Love And Rockets – My (life in) music lists

Eighties’ best 100 redux: #79 Love and Rockets “So alive” (1989)

At track #79, we’ve got “So alive” by Daniel Ash’s third and longest lasting band, Love and Rockets.

After the ground-breaking goth act, Bauhaus, disbanded in 1983, guitarist Daniel Ash focused more on his side project, Tones on Tail, with friend Glenn Campling and Bauhaus drummer Kevin Haskins. They would release an album and a litany of EPs (including popular club single “Go!”) before dissolving in 1984. Shortly afterwards, the members of Bauhaus, minus vocalist Peter Murphy, reconvened under the moniker Love and Rockets.

This trio started off in much the same dark place musically as Ash’s two previous bands but as time wore on, Love and Rockets would play with more elements, like psychedelic rock, folk, glam rock, and much later, electronic music, as their sound continued to evolve. “So alive” comes from their self-titled, fourth album and is an obvious example of the band’s love affair with glam rock. It’s sleek, it’s smooth and for the first time, Ash sounds like a sexy beast as he leads a slew of backup singers through a chorus of “doot-doots”. “So alive” became a surprise hit for the band in North America, peaking at number 3 on the billboard charts, their highest ever charting.

This song was so popular back when I was in high school, I couldn’t help but know who Love and Rockets were. I have very specific memories of scouring the cassette tape racks lining the walls of HOV (Hooked on video) music store, the only such purveyor of music in my small hometown, looking for the Love and Rockets album that had this particular song on it. For some reason, I never found it there amongst the other Love and Rockets albums, perhaps because it was always sold out.

I now have a copy of the band’s very fine greatest hits compilation, “Sorted!”, and have developed an appreciation for a great many of their other tracks. But I will always have a soft spot for the “doot-doots” of “So alive”.

Original Eighties best 100 position: 81

Favourite lyric: “I don’t know what colour your eyes are, baby / But your hair is long and brown” Interesting that he doesn’t know her eye colour? What does that mean, I wonder?

Where are they now?: Love and Rockets was a going concern throughout the 90s, finally calling it quits in 1999. They reunited for some live shows for a few years in the latter half of the 2000s and despite the fact that Ash was quoted as being finished with the band in 2009, they returned in 2023 after a failed Bauhaus reunion and are active again… for now.

For the rest of the Eighties’ best 100 redux list, click here.

Playlist: Time to get your Goth on

Happy World Goth Day everyone!

Er… To be honest, it’s not a holiday I observe but it did give me occasion to start in on an idea that I’ve kicked around in the past. And that is making and sharing genre-themed playlists on these pages. So, yeah, starting things off with Goth.

Goth is easily the music genre, lifestyle, and subculture that is most misunderstood by mass media and the public in general. I remember the going joke amongst a few of my coworkers, some years ago, which centred around the term ‘practicing Goth’ (as in, ‘Look at all that black, it looks like Jennifer is practicing Goth today’). It’s a term we culled from an article, one of many that had wrongfully attributed the perpetrators of the Columbine massacre as members of the ‘Goth community’.

I’m not sure I even fully understand the idea of being and ‘practicing’ Goth and all of the different offshoots that now exist but I do enjoy some facets of the fashion (the adoption of Victorian dress, for instance). I am also quite a big fan of a lot of the music that inspired the original scene, though I completely missed out on it, being too young at the time.

Some people sneer at the term Goth as a genre of music, calling it gimmicky, and the truth of the matter is that many of the original artists attached to the genre disliked the tag and tried to loosen its hold. I can remember going to a Sisters of Mercy show in Toronto in 1998, seeing all the youngsters in the audience wearing black, leather, S&M gear, etc., and wondering what they thought of lead singer Andrew Eldritch coming out on stage with his hair bleached blonde and cut short, and wearing a loud red Hawaiian shirt.

The idea in creating this playlist was not to define what is and what is not goth but to celebrate those artists that inspired generations to wear black. It is somewhat chronological, starting with those post-punk artists that toiled in darkness (Joy Division, Bauhaus), continuing with those that took up the mantle (The Cure, The Sisters of Mercy), squeezing in some acts that are not technically goth but definitely don’t sound out of place (Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen), and finally, gently transitioning to those that felt honoured to play in the originators’ shadows (She Wants Revenge, The Horrors), many years later.

For those who don’t use Spotify or if the embedded playlist below doesn’t work for you, here is the entire playlist:

1. Joy Division “She’s lost control”
2. Bauhaus “Bela Lugosi’s dead”
3. Tones On Tail “Christian says”
4. Love and Rockets “Haunted when the minutes drag”
5. The Cure “The hanging garden”
6. Killing Joke “Love like blood”
7. Siouxsie & The Banshees “Cities in dust”
8. Sisters of Mercy “Alice”
9. The Mission “Tower of strength”
10. The Cult “She sells sanctuary”
11. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds “Red right hand”
12. Concrete Blonde “Bloodletting (The vampire song)”
13. Leonard Cohen “Waiting for the miracle”
14. Dead Can Dance “Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove”
15. Cranes “Shining road”
16. Interpol “Obstacle 1”
17. She Wants Revenge “Tear you apart”
18. The Horrors “Do you remember”
19. Esben and the Witch “Marching song”
20. I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness “According to plan”