Hi Paul.

Maybe I'm not remembering the story right....

Isn't Anything is the only one of those albums I have much of an opinion on, and it's been stated forcefully by Jon & Jim.

And speaking - as we were - of sorta kinda goth bands of the turn of the '90s, Cranes have to be mentioned. IIRC, they sounded like a small scared child trapped in a room with Michael Gira. But in a good way.

And the mighty, never-forgotten Telescopes.

Cranes are cool. Has anyone mentioned Swans? I love their cover of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" as much as the original.

Swans=Michael Gira.

By association. A huge majority of goths (n = all my friends in the Boston goth scene) love the Church.

Heh. I remember in high school that it was much easier to slip the Church under parents' and teachers' radar, as opposed to, say, the Screaming Blue Messiahs (who I realize are not goth; just commenting on how names would catch parents' eye).

And wearing a Dead Kennedys T-shirt was like the ultimate badge of rebellion.

And wearing a Dead Kennedys T-shirt was like the ultimate badge of rebellion.

My favorite freak-the-authority-figures T-shirt was a Butthole Surfers T-shirt. Which I think my brother stole.

Maybe I'm not remembering the story right....

Historically I'd say the bass becoming a lead instrument goes (very) roughly: Jimmy Blanton (Ellington's bassist who revolutionized the instrument before dying at the age of 23) set the stage for Mingus, who as both a virtuoso and composer/bandleader was uniquely positioned to put the bass front and center (cf. Martin Williams' essay on Mingus, "The Pivotal Instrument" in The Jazz Tradition), to Detroit's finest, James Jamerson, who came up as a jazzman, trained on the double bass, before revolutionizing the electric and influencing... basically everyone, and he was followed by Larry Graham of Sly & the Family Stone who completed the cycle of making the bass "the pivotal instrument" in pop as well as jazz. That leaves a lot out of course, but I think it catches the key figures.

Paul McCartney on James Jamerson: "Then I started listening to other bass players - mainly Motown. As time went on, James Jamerson became my hero, although I didn't actually know his name until quite recently Jamerson and later Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys were my two biggest influences: James because he was so good and melodic, and Brian because he went to very unusual places. With the Beach Boys, the band might be playing in C, but the bass might stay on the G just to hold it a back. I started to realize the power the bass player had within the band. Not vengeful power - it was just that you could actually control it. So even though the whole band is going along in A, you could stick in E," he says, and sings an insistent repeated bass note. "And they'd say: 'Let us off the hook!' You're actually in control then - an amazing thing. So I sussed that and got particurlarly interested in playing the bass."

IIRC, they sounded like a small scared child trapped in a room with Michael Gira.

This made me laugh and laugh and laugh. Having seen the Swans, I have an idea what that's like. Amazing show, but there was an undercurrent of violence in the crowd that had me on edge all night. I kept expecting some kind of explosion. The surprising thing was that it didn't happen.