Point/Counterpoint: Dead Most Certainly Cannot Dance

During one of the quieter songs from Sunday night’s Dead Can Dance show at the Hollywood Bowl, my buddy Geoff leaned over and whispered to me, “I don’t want to eat the taco because it’s too loud.” You see, the inevitable crunches from the hard taco shell (we picked up surprisingly decent slash greasy Mexican food from Lucy’s on La Brea) would surely have annoyed the various hardcore fans who were experiencing various states of rapture whilst listening to the freaky moans and aural emissions coming from the stage. I turned around, only to see a sea of noodle dancers swaying like strung out hippies and many others gently bobbing in their seats, eyes closed, hypnotic smiles plastered across their faces.

Truth be told, I didn’t know much about Dead Can Dance before I attended the show. I knew that the Bowl show was part of a reunion tour and that singer/instrumentalist Lisa Gerrard also does film scores. I didn’t know much more after the show because Gerrard doesn’t sing words that others humans can understand. According to the website Dead Can Dance Within, Gerrard’s vocals are “mainly phonetics that are sprung from thoughts and emotion she feels as she sings.” Right.

To me, most of the songs sounded like psychedelic renditions of my cantor’s Yom Kippur performance of the Kol Nidre service, along with a dash of your typical Bollywood film score played half speed.

This was a coma-inducing affair all around. For me, that coma was the result of boredom. For most of the fans in attendance (judging by their facial expressions), it was the result of a massive rush of serotonin to the brain, causing impairment.

Impairment of their shitty-music detectors.