another dreamer with a six-string with ethereal aura and celestial tenor voice(NY Times)
it's just easier to go any place I want to, it could be like a human radio station
“Phantom” solo tour
Jeff did a solo “phantom” tour of small cafes and pubs starting in December of 1996 under alias names such as A Puppet Show Named Julio, Crit Club, Father Demo, Topless America, Smackcrobiotic, The Halfspeeds, Crackrobats, and Martha and the Nicotines. When asked why he toured and did not let fans know, he replied in a letter that was posted to the official Jeff Buckley web site:
“There was a time in my life not too long ago when I could show up in a cafe and simply do what I do, make music, learn from performing my music, explore what it means to me, i.e. have fun while I imitate and/or entertain an audience who don’t know me or what I am about. In this situation I have that precious and irreplaceable luxury of failure, of risk, of surrender. I worked very hard to get this kind of thing together, this work forum. I have loved it and then I missed it when it disappeared. All I am doing is reclaiming it.”
“They are simply my way of survival and own method of self-assessment and recreation. If they don't happen....nothing else can.”
The Phantom Solo Tour: All dates are 1996:
12/6 – Westborough, MA at Old Vienna as “The Crackrobats”
12/7 – Boston, MA at Kendall Square as “Possessed by Elves”
12/9 – Buffalo, NY at Spot Coffee as “Father Demo”
12/10 – Cleveland, OH at Barking Spider as “Smackrobiotic”
12/12 – Manyunk, PA at La Tazza as “Crit-Club”
12/13 – Baltimore, MD at Ze Bean as “Topless America”
12/14 – Washington, DC at Misha’s as “Martha & The Nicotines”
12/15 – Washington, DC at Soho as “A Puppet Show Named Julio”
“I have read you, everyone. I love you, too. Especially the ones who channel dead spirits from space and also ones who want to murder me. All my hugs and kisses. In hell, baby.”
I hope that people who liked him resist the temptation to turn his life and death into some dumb romantic fantasy—he was so much better than that. Not everyone can get up and sing something they take a liking to and make it their own, sing true to their heart and be curious about all different strains of music. Corpus Christi Carol was a completely conceived interpretation. I'd never heard the piece before and when I heard the original I realised what Jeff had done was even more amazing. He'd taken it into his own world. That's something my favorite classical musicians can do, be themselves but use all that expertise to make the music more beautiful. Jeff did that naturally. Only a handful of people are capable of that. I was amazed when he did meltdown. I asked him what he wanted to sing and he said he'd like to do one of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder in the original German! Absolutely fucking fearless. He was convinced he could sing it without rehearsal, just because he liked it. In the end he did a Purcell song, Dido's Lament, which is in danger of sounding incredibly poignant in retrospect: 'Remember me but forget my fate'. But he also sang Boy With the Thorn In His Side because he liked it, and Grace to show something of himself. When he started singing Dido's Lament at the rehearsal, there were all these classical musicians who could not believe it. Here's a guy shuffling up on-stage and singing a piece of music normally thought to be the property of certain types of specifically developed voice, and he's just singing, not doing it like a party piece, but doing something with it. My last memory of him was at the little party in the green room afterwards. There were all these people sitting round Jeff who'd never met before – Fretwork, the viol group, a classical pianist and some jazz player —all talking and laughing about music. He'd charmed everybody. I'd much rather remember that than anything.
the songs on “pornography” were written either “stream of consciousness” (“streams of extreme drunkenness”!) style on an old typewriter in my bedroom at home in crawley, or on torn scraps of yellow paper on hallucinating early mornings walking through and around horrible bits of london in cold december 1982. they range from acutely personal observations on my immediate surroundings and friends, to general rants against the futility of everything and everyone, to back to the horrors going on inside... it is very difficult to explain the songs, as even within each verse of any one, there are several layers of (logically) unconnected ideas. but i will colour...
100 years – is pure self loathing and worthlessness, and contains probably the key line – the line that underpinned this period of writing: “it doesn't matter if we all die”...everything is empty. this song is despair
a short term effect – is about a drug and it's effect. short-term i thought.
the hanging garden – is something like about the purity and hate of animals fucking, and i think
siamese twins is about the hate and purity of people fucking too...
the figurehead – was a grotesque skull sculpture i discovered in the disused asylum we used in the “charlotte sometimes” video. i took it home to talk to – to confess to? and this song is about guilt.
a strange day – was how i would feel if it would only be the end of the world – and...
cold – is another song about another drug and it's grip...
pornography, the last song, and in fact the last song i wrote for a while, is fueled by the same self-mockery, self-hate, that burned in 100 years, but it is, if only very slightly, a little more hopeful than the others... i am escaping (i escaped) by blaming someone else. a murder or suicide? “i must fight this sickness...”
“pornography”, an album that almost chokes on itself, remains a dairy of one of my blackest times. but it's one of my favourites!!!!
在《Pornography》中，情感的“腐化”表现得尤为突出。歌曲如《One Hundred Years》展现了对生命无望的情绪，歌词“It's been one hundred years, and still I'm crying”传达了无尽的苦痛与内心的纠结。这种情感的“腐化”通过音乐的结构、音效的设计和歌唱方式得以完全体现。吉他和合成器的重复性音效，以及密集的打击乐，使得整张专辑的氛围充满了压迫感和黑暗色彩。
随着时间的推移，The Cure的情感表达发生了显著的变化。《Disintegration》是The Cure的另一张关键专辑，虽然它的情感依旧复杂且阴郁，但其中不乏对爱的探索和情感的反思。特别是专辑中的《Lovesong》与《Pictures of You》，这些歌曲传达出了一种情感上的成熟和对爱的向往，这与《Pornography》的绝望感形成了鲜明的对比。
《Disintegration》展现了乐队音乐上的“重生”，情感不再是单纯的压抑与痛苦，更多的是对内心复杂情感的多角度表达。尤其在《Lovesong》一曲中，虽然其旋律简洁明快，但其情感却显得深刻和充满了渴望，歌曲中的音效不仅强调了情感的深度，也让旋律变得更加丰富。《Pictures of You》则通过清晰的旋律线条和层次分明的音效设计，讲述了一段爱情的回忆与怀旧，使得情感的表达变得更加生动与真切。
The first track off of 1982’s Pornography, The Cure open up their gothic “piece de resistance” with an innovative wildly flanging guitar, and African polyrhythmics. Smith’s opening words: “It doesn’t matter if we all die” are a sampling of the bleak existentialism and in many cases pessimism that will dot the album. The song is about the drollness of post industrial life and at some points a parallel to the book 1984 by George Orwell in allusions to police patrolling streets under the night and shooting rebels down.
While Smith has never come out and said that the song (or its title) were inspired by The ‘Hundred Years War’, it should be noted that The Hundred Years War was a long-running bloody conflict between England and France about which family line should have the French throne. It is possible that the song’s metaphors of personal suffering are being compared to the Hundred Years War (or simply its title).
“One Hundred Years” showed up on the 10” single and double 7” gatefold single of “The Hanging Garden” (often labeled as A Single). However, a UK promotional 7” was released that put “One Hundred Years” on the A-side and “The Hanging Garden” as its B-side.
2
The second track on the Cure’s gothic milestone, Pornography, is centrally about the “short term effect” of drug-taking, something the band had been doing a lot of during the production of the album (and its predecessor, Faith), although, on another level, it deals with the same themes of the shortness and futility of life that are touched on on a number of Pornography’s other tracks.
Sound-wise, it continues in the same vein as “One Hundred Years”, sustaining the already-intense atmosphere with a quick, driving drum pattern and screaming, backwards guitar noises. The major triad that opens the track also strikes an unsettling dissonance with the dark, whirring backing.
3
“The Hanging Garden” was the sole commercial single release from The Cure’s album Pornography. Two releases of it were under the title A Single. It reached #34 in the UK, becoming their second-highest charting single there at the time – until the following year when “The Walk” broke the top 20.
Cure frontman Robert Smith said in a fanzine, “The Hanging Garden is something like about the purity and hate of animals fucking.” While it’s not very specific, that’s all that’s really known about the song’s meaning. However, the title may be a reference to The Hanging Gardens in Mumbai, India, which is well known for its view of the Arabian Sea and its hedges, which are carved in the shapes of animals.
4
After stating that “The Hanging Garden” was written about “the purity and hate of animals fucking”, he added “And I think “Siamese Twins” is about the hate and purity of people fucking too…”
Some fans believe the song is a metaphorical description of a quite psychologically traumatic first sexual intercourse, losing virginity to a prostitute, as seen through the prism of narrator’s twisted, morbid, traumatized imagination in a style somewhat resembling stream of consciousness, involving a series of striking images, torn out of time just like our memories are. He painfully recalls every single detail of the past night over and over, exaggerating it to the point where narrative becomes nightmarish and disturbing. The name of the song is a metaphor for a heterosexual intercourse, where a man and a woman become intertwined as if they were a single creature, just as Siamese Twins are, and, in case of the narrator, start hating each other, just as the aforementioned Siamese Twins might.
“Siamese Twins” is one of the instrumentally lighter tracks on the album, with a sonic emptiness akin to what is heard on Seventeen Seconds and Faith, but Smith’s tortured vocals and Lol Tolhurst’s pounding drum cycle help sustain its dramatic intensity.
5
In a fanzine, Robert Smith shared that “The Figurehead” was inspired by “a grotesque skull sculpture I discovered in the disused asylum we used in the “Charlotte Sometimes” video. I took it home to talk to – to confess to – and this song is about guilt.”
6
“A Strange Day”, a song about, according to Robert Smith, “how I would feel if it would only be the end of the world”, is backed by the same driving force that appeared on “A Short Term Effect”, only this time it’s slightly slower. The drums and prominent bassline are also reminiscent of the band’s 1981 single, “Charlotte Sometimes”.
7
Introduced by an ominous cello line (played by Robert Smith himself), crashing, plodding drums soon pull “Cold” into a synth-laden abyss of sound. The track is slow and formidable, with lyrics dealing with the effect of drugs in Pornography’s uniquely ambiguous manner.
8
The Cure’s landmark gothic rock album, Pornography, closes with perhaps the group’s most harrowing and difficult track to date. It opens with a cacophony of voices whose words are near-impossible to make out, creating a claustrophobic atmosphere that mirrors Robert Smith’s drug-induced schizophrenia. Lol Tolhurst’s pounding toms gradually fade in, followed by a menacing organ and bass sound. Smith’s vocals and dissonant guitar bursts then add fuel to the fire of this hellish concoction.
The lyrical content is akin to that of the album’s opening track, “One Hundred Years”, a series of images which don’t really connect or flow in any way, painting a picture of violent and chaotic destruction. The precise meaning of the lyrics is frequently debated amongst Cure fans, as most of Pornography was written streams of consciousness while Smith was high or drunk, making the words extremely difficult to interpret.
Today I added 2 Nassarius Snails, 2 Blue Legged Hermit Crabs, and a Royal Gramma. This species of snail burrows into the sand and looks for detritus to eat, while most hermit crabs eat various species of algae.
Ammonia levels hit zero 2 days ago so I re-dosed ammonia, which again dropped to zero within 24 hours. This suggests that the nitrogen cycle has been established.
Today I added a small power head to add currents to the tank, the power of the power head varies on a sinusoidal curve. The ammonia levels have steadily dropped since redosing nitrifying bacteria.
Ammonia has dropped to around 1.5 ppm, and Nitrite around 0.4 ppm, meaning that the nitrogen cycle is showing signs of starting, once ammonia and nitrite both dip below 1 ppm, I will re-dose ammonium chloride in order to get an ammonia level back to 2ppm to feed the nitrifying bacteria.
1.《Pornography》：抑郁与痛苦的“腐化”之路
