Dead Can Dance

By my reckoning, I got to see Dead Can Dance 9 times between 1986 and 1996, before they finally split up in 1998. I also saw Lisa perform solo in 1995 and Brendan in 1999. I consider myself very privileged to have seen the band perform so many times and at such different stages in their career and development. They were, without a shadow of a doubt, the most moving and awe-inspiring (quite literally) musical act it has even been my profound pleasure to witness live.

Anyway, imagine my surprise and unfettered joy when I learnt that Lisa and Brendan had decided to reunite for a new tour and possibly some recorded material. One problem: I found out about this way too late. No, the tour isn’t over, but it has begun, and I’ve already missed the opportunity to return to my native Netherlands to see them perform in The Hague.

On the other hand, the band are playing a couple of dates in London in early April. If only I could go.

Well, why can’t I? Money (or rather the lack of it) isn’t the hindrance it once was, so why not hop on a plane to England for a few days? Nah, that would be crazy, right? On the other hand, who the hell cares? So went the conversation in my head for the first minute or so after I realised that the tour had only just begun and that pulling this off was actually possible.

I became so excited at the prospect of subjecting my ears and emotions to this wonderful music one more time that there was really no way I could stay away. I barely slept that night, waking Sarah and rambling incessantly about the fact that Lisa and Brendan were once again making music together.

Thanks to the many applications of the Internet, I’ve now secured myself a flight and a hotel, plus a ticket for the second concert in London. I hope to pick up a ticket for the first night within the next few hours.

I’ll be boarding a Virgin Atlantic flight on 4th April from San Francisco to London Heathrow and returning again on the 8th. Not a long stay by any means, but I’m only going for the concerts, so why hang around any longer? I’m giving myself a day to get used to the time differential, but I really want to get back to Sarah as soon as I can. If the concerts were later in the month, I’d be faced with a real quandary, forced as I would be to choose between my pregnant wife, with whom I’ve been in a relationship for five years, and Dead Can Dance, with whom I’ve been in as equally meaningful a relationship for nineteen years. You can scoff if you like, but this is heartfelt stuff. This music is seriously special to me and has been a reassuring thread in my life for half my years on this planet.

It turns out that Dead Can Dance are also recording 13 of the concerts on this tour, each of which will be released as a limited edition run of 500 2 CD sets. In addition, there will be a box set of all 13 concerts, limited to 100 copies. So, one way or another, there will be only 600 CDs of each concert pressed. We’re talking commercially packaged, silver disc CD releases, too; none of your gold disc, quick production crap with no proper box. These will be fully mastered recordings from the mixer desk.

The box set doesn’t come cheap, especially with the exchange rate of the Euro to American Monopoly money figured in, but for me, this item is an unnegotiable must-have. I don’t consider myself very materialistic, but this item I simply must have, at virtually any price. There’s pretty much nothing else that I care about so much that I could be exploited by cynical marketing, but where Dead Can Dance are concerned, I’m pretty easy prey. Not that I consider this to be cynical marketing, however; owning 13 Dead Can Dance concerts across 26 CDs is my idea of bliss, although it remains to be seen how variable the set that the band plays each night will turn out to be. Initial reports are that there is little variance from one night to the next.

Anyway, I’m totally fucking psyched about this. I’m such a boring bastard, that I do very little else with my hard-earned. The only money I’ve spent in the last few months has been on fixing up our ten year old car and purchasing baby products as we await the arrival of Franbert.

Everyone needs something to get worked up about, and music has been my thing for as long as I can remember. Nevertheless, there are few if any bands left in the world apart from Dead Can Dance for whom I would fly across the Atlantic on a knackering three day sojourn, notching up a 20,000 km round-trip and requiring a week off work. I’m glad I still have it in me, to tell you the truth.

I feel 19 again and am reminded of standing outside the Town & Country Club in Kentish Town in June of 1986, waiting for the doors to open, so that I could witness for the first time the spectacle that was and is Dead Can Dance. My girlfriend had just left me and I was feeling as miserable as sin.

That night would begin a lifelong involvement in and love of the music of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry, whom, after 1998, I thought I would never see perform together again. Now, at age 38, I will. A mere couple of months removed from becoming a father, the opportunity to experience this music once again first-hand somehow takes on an extra poignancy.

I can’t wait.