[kj] Fire Dances

[Paul Rangecroft]

The first album with the golden harp was always going to be a bit
different. Certainly a pagan revelry vibe to it, and nowt wrong with
that. I think 'The Gathering' is one of their best. Would love to have
been at some of those gigs. Hasn't aged particularly well compared to
the earlier albums - especially the "silly" lyrics - but I still like
it. Kind of bridges the gap between the
post-punk/industrial/rhythm-centric songs to more melody-based
material, as they evolved as musicians.

On 8/12/18, 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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