[kj] Fire Dances

[Neil Perry]

I was still missing the thunder of WTF! when Fire Dances came out - it and
Revelations sounded so thin in comparison.
But I thought it was a big improvement on Revelations, more cohesive, and
it contained Harlequin, which to me was and still
is the - or at least a - quintessential KJ song. I remember me and mates
clustered around the TV at the student halls where I was living to
watch them on The Tube, and Dominator blew my tiny mind (plus Raven in his
flat cap and Jaz at the keyboards in full paint job).
I still love Dominator, Harlequin and Song & Dance - Geordie's sound is so
sharp it'll have your head off.
As for silliness, well, yeah it was there but the vibe and threat was still
enough to counter it.
Wilful Days should have been on it though - or did that come out after the
LP?

N
PS photos of the jeans please Jamie

On 12 August 2018 at 15:53, jpwhkj--- via Gathering <gathering at misera.net>
wrote:

> It was the first album to come out after I fell in love with the Joke, and
> my first-ever Joke gig (indeed my second-ever gig) was on the Fire Dances
> tour.  Me and my best mate played the album to death that summer, and soon
> enough I had a pair of bleached jeans with KILLING written down the front
> of one leg in bleach, and JOKE down the back - in the Fire Dances font
> (thank you, mum).  They're still in a bag upstairs somewhere.
>
> So, listening to it now courtesy of youtube, I can't hear those drums
> crashing in without being transported back to the summer of 1983.  At the
> time (as far as I can recall) I thought it was Jaz imagining some
> post-nuclear world, or maybe some distant past... so the total silliness of
> it the lyrics didn't really register on teenage-me.  But yes, they are
> silly.
>
> That said, they're better than what-I-did-on-my-holidays-by-Jeremy-Coleman-aged-9
> aka Outside The Gate.  And to be honest, most Joke lyrics from the mid or
> late eighties onwards have been some shade of silly.  For what it's worth,
> I suspect that the departure of Big Paul in 1987 or 1988 removed a key
> component of KJ's creative base, and we had a couple of decades of
> conspiracy-theory lyrics combined with chugging guitars as a result.
>
> Musically (and lyrically) it did have a striking unity of character
> though.  You can't listen to a Fire Dances track and think it's from any
> other album.  Admittedly most KJ albums have quite a distinctive character
> of their own - each one very Killing Joke, but also different from the
> others - but I think Fire Dances has it more than most.  I'm listening to
> Feast of Blaze at the moment, which on the vinyl was the opening track of
> side 2, and once again I'm back in 1983, watching the needle drop onto the
> vinyl, the red and yellow centre spinning round...
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: HG <hgrey1935 at gmail.com>
> To: gathering <gathering at misera.net>
> Sent: Sun, 12 Aug 2018 6:23
> Subject: [kj] Fire Dances
>
> Been listening to this album tonight and have such a love/hate
> relationship with it. The first album post-Jaz Iceland meltdown and the
> first new songs without Youth. Some great riffs by Geordie and great
> drumming by Paul, but the lyrics and song titles leave me flat and seem
> juvenile. Fun and Games? Song and Dance? Let's All Go to the Fire
> Dances?? Who were they trying to appeal to with this album? Lust Almighty
> gets the award for best tune with worst lyrics. Still looking forward to
> seeing them in SF in Sept...
>
> Harold
> San Jose, CA
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