2 posts tagged “scott walker”

I wasn't speaking of the so-called "dark cabaret" subgenre, but Wild Bill of Ithaca College's Sharp Notes blog was on Monday, writing:

Origin:

Debatable. Many fans consider the first cornerstone of the genre to be Nico’s 1974 release The End.

Surely we had dark cabaret before 1974?  I'd point to Scott Walker's Jacques Brel interpretations as the origin, one of the first being "Amsterdam" from Scott's 1967 debut solo album:

I can't think of Scott Walker without hearing "Montague Terrace (In Blue)," also from Scott:

That song seems to be the blueprint for a new type of rock song, the lounge ballad that erupts into a bombastic chorus.  Did Bryan Ferry have "Montague Terrace" in mind when he wrote "A Song for Europe"?

Or did Lou Reed when writing "Berlin"?

Have you ever heard Lou give such an impassioned performance?  Usually he delivers his lines half-spoken with an air of cool detachment, but his emotional outpouring in this live setting really brings out the heartache at the core of the song.  (I'm not much of a fan of saxophone solos in rock songs--Andy Mackay excepted--but Marty Fogel pulls off a great one here.  And keyboardist Michael Fonfara will return in a future "guilty pleasures" post.)  Contrast with the lethargic version that opens the earlier Berlin, the album (arguably a work of dark cabaret itself):

Maybe that take is just as emotionally valid, a state of catatonia born of depression.  Most of the lyrics heard in the live version are missing here; the entire chorus is gone!  But even this version is a reworking of a song that Lou recorded for his first, self-titled solo album in 1972:

This first version strikes the middle ground of feeling, somewhere around melancholia.  The chorus is present here in a slightly different form:

You're right, and I'm wrong
Hey babe, I'm gonna miss you now that you're gone
One sweet day

Which he later changed to:

Hey baby you was right, and I know that I was wrong
I know I'm gonna miss you now (I know I'm gonna miss you anyhow)
Baby, one sweet day

Not that it's significant, it's just one of those things that I notice and can't help pointing out.  I don't want to leave the dark cabaret topic without bringing up the Tiger Lillies, but six songs in one post is quite enough, so they'll have to wait.

Since Salty Miss Jill brought up Neil Hannon in the Music Lovers post, here is Neil himself singing his song with "Jill" in the lyrics:

Neil Hannon is the true inheritor of Scott Walker's mantle, though he has a lighter touch: his humor is more sardonic than morbid.  (Walker himself now inhabits a different musical planet altogether.)  The best Divine Comedy album so far is Casanova, from 1996, which spawned the delightfully wicked single, "The Frog Princess"--

What a cheeky little man!  Incidentally, I owe my Divine Comedy fandom to Duncan Sheik, who linked to the DC website from his.  Co-incidentally, I heard Duncan's "She Runs Away" at the gas station yet again last week.  That song must really make people spend!