Classic or Dud: Swans

(Yeah, it's VH1 Classic, but still! "THE SEX IN YOUR SOUL WILL DAMN YOU TUH HELL! DAMN YOU TUH HELL!")

xpost

She had said she planned for the gig to be...what was it? "a Post-Modern Gospel" yeah, I think that's what she said at the end of it. Crazy stuff.

Also she did that Dead Can Dance cover of "American Dreaming" and it drove me crazy cause I couldn't remember who did that song. It was only when I got home that I figured it out.

*commercial starts*

It's called SWANSMAGIC! :)

http://www.myspace.com/jarboeliving

No, it's nice that you finally understand!

listening to it now, with SFA's 'Mountain People' the perfect alphabetical introduction.

Just got "Soundtracks for the Blind" the other day, but haven't really had the proper setting to listen to it.

I do remember being very off-put by a lot of the "Various Failures" compilation when I first got it, since I'd only ever heard the early stuff ("Public Castration is a Good Idea" is probably the most brutal album I've ever heard), but I've gotten a lot more comfortable with their later period in the last couple years. I especially dislike the cover of "Black Eyed Dog". The way Jarboe sings it just bugs me.

boooooooooooo! ya should have seen her do it live. scare the pants off ya.

I think I've decided my fav Swans album is:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51%2BkqYXCVGL._SL500_AA280_.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51%2BkqYXCVGL._SL500_AA280_.jpg

I'm going to give that one another listen really soon because I think out of all the Swans studio albums, it's the one I'm least familiar with.

Oh, I adore that record. I fell in love with Swans with "Holy Money," purchased on cassette from a Seattle pawn shop around 1987? 88?, tipped off by something I'd read in SPIN. (Hard to believe, looking back.) "Children of God" followed, plus the "Love Will Tear Us Apart" 12"s.... "The Burning World" soundtracked the summer after my senior year in high school. And then "Love of Life" and "White Light from the Mouth of Infinity" just blew my mind wide open. When I think of those records, all I can think is MASS (as in volume, as in weight, and communion, all at once).

http://consequenceofsound.net/2009/05/08/swans-thinking-reunion-tour-album/
http://consequenceofsound.net/2009/05/08/swans-thinking-reunion-tour-album/
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http://consequenceofsound.net/2009/05/08/swans-thinking-reunion-tour-album/
http://consequenceofsound.net/2009/05/08/swans-thinking-reunion-tour-album/
http://consequenceofsound.net/2009/05/08/swans-thinking-reunion-tour-album/
sorry, I can't stop pasting
http://consequenceofsound.net/2009/05/08/swans-thinking-reunion-tour-album/
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http://consequenceofsound.net/2009/05/08/swans-thinking-reunion-tour-album/
http://consequenceofsound.net/2009/05/08/swans-thinking-reunion-tour-album/

Hmmm.

I know, I've had enough with these reunions, but this is SWANS

dude just said he was thinking about swans as he got into his car after a show

I do this all the time

gira: "at some point in the future, there is a chance that swans would maybe play some shows, possibly. can I get in my car now?"

internet: SWANS REFORMED TOUR IMMINENT

that said, if it's a gira-jarboe-westberg-kizys-parsons reunion I will print this thread out and eat it

Someone told me he doesn't get along with Jarboe now, is that true?

That's about how it works, yeah. (xxpost) :-)

"I was just thinking gee I bet I could get a better guarantee if I credited this to Swans"

a friend saw his solo show in boston a couple weeks ago, said it was mindblowing

swans are dead! they can't play again.

they should really leave it be. and i say this as someone who considers them one of their top ten fave bands.

original article here: http://brainwashed.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7536&Itemid=1

I love Swans, but not sure I want to see a naked, sweating, 55-yr-old Gira...

they were so amazing on that swans are dead tour though... okay, i'd go see them. hahahaha!

A reunion seems somewhat strenuously unlikely.

Maybe Gira just wants to resurrect the name to play all those songs and house his new Swans-sounding material, and get whoever he wants to join in? Not necessarily with Jarboe (she wasn't in the band from the start, who knows, maybe he's not going to ask her permission), a choice of five or six drummers, guitarists, bass players, or maybe even new people?

I mean, how many incarnations have there been? Which one would be THE reunion?

Didn't even notice Veronica's post yesterday, sorry about that!

Uh, meanest and heaviest? Hm. I mean the earliest stuff is the most 'punishing' per se but the current era is transcendently pulverizing, so.

well I wanna start with something from the era in which they initially made their mark…like Filth?

oddly, I picked up To Mega Therion the other day, and later saw that you are AMG's Celtic Frost scholar as well…

If you aren't specifically asking Ned, I'd strongly suggest the Cop/Young God/Greed/Holy Money collection. Filth is great but I don't think any other Swans studio album or collection of albums beats C/TH/G/HM for sheer prolonged brutality.
Children Of God/World Of Skin is more accessible if you're worried about that but I remember finding C/TH/G/HM surprisingly easy, because it seemed like it might have been difficult.

Consider this another vote for Cop/Young God/Greed/Holy Money, three albums and a couple of 12" singles jammed onto a two-CD set. If you like that, pick up the live album Public Castration Is A Good Idea from the same era. The songs get almost twice as long sometimes; play it loud enough to make your neighbors cry.