Walking Bicycles 1st December

 This was a free performance at the Empty Bottle.  The Walking Bicycles performed at their CD release party, for "?Go?"....or is it" Go!".  I'll be listening to this music for some time.  It grew on me while I wasn't looking.  Some songs seem fit for framing the memories of this past year.  I don't have the lyrics to better explore that CD.  I shall better articulate the thoughts on that one later, for the moment all I can say is that I'm glad, so glad to have it and to have the performance of it down.

   My first experience of  "Welcome to the Future", perfectly framed for me the uncertain fog of times to come with no job security, foreclosures, credit default swaps, failing banks, failing automakers....then again I do hear too much fucking NPR.  It must be said that this is not in the text of the song but just what drifts into my head as I hear the song.  Yet when I read the words to "....Future" they place one in this backdrop of urban decay.  And then my sprockets it is time to dance!  

  You can easily dance to this in Nocturna. Transition this after anything from Siouxsie's "Tinderbox", and before Joy Division's "Shadow Play".  They will keep on dancing.  But for the moment lets forget the iconic bands and put Walking Bicycles next to some contemporaries.  Who are they?  Black Ice from California, Ipso Facto and The Violets from England....at least to me.  Before bands like VNV Nation, Covenant,  one way to make goths dance faster (besides industrial) was with something with a lot of bass like Joy Division or death rock sounding.  Please forgive me this constant referencing to dancing in goth clubs.  Dancing is a most direct way of engaging the music.  

  The first two Walking Bicycles CDs caught on with me almost immediately.  Urban decay is all over "Disconnected".   It is the common backdrop.  In the world of "Disconnected" grass grows through pavement, swing sets sit by worn tires, the back yard fridge doubles as a coffin.  They basically described the south Chicago of my childhood.  It's like I'm back in Calumet Park with their rusting metal playground.  Everything that is urban is in decay.  The trees here are of concrete....and Indiana is just over the border.  It could also be me connecting all these dots together, but in many of the songs I get some background to suggest a graying old urban world.   
In "Desperate", the urban decay is everywhere including people, too insincere to even smile.  Hope barely holds by a tether.   And you don't want to be who they are talking about in "So Far", with shattered dreams and hair thinning .  Human defeat slumping in a lazy chair.   I don't write about all the depressing stuff to turn people off.   I want to turn people on to the catharsis.  Goths do get catharsis.  That's why we dance to "Love Will Tear Us Apart", as I believe you will appreciate this band Walking Bicycles.  I haven't even started on "Go".  Later, this post took me long enough.

Kaspar-Zig