The Dark Clan - Goths on a Boat

Goths on a Boat	Neverending Story (feat. Donna Lynch)	Starwash (instrumental, feat. Jim Warchol)
Goths on a Boat came about the same way many other good bad ideas have in that started with a conversation at Darkroom in Chicago. We were asked to play at David Schock's (of WTII Records) birthday shindig at Darkroom alongside such scene luminaries as XUBERX, The Gothsicles, and Cruciform Injection. During setup, Kassi from Cruciform offered to let us use some of her equipment to increase the speed and efficiency of the changeover between us and Cruciform. Through a conversational process that I don't quite recall, it ended up that I agreed to write her a song in thanks. This is not to say that I am at all put out by this or feel like I got fooled or duped or something. Quite the opposite; to paraphrase Gordon Gano, for me writing a song is easier than doing my laundry, and any time I can write a song for a friend, especially as thanks or repayment of a debt or favor, I'm always happy to do so. Since Cruciform was scheduled to play the upcoming Gothic Cruise, put on by the lovely folks at All Genre Travel (they really are lovely, I've corresponded with Zaida and found her to be gracious and friendly), Kassi suggested the song I write be called Goths on a Boat, and be about said goths. Over the next couple weeks I turned the topic over and over my head, looking for an angle from which to approach it. The imagery inherit in a term like "goths on a boat" is amusing right out of the gate, but I adore gothic and dark lifestyles so if I ever poke fun, I don't want it to be from an angle that outsiders could appreciate, e.g., "look how funny these people in black look on a cruise ship." That would be awful. No, I wanted to to tackle things more from a perspective of being at least somewhat in the lifestyle, and knowing some of the kinds of folks that might consider taking such a cruise and what their motivation may be, so that other people who "get" the genre could have a giggle, but not in any mean sort of way. Laughing with, not laughing at. After making that decision, it was a small matter to map some typical scene stereotypes to musical stereotypes, and the song pretty much wrote itself. In fact the only difficult part that remained was deciding which of the 947382749 goth/industrial sub-sub-genres I wished to lampoon. N.B.: The discerning listener will note subtle changes in the instrumentation and mix as each of the stereotypes sings his verse. Goths on a Boat words and music copyright 2009 Dan Clark, all rights reserved additional vocals by Lane Ellen I'm a gothic sort subgenre: Rivethead stompy boots, all clothed in black, and pale like I was dead typically I eff the sun in darkness do I dwell until I hear about this cruise it wasn't hard to sell Cruciform Injection's gonna be the house band I'll take a break from smoky clubs for sun and surf and sand It might be strange at first I guess, especially for the crew I hear those boats have WiFi now so there'll be lots to do Plus I hear one of the ports of call has a store where you can get Nu Rocks...cheap. On a big white boat In the deep blue sea I wait for you, my darling though it makes no sense to me I need to go Goths on a Boat I'm a gothic sort Futurepop's my taste, Sandwiches and Swords, I'm not afraid! Spend my days and nights on Side-Line, too defending Ronan's honor from jerks like you Typically I'd never take a step outside But now I have incentive from a Gothic Cruise Line I can only sing five notes, but Micah he can wail! So I'll get on that boat, and to Victory we will sail. I'm not afraid to leave behind these maps of reality. I am a sensitive synthpop guy I make all the girls swoon, but their boyfriends don't know why I need to take a break from getting laid all the time So I'll go check out Cruciform on a gothic cruise line Alright, look, so I made up the part about getting laid. These chicks always bring their boyfriends to the show. Fuck! [Chorus]	For whatever reason, I tend never to get comments on my singing. I don't take any offense or anything at this, mind you, but while I get a great deal of feedback on my guitar playing or the songs or other aspects of the Dark Clan live show, I tend never to hear anything one way or the other about my vocals. You can imagine my surprise then when after a show in Baltimore the great Donna Lynch of Ego Likeness, a certified Golden-Voiced Rock Goddess, said to me "...so I was listening to you sing, and I was thinking, we should do a duet, it'd be great to do a duet with him..." I believe the phrase "blown away" applies here. To go from never receiving any feedback of any sort to having someone as gifted as Donna tell me she thought highly enough of my voice to want to sing a song with me was, aside from being an enormous compliment, extremely humbling and gratifying. Donna and I talked for a bit more that night, and she said that while she wanted to do a duet, she was at a loss as to what to sing and the only song that kept occurring to her was the Neverending Story, theme song to the 80s movie of the same name. That movie and that song both have a lot of baggage associated with them, so I thought it would be a good challenge to come up with an approach I could get behind. I love a good challenge, especially one that's musical. So I told Donna that would work for me, and I'd get back to her with a mix a bit after we got off tour. The main challenge, to my ears, of covering a song like Neverending Story isn't the other cover versions that other artists have done, it's the unfortunate associations of "hits from the 80s!"-style cheese that it's been saddled with. I was a naive and earnest and sincere child and while the movie Neverending Story didn't have a particularly significant effect on me when I was growing up (I would have been 9 or 10 when it came out), similar movies did, and I felt I could honestly get behind what I perceived to be the basic message of the movie and the song, namely that it's okay to be a dreamer, because everything starts as a dream, so without dreamers we would have nothing. It was with this in mind that chose to try to strip away all the layers of K-Tel records smarm and 80's cheese and bad haircuts that I feel the song has been associated with and take it totally straight, totally honest and sincere. That decision informed pretty much everything about the arrangement, right down to synth patch selection and mixing decisions, and I couldn't be happier with how it turned out. My deepest, sincerest thanks to Donna for suggesting the track and providing me with such awesome vocals, and to her husband Steven Archer for taking studio time that they could have used to work on their new album to record Donna for my track. Neverending Story words by Keith Forsey music by Giorgio Moroder copyright 1984 Moroder, Forsey All Rights Reserved Turn around Look at what you see In her face The mirror of your dreams Make believe I'm everywhere I'm hidden in the lines And written on the pages Is the answer to a never ending story... Reach the stars Fly a fantasy Dream a dream And what you see will be Rhymes that keep their secrets Will unfold behind the clouds And there upon a rainbow Is the answer to a never ending story Show no fear For she may fade away In your hand The birth of a new day Rhymes that keep their secrets Will unfold behind the clouds And there upon the rainbow Is the answer to a never ending story	Starwash is the result of my effort to combine Drum-n-Bass, a genre a love, with Shoegaze, a genre I don't love at all. I don't want to say I hate Shoegaze, per se, but every time I hear "Loveless" I want to crawl into an armoire with my iPod and listen to a Portishead record on loop. I thought that if I tried to actually write something Shoegaze-y it might help me appreciate the music a bit more, even if I still don't want to run out and buy Lush albums. I have the good fortune of being friends with Jim Warchol of the midwestern (Milwaukee-based) Shoegaze band Sometime Sweet Susan, a reasonably well-known outfit in their genre and in their area and a certified Big Thing back in the day. For while I have no technical barriers stopping me from playing any kind of guitar in any genre, I have no understanding at all of the thinking and part structuring and arranging that goes into making a Shoegaze guitar part, so I was glad that I could ask Jim if he would be willing to contribute guitars, and super excited that he said yes. I programmed all the drums, recorded the core guitar parts (the clean, delay-soaked ones) and bass so I could lay out the changes, then Jim came by my studio, listless works (a vigorous enterprise!) one afternoon and did his thing. This song is successful for me in a couple ways; as a song, I love it and love listening to it, and as a genre exercise I did learn rather a lot more about how Shoegaze guys think about their parts, so while I'm still not a big fan of the genre, I feel much more comfortable around its constituent components, and am confident I could wield the fuzzed-out and heavily effected guitar stylings native to Shoegaze in a future track if I should need to do so. Well, or I can always see if Jim is free.

Goths on a Boat

Neverending Story (feat. Donna Lynch)

Starwash (instrumental, feat. Jim Warchol)

Goths on a Boat came about the same way many other good bad ideas have in that started with a conversation at Darkroom in Chicago. We were asked to play at David Schock's (of WTII Records) birthday shindig at Darkroom alongside such scene luminaries as XUBERX, The Gothsicles, and Cruciform Injection. During setup, Kassi from Cruciform offered to let us use some of her equipment to increase the speed and efficiency of the changeover between us and Cruciform. Through a conversational process that I don't quite recall, it ended up that I agreed to write her a song in thanks. This is not to say that I am at all put out by this or feel like I got fooled or duped or something. Quite the opposite; to paraphrase Gordon Gano, for me writing a song is easier than doing my laundry, and any time I can write a song for a friend, especially as thanks or repayment of a debt or favor, I'm always happy to do so.

Since Cruciform was scheduled to play the upcoming Gothic Cruise, put on by the lovely folks at All Genre Travel (they really are lovely, I've corresponded with Zaida and found her to be gracious and friendly), Kassi suggested the song I write be called Goths on a Boat, and be about said goths. Over the next couple weeks I turned the topic over and over my head, looking for an angle from which to approach it. The imagery inherit in a term like "goths on a boat" is amusing right out of the gate, but I adore gothic and dark lifestyles so if I ever poke fun, I don't want it to be from an angle that outsiders could appreciate, e.g., "look how funny these people in black look on a cruise ship." That would be awful. No, I wanted to to tackle things more from a perspective of being at least somewhat in the lifestyle, and knowing some of the kinds of folks that might consider taking such a cruise and what their motivation may be, so that other people who "get" the genre could have a giggle, but not in any mean sort of way. Laughing with, not laughing at. After making that decision, it was a small matter to map some typical scene stereotypes to musical stereotypes, and the song pretty much wrote itself. In fact the only difficult part that remained was deciding which of the 947382749 goth/industrial sub-sub-genres I wished to lampoon.

N.B.: The discerning listener will note subtle changes in the instrumentation and mix as each of the stereotypes sings his verse.

Goths on a Boat
words and music copyright 2009 Dan Clark, all rights reserved
additional vocals by Lane Ellen

I'm a gothic sort
subgenre: Rivethead
stompy boots, all clothed in black, and pale like I was dead
typically I eff the sun
in darkness do I dwell
until I hear about this cruise it wasn't hard to sell
Cruciform Injection's gonna be the house band
I'll take a break from smoky clubs for sun and surf and sand
It might be strange at first I guess, especially for the crew
I hear those boats have WiFi now so there'll be lots to do
Plus I hear one of the ports of call has a store where you can get Nu Rocks...cheap.

On a big white boat
In the deep blue sea
I wait for you, my darling
though it makes no sense to me
I need to go
Goths on a Boat

I'm a gothic sort Futurepop's my taste,
Sandwiches and Swords, I'm not afraid!
Spend my days and nights on Side-Line, too
defending Ronan's honor from jerks like you
Typically I'd never take a step outside
But now I have incentive from a Gothic Cruise Line
I can only sing five notes, but Micah he can wail!
So I'll get on that boat, and to Victory we will sail.
I'm not afraid to leave behind these maps of reality.

I am a sensitive synthpop guy
I make all the girls swoon, but their boyfriends don't know why
I need to take a break from getting laid all the time
So I'll go check out Cruciform on a gothic cruise line
Alright, look, so I made up the part about getting laid. These chicks always bring their boyfriends to the show. Fuck!

[Chorus]

For whatever reason, I tend never to get comments on my singing. I don't take any offense or anything at this, mind you, but while I get a great deal of feedback on my guitar playing or the songs or other aspects of the Dark Clan live show, I tend never to hear anything one way or the other about my vocals. You can imagine my surprise then when after a show in Baltimore the great Donna Lynch of Ego Likeness, a certified Golden-Voiced Rock Goddess, said to me "...so I was listening to you sing, and I was thinking, we should do a duet, it'd be great to do a duet with him..." I believe the phrase "blown away" applies here. To go from never receiving any feedback of any sort to having someone as gifted as Donna tell me she thought highly enough of my voice to want to sing a song with me was, aside from being an enormous compliment, extremely humbling and gratifying.

Donna and I talked for a bit more that night, and she said that while she wanted to do a duet, she was at a loss as to what to sing and the only song that kept occurring to her was the Neverending Story, theme song to the 80s movie of the same name. That movie and that song both have a lot of baggage associated with them, so I thought it would be a good challenge to come up with an approach I could get behind. I love a good challenge, especially one that's musical. So I told Donna that would work for me, and I'd get back to her with a mix a bit after we got off tour.

The main challenge, to my ears, of covering a song like Neverending Story isn't the other cover versions that other artists have done, it's the unfortunate associations of "hits from the 80s!"-style cheese that it's been saddled with. I was a naive and earnest and sincere child and while the movie Neverending Story didn't have a particularly significant effect on me when I was growing up (I would have been 9 or 10 when it came out), similar movies did, and I felt I could honestly get behind what I perceived to be the basic message of the movie and the song, namely that it's okay to be a dreamer, because everything starts as a dream, so without dreamers we would have nothing. It was with this in mind that chose to try to strip away all the layers of K-Tel records smarm and 80's cheese and bad haircuts that I feel the song has been associated with and take it totally straight, totally honest and sincere. That decision informed pretty much everything about the arrangement, right down to synth patch selection and mixing decisions, and I couldn't be happier with how it turned out. My deepest, sincerest thanks to Donna for suggesting the track and providing me with such awesome vocals, and to her husband Steven Archer for taking studio time that they could have used to work on their new album to record Donna for my track.

Neverending Story
words by Keith Forsey
music by Giorgio Moroder copyright 1984 Moroder, Forsey All Rights Reserved

Turn around
Look at what you see
In her face
The mirror of your dreams
Make believe I'm everywhere
I'm hidden in the lines
And written on the pages
Is the answer to a never ending story...

Reach the stars
Fly a fantasy
Dream a dream
And what you see will be
Rhymes that keep their secrets
Will unfold behind the clouds
And there upon a rainbow
Is the answer to a never ending story

Show no fear
For she may fade away
In your hand
The birth of a new day
Rhymes that keep their secrets
Will unfold behind the clouds
And there upon the rainbow
Is the answer to a never ending story

Starwash is the result of my effort to combine Drum-n-Bass, a genre a love, with Shoegaze, a genre I don't love at all. I don't want to say I hate Shoegaze, per se, but every time I hear "Loveless" I want to crawl into an armoire with my iPod and listen to a Portishead record on loop. I thought that if I tried to actually write something Shoegaze-y it might help me appreciate the music a bit more, even if I still don't want to run out and buy Lush albums.

I have the good fortune of being friends with Jim Warchol of the midwestern (Milwaukee-based) Shoegaze band Sometime Sweet Susan, a reasonably well-known outfit in their genre and in their area and a certified Big Thing back in the day. For while I have no technical barriers stopping me from playing any kind of guitar in any genre, I have no understanding at all of the thinking and part structuring and arranging that goes into making a Shoegaze guitar part, so I was glad that I could ask Jim if he would be willing to contribute guitars, and super excited that he said yes. I programmed all the drums, recorded the core guitar parts (the clean, delay-soaked ones) and bass so I could lay out the changes, then Jim came by my studio, listless works (a vigorous enterprise!) one afternoon and did his thing.

This song is successful for me in a couple ways; as a song, I love it and love listening to it, and as a genre exercise I did learn rather a lot more about how Shoegaze guys think about their parts, so while I'm still not a big fan of the genre, I feel much more comfortable around its constituent components, and am confident I could wield the fuzzed-out and heavily effected guitar stylings native to Shoegaze in a future track if I should need to do so.

Well, or I can always see if Jim is free.