I warn you before I go into this list, that I am an emotionally damaged person, and that I have already taken my Ambient for the evening as I begin writing this, so I may not stay on topic, it may not all be clear, it may actually say more than I would want it to, but you are going to get it, un edited, straight from me.
With that said, here is my favorite 10 songs.
With that said, here is my favorite 10 songs.
1. Skinny Puppy | Killing Game
I was from the very first seconds of hearing them hooked on Skinny Puppy from the beginning. I searched out and bought everything and anything they released or were on. I bought bootleg videos, I wanted to be Skinny Puppy, I lived and breathed Skinny Puppy. Ohgr’s free form train of though lyrics, made sense to me, that was how I wrote Music, I just freestyled words, puked emotions raw and exposed onto songs. I sang through a Distortion pedal, I unintentionally mimicked his voice (I didn’t realize it until much later when we were playing a Viktim show and the headlining band came marching up to me as we came off stage opening for them telling me how he had run out to watch us as we played, that we sounded so much like Skinny Puppy, but without ripping them off, and that he loved it. We played Skinny Puppy at my wedding, I played Skinny Puppy on the way to my divorce, I played Skinny Puppy while sitting in a tub after eating a bottle of pills and alcohol after I performed a show. Eventually, many many years later, I actually got the opportunity to meet Skinny Puppy. Dwayne was long since passed, but I met Cevin Key and Ohgr, and they were so very nice. They signed my Access Virus TI Polar, I combined my most important synth to me with my most important Musical influence. I cried as I thanked the person that allowed me the opportunity to meet Skinny Puppy. They also signed one of my Ouija Boards. I collect old Ouija boards, cant help it. The vibe, the driving force in that song Killing Game – I wanted to be that song.
2. Ministry | Just One Fix
Heroin was huge in the 1990s. If it was not your friends making it seem cool it was Trent Reznor, Al Jourgenson, William Burroughs, it was just… Everywhere. I actually made it through without ever doing Heroin, I did plenty of other drugs, but never that. However other musicians I played with were of course doing Heroin, and all in all, Just One Fix brings me back to the 1990s. The glory days of Industrial and Goth. Just hearing the song today brings me shivers and I have to listen to it all the way through. It was the first song I learned how to play on Guitar, and everytime I picked up someone's guitar I had to play it.
3. Arthur Brown | Fire
When I was a kid, my parents would have parties, our basement was almost a nightclub, there was a DJ booth, a bar, a pole, a pooltable, a discoball, poker tables, and paintings on the walls, and we had a pool in the backyard. Other than the obvious Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Zappa and Zeppelin the big mark on my childhood was burned there by Arthur Brown, on a 45 rpm record. My day would put it on at the height of the night, blasting I am the God of Hellfire and I bring you… Fire!!! I bring you to burn – just watching my uncle's laugh and the women look a bit angry, and all that, it's really what set me on my path early on. My parents were far from out of the ordinary, but this song sent me on a path into the Occult, and I was obsessed with Fire, Satan, the Devil, Horror, everything from that moment on.
4. Front Line Assembly | Circuitry
In 1995 Front Line Assembly toured, and came to Philadelphia with Die Krupps, and Numb, and my friend Scott and I went and saw them. The show, the CD, everything, blew us away, and we went home and we started writing and recording Guitar driven Industrial/US Coldwave. This is actually one of the rare bits of Music that is not tied to a sad story. Front Line Assembly combined with Leather Strip, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, all lead to me forming my Industrial project Viktim, which I did for the next 15 years I guess, from about 1996 – 2011. I have been making Electronic Music ever since, maybe if I had not found FLA I would have gotten a real career, and grown up, haha.
5. Cranes | Thursday
On one of the summer adventures where my heart was being devoured by the black haired Raven that was my girlfriend, we were broke up, and she was of course ‘single’ and doing her thing down the shore, etc. while I was mourning for her being gone, and a girl I met at the mall who worked in the CD store there. She asked me what I was into, we talked about The Cure, and Nine Inch Nails and she recommended I pick up Wings Of Joy by Cranes. I got her phone number, took her on a couple dates, she tried to get me to move on, we would listen to Cranes, and watch movies on the couch. I was very awkward, I didn’t really know what to do, I knew I was dumped and single and could do whatever, but all I really did was listen to the Cure, watch those old Hardcore movies by Richard Kern with Lydia Lunch in them, and then listen to the Cranes that summer with this girl.
6. Type O Negative | Unsuccessfully Coping With The Natural Beauty Of Infidelity (The "I Know You're Fucking Someone Else" Extended Mix)
High School Romance, full of being betrayed by a beautiful teenage Goth girl. I can’t even listen to Type O Negative without thinking about it all, and being sucked back to that time. The Aching, the Loneliness, the Pain. There was such pain. Back then we didn’t have cell phones, so I would call on her line and it would be busy for hours (no call waiting on her phone), and sometimes I would ask the operator for an emergency break through and I would get to speak to her. That was a pretty rough romance. Ups and downs, offs and ons. Well, it was always ON for me. Some evidence I turned away many times, and I was so blind. I even found letters written to other guys, and just lots of terrible things. Trust and you’ll be trusted, said the liar to the fool. I saw Type O Negative a few times and they were great everytime, nothing beats crying during a show, drunk, and then that Teenage Depression turning to Rage. At one show I ended up in a fight with Security, and then was pounded against the Type O Negative Tour van. I did get a few good swings in, but I wanted to fight the World, instead I fought five Security guys. Haha. Still did not heal a broken heart.
7. The Cure | 100 Years
Pornography was the first cassette tape that I fell completely in Love with for Alternative Music. I was utterly obsessed with that tape and I would listen to it over and over and over again. I went and searched out thrift stores to find a black sweater that was falling apart like Robert Smith would wear, and I was just soaking myself in Depression. One night at this period I awoke in the evening to find my parents on either side of my bed, they had decided for an intervention. They were ripping Cure, Misfits, Skinny Puppy, and the comic book Hellshock posters off the wall. They were convinced I was going to hurt myself, hurt my brother, hurt them, that it was because of the Music and the books I was reading. They eventually went away and I went back to sleep, and we didn’t really discuss it, but I was not allowed to really be out and about with how far I was slipping, I think around this same period I started cutting myself. I hid it from every one, I would carve words into my arms. How I was feeling, they would heal, and it would all be fine, UNTIL Summertime came, and from swimming and short sleeves my arms would tan, and then the healed words would stand out like chalk on a blackboard.
8. Leæther Strip | Strap Me Down
Oh, God, I can't even tell you how much I Love Leæther Strip. I found them by way of back in the day I would find Record Labels that had artists I liked, and then I would start buying all the bands on those labels, such as Zoth Omog Records, Cop International, Cleopatra, etc. and that CD Solitary Confinement knocked me out. I just loved it. I think that same day I also bought Psychopomps - Six Six Six Nights In Hell, Masked Beauty In A Sea Of Sadness, and Die Krupps, and a Front Line Assembly CD. It was a good day, we took the train back home and again, got wasted and listened to Music all day.
9. :wumpscut: | Die In Winter (Extended Remix)
My friend and I were/are Rabid Music collectors and we had been sucking up all the ‘staple’ bands at all the Record stores, Foetus, The Sisters, Black Flag, Skinny Puppy, Throbbing Gristle, Joy Division, etc. and we went into this On Store and I asked the guy working the counter to recommend me something new to buy. He looked me up and down, and then recommended KMFDM, Gravity Kills, and Sister Machine Gun. I immediately got bent out of shape, I already knew about them, he was judging me off how I was dressed (kinda Punk, Doc Marten boots, leather jacket, Black Flag patches, and I think I was in a Cop Shoot Cop shirt, and well, I got angry, walked to the back of the store, grabbed the most obscure name I saw :wumpscut:’s CD Bunker Gate Seven, and I bought that. When we got home, put it in the CD player, I became obsessed, I wanted to make Music like this. I tried, but I only had one Roland keyboard and it did mostly Piano sounds, and I had a TEAC reel to reel 4 track. I simply could not make that modern EBM with what I had. I ended up making a lot of Noise loops on tapes, stretched across the room, that was because of listening to so much Foetus. Hmmm, somehow Foetus made its way into my :wumpscut: lovefest here. But it makes sense to me.
10. The Sisters Of Mercy | Nine While Nine
The first time I heard the Sisters I was working in a Comic Book shop owned by a guy that was a Horror writer, the store had the largest selection of Horror in the South Jersey/Philadelphia area, and ended up a Comic shop as well. We would all hang out there, as he typed on his type writer, and he turned us on to Kate Bush, Morrissey, Suicide, Love And Rockets, Killing Joke, The Cure, Joy division, Bauhaus, and most important to me The Sisters Of Mercy. He ended up my mentor and really a lot more, and it was a strange weird part of my life. Listening to Nine While Nine I usually start to tear up and start snotty crying before the end of the song. The song was a favourite through out a High School, and ended up being the song my bride and I danced to at our wedding (which later ended in divorce).
I do have other songs I like, and not all the songs I like are sad, though most do have bad experiences tied to them. I cant romanticize my tortured past, I really wish I didn’t have these experiences, I can't wear my depression as a badge of honor, or be a martyr. It would be so much easier for myself, and for the people I care about if I was Normal or at least as Normal as Normal can be.
