Musically Speaking

Accidentally rediscovered two bands I really like this afternoon and when I look at how different they are I realize I am schizophrenic. The first was Mad Season formed by members of Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam and Screaming Trees (who I also like A lot) 2 of the 4 guys who founded Mad Season ODd on Heroin. Layne Staley was the lead singer.

"When police kicked in the door to Layne Staley's University District apartment on April 20, there, on a couch, lit by a flickering TV, next to several spray-paint cans on the floor, not far from a small stash of cocaine, near two crack pipes on the coffee table, reposed the remains of the rock musician." The article also stated that the 6' 1" Staley weighed 86 pounds when his body was discovered. The autopsy report later concluded that Staley died after injecting a mixture of heroin and cocaine known as a "speedball"."

The Dresden Dolls are a duo formed in Boston by Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione. they remind me a bit of groups like Berlin from the 80s.

"The two describe their style as "Brechtian punk cabaret", a phrase invented by Palmer because she was "terrified" that the press would invent a name that "would involve the word gothic."

The band's first name was Out of Arms. At some point, the name became The Dresden Dolls. The name, according to Palmer, was "inspired by a combination of things," including the firebombing of Dresden, Germany and the porcelain dolls which were a hallmark of pre-war Dresden industry; an early song of the same name by The Fall; and a reference to the V. C. Andrews novel Flowers in the Attic where the classically blond and blue-eyed protagonists are called "the Dresden dolls." The name also evokes Weimar Germany and its cabaret culture. Additionally, she "liked the parallel between Dresden (destruction) and Dolls (innocence, delicacy), because it is very much in keeping with the dynamics of the music, which sometimes goes from a childlike whisper to a banshee scream within a few seconds."wikipedia