Ghost dances and Alchemy!

In 1985 right after quitting The Sisters of Mercy, Gary Marx joined forces with Anne-Marie from Skeletal Family and formed, short lived Ghost Dance as every decent old goth on the planet knows...
Their third release was "The Grip of Love" on Karbon Records 31 October 1986 (hey that's Halloween and... my B-day!)
The 12" version of this release was adorned with  this sleeve:

The illustration used on it depicts an hermaphrodite and was  the cover of a famous 14th century publication, now entitled Aurora Consurgens. 

Aurora Consurgens is an illuminated manuscript of the 15th century which can now be found in the Zürich Zentralbibliothek.

The Aurora Consurgens is one of the earliest emblematic alchemical manuscripts. It is dated to the early 1400's. It has become well known for its thirty-eight miniatures in watercolour, a strange series of engaging allegorical images all representations of alchemical elements depicted in human or animal form, which the contemporary mind sees as surrealistic and enigmatic. In fact it was a sort of code addressed to mystics e.g. mercury is depicted as a serpent; gold as the sun, silver as the moon etc. 

The work became known towards the end of the 20th century through the work of a Jungian psychologist, Marie-Louise von Franz, who issued an edition of it which was translated into English as Aurora Consurgens : a document attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the problem of opposites in alchemy (now attributed to a writer called the "Pseudo-Aquinas"  if you care...)

Except for "our" Ghost Dance, brazilian symphonic power metal act ANGRA released in 2006 a cd entitled Aurora Consurgens...

That's all for now my little alchemists!

Stay tuned for more Goth-an-Roll!

Contact...

Hi there,
As I am preparing my new update about... No, I won't say it yet, patience is a gift!
I thought it was my obligation to let all of you who leave comments or have done so in the past, that I'm facing problems of technical order, in contacting you back.
So, you can of course leave any comment you please on the blog, but if you'd like me to contact you back, please contact me though the blog's facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/80sGothicRock

Stay tuned!

Gothic Rock forefathers pt.II (Blue Oyster Cult)

Here’s one that will probably be my most controversial article so far…

Last summer I started the "Gothic Rock Forefathers series” where we spotted and remembered all those, essentially ‘60s and '70s bands, that "prepared" mostly aesthetically the ground for the original gothic rock era of the '80s. We started with Black Sabbath and now I’ll claim that Blue Oyster Cult had an important  and significant amount of elements that justifies a Forefathers of Goth title.

An obscure little band by the name of Soft White Underbelly evolved into BOC (I’ll use the abbreviation ) in NY city in 1971. They went down music history as a “clever hard rock” outfit and were one of the first to use the term “heavy metal” when it was still hip and cool and deprived of too much nonsense…

From their early days and in all their releases they displayed a strange symbol along with the (in some cases Gothic) band lettering, whose origin and meaning remained unexplained by the band for several years. They later on revealed that it was a modified version of the astrological and alchemical symbol for Saturn (Cronus).

Several of their sleeve covers had references to occult elements and images that conveyed a sense of mystery. See a sample...

An outlandish mood and a galore of symbols for "Fire of Unknown Origin" LP in 1981...

Note the appearance of this odd circle on the back of this same album. That was years before a certain Mc Coy made magic circles trendy and, nowadays, a must for similarly sounding young bands…

Check the use of dry black backgrounds and typographically styled lyrics excerpts in 1973...

Cathedrals and arches in 1975...

Black and white and oh, so many symbols in 1983...

If this ain't goth... 1988

Most important though it's their music and sound. That’s what it (should be) all about. BOC played a very particular and sometimes weird version of early metal that often used dissonant parts and sudden changes. Their sound was alternating straight strong chords and riffs with dark and moody parts. Diversity and doing the unexpected was in their agenda all too often. They could at will get miles away from the classic rock sound of their contemporaries.

Just listen to songs like Astronomy (a masterpiece!), The Revenge of Vera Gemini (co-written with Patti Smith who collaborated with them for a period), Don’t Fear The Reaper (the ultra classic covered much later by HIM), Unknown Tongue, Veteran of the Psychic Wars ( co-written with legendary sci-fi writer Michael Moorcock), Joan Crawford (who has risen from her grave!) and tell me if the mood we seek in goth rock isn’t already there…

To conclude let’s check some of their lyrics too…

"Workshop Of The Telescopes"- Blue Oyster Cult, 1972

By silverfish imperetrix, whose incorrupted eye

Sees through the charms of doctors and their wives

By salamander, drake, and the power that was undine

Rise to claim Saturn, ring and sky

By those who see with their eyes close

They know me by my black telescope

"Subhuman"- Secret Treaties,1974

I am becalmed, lost to nothing

Warm weather and a holocaust

Left to die by two good friends

Abandoned me and put to sleep

Left to die by two good friends

Tears of god flow as I bleed

"Flaming Telepaths"- Secret Treaties,1974

Experiments that failed too many times

Transformations that were too hard to find

Poison's in my bloodstream, poison's in my pride

I'm after rebellion, I'll settle for lies

Yes I know the secrets of the iron and mind

They're trinity acts a mineral fire

Yes I know the secrets of the circuitry mind

It's a flaming wonder telepath

"Divine winds"- Cultosaurus Erectus, 1980

Anxious lovers, bums in the street

Jackals in waistcoats, men in sheets

Purple mountains, waves of grain

Grace of God, thy will be done

If he really thinks we're the devil, then let's send 'em to hell

"Lips In The Hills"- Cultosaurus Erectus, 1980

Up in the sky, beyond the chasm

My eyes behold, a rare phantasm

The godless night, the night that I saw [repeat as above]

I am gripped, by what I cannot tell

Have I slipped or have I merely fell

I've been tricked, my senses telling lies

I've been (stiffened?) by serpent's soundless cries

"The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Von Frankenstein's Castle At Weisseria"- Imaginos, 1988

On the terminal point

Of the cul-de-sac

Patients are dying

The horses are dazed

From the glare of stars

The starry wisdom

Owned by the Baron

And he's got the cure

A drug by the name of World Without End

Carved in Rosetta Stone

Ok, Ladies and Gentlemen it seems I'm back, after feverous nights and everything that comes along...

UK goth band Rosetta Stone (formed in 1988) was a fabulous and important '90s goth band with a strong cult following back then. The "Quarriers" know...
It also happens to be the name of the most visited object at the British Museum, the one visitors see first as the enter the mighty building...
Let's see...

The real Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian black granite monumental stele (flat vertical stone monument or column)  inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. 
This fragment of a larger stele, was rediscovered near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta in 1799 by a soldier, Pierre-François Bouchard, of the Napoleonic French expedition to Egypt, who was checking building material for the construction of military fortification!
It is considered as one of the main findings that has enabled scientists, decode ancient egyptian hieroglyphs. This is mostly due to the fact that the inscribed decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic (late egyptian) script, and the lowest Ancient Greek. Because it presents essentially the same text in all three scripts (with some minor differences between them), it provided the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The text was written by a group of high-priests in Egypt to honour pharaoh Ptolemy V and lists all of the things that the pharaoh has done that were good for the priests cast and the people of Egypt.

British troops defeated the French in Egypt in 1801, and the stone came into British possession. Transported to London, it has been on public display at the British Museum since 1802!

One of the first to announce the complete deciphering of these inscriptions was french teacher and orientalist Jean-Francois Champollion in 1822. He happened to know Greek and Coptic at the time -Coptic being a Demotic related language- a fact that was important in finding out that all three texts were the same...

All those who have seen it know it's an impressive black piece of mystery...

Oh, by the way, the first word that Champollion was able to identify was "Cleopatra"...

Rosetta Stone today is also used in other contexts as the name for the essential clue to a new field of knowledge.

That's all for today folks!

Keep "an eye for the main chance"...