to the top 40, but then again I'm just a naturally miserable aging goth, so what the hell do I know about anything.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Aug 18, 2013 5:55:38 GMT
It poses a very good question really.
My favourite album, Man Who Sold the World:
The Width of a Circle – probably about a homosexual experience which is equated with a trip to evil/hell/sin All the Madmen – everyone sane is mad. A song about electroshock Therapy, a controversial treatment for deep depression and mental illness. Black Country Rock – a pastiche of Bolan and one of the few almost jolly moments After All – "Man is an obstacle, sad as the clown"
Running Gun Blues – 'For I promote oblivion And I'll plug a few civilians I'll slash them cold, I'll kill them dead I'll break them gooks, I'll crack their heads I'll slice them till they're running red' Saviour Machine – classic machine turns on humanity and destroys us song She Shook Me Cold – 'I was very smart, broke the gentle hearts Of many young virgins I was quick on the ball, left them so lonely They'd just give up trying'.Probably about oral sex. The Man Who Sold the World – compared to lovecraft The Supermen – immortality is hell with death a virtually unobtainable release
All in all an utterly cheerless and bleak album which I find to be a constant inspiration. Given me more joy than most things.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Aug 18, 2013 10:15:19 GMT
Perhaps it's just me but the stuff that's routinely paraded as "depressing" (Leonard Cohen, Joy Division, etc.) doesn't bring me down at all. Maybe it's because it's real. I saw Joy Division live three times in very different settings and on each occasion left the gig feeling very alive, as though I'd been part of something unique and very powerful.
The total lack of sincerity in much modern corporate music induces true despair...
[/pretension]
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Post by dem bones on Aug 18, 2013 11:14:07 GMT
You're certainly cheering me up, gents, and i thank you for it (no sarcasm). Sev, I think the point of This Will End In Tears is that downbeat, "depressing" music is often beautiful, ultimately uplifting, whereas a lot of cheery, good-time pop doesn't work because it lacks an emotial depth it never claimed to have in the first place. As mentioned, i've not read I Hate Myself ..., but at least one reviewer dismisses it as the author sneering at music he happens to dislike, which is not the same thing at all. God help you all, i can feel an epic post coming on, but ... it's easier Waitin' Around To Die. Maybe later in the week .... Happy birthday to Vault!
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Post by Robert Adam Gilmour on Aug 18, 2013 12:45:22 GMT
I have to say that I agree with everyone who said that brilliant sad music gives you a reason to live rather than die. However there was one band called Soul Whirling Somewhere who was often far too derivative of Red House Painters but had their own incredible moments now and then that were some of the most depressing things I'd ever heard and it really did dredge up lots of bad feelings along with the beauty and I could easily imagine that music tipping some people over.
But I also think you get desensitised if you listen to this stuff a lot, most of it doesn't come close to making me cry, but when I was 9 or 10 years old and I first heard Radiohead's "Exit Music" it seems unbelievably devastating. I don't want to get too snobby but there are several times I've heard people who only listen to singles chart music say that they find some rock song really depressing but it doesn't seem that way to me in the slightest. I think for some people, any serious reflection of any kind seems too depressing.
Weirdly Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins wasn't fond of This Mortal Coil and thought they were too depressing.
The inclusion of Mark Eitzel/American Music Club and Black Tape For A Blue Girl gets my interest in this book but my shopping list is too big already and I don't like buying records on the basis of one song when I have a gazillion albums to find. But I do love this sort of music and every now and then I feel like I haven't listened to enough sad music. I haven't bought anything like Low, Red House Painters, Idaho, Codeine etc in ages, I think in the early 90s some American bands really had a knack for that bleak isolated worn out dusty aesthetic.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Aug 18, 2013 16:35:50 GMT
I have a jolly tome entitled I HATE MYSELF & I WANT TO DIE which apparently contains 50 unbearably depressing song. It includes the original Jacques Brel version of Seasons in the Sun, which I understand is a major downer. And thanks to the wonders of the world wide web here is that moribundly depressing song with the additional bonus of the English subtitles. www.dailymotion.com/video/x192wc_jacques-brel-moribond-dying-man-eng_musicIt's well worth watching this to the end. It moves from a sort of Monty Python thing with ridiculous clarinet (I think - I didn't listen too hard)and the finale takes it somewhere beyond my understanding. Thanks Lord Probert I now need to find someone to sing this at my funeral as it may well wake me up.
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Post by Dr Strange on Aug 19, 2013 10:28:31 GMT
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Post by dem bones on Aug 19, 2013 13:04:15 GMT
The inclusion of Mark Eitzel/American Music Club and Black Tape For A Blue Girl gets my interest in this book but my shopping list is too big already and I don't like buying records on the basis of one song when I have a gazillion albums to find. hi david, i found the book in the local library so you could always put in an order? The real meat is in the essays and the pub debate in the making that is the '100 Saddest Songs'. The band/ artist entries are essentially discographies with Mr. Houghtaling - who is a great one for compiling playlists - selecting artist in question's ten saddest songs (chances are, you'll not agree with his choices). Am dead impressed that he includes an entry on Felt! Personally, i think the main evil in X Factor & Co. is that it's killed POP MUSIC stone dead (makes no difference to rock, reggae, goth, emo, funk, indie, country, r&b, rap, etc). It would be naive - and plain wrong - to suggest that manufactured groups began with SAW/ the abominable Spice Girls, & Co., but post-Cowell it's on an industrial scale. Who buys it? I can't believe it's schoolkids. That is lovely.
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Post by Dr Strange on Aug 19, 2013 13:56:06 GMT
Dem, just noticed that your 'Waitin Around To Die' above is a link to Townes van Zandt. Never would have figured you as a TVZ fan, here's Jason Isbell again covering 'Pancho & Lefty' - www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKnoKSDwY3A
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Post by dem bones on Aug 21, 2013 19:06:18 GMT
Dem, just noticed that your 'Waitin Around To Die' above is a link to Townes van Zandt. Never would have figured you as a TVZ fan, here's Jason Isbell again covering 'Pancho & Lefty' - www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKnoKSDwY3A ] It was down to Uncut magazine. Bought it religiously for about six years. Still have a few of the free discs i've yet to get around to, but this one in particular saw heavy rotation on crappy dem cd. Hadn't heard of Townes Van Zandt 'til then, but " Waitin' Round To Die? That sure sounds like my kind of title." And then I played it. Beautiful. There's a great line in It Will End In Tears where a woman in the audience asks him why he doesn't play any happy songs? TVZ comes back with "Man, these are the happy songs. You don't want to hear the sad ones."
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Post by Dr Strange on Aug 22, 2013 10:16:14 GMT
I'm not a huge fan of TVZ, his studio albums were often heavily overproduced, but his live stuff is worth checking out. Most people probably only know his version of the Stones' Dead Flowers from The Big Lebowski soundtrack. A very interesting, and ultimately tragic, individual though. He certainly lived the life he sang about.
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