Midsummer Nyte Scream Review"...Scream is at once the capstone and clarion call of a movement that never really died. The way it came together was simple: Having recently moved back to San Antonio(TX), Lopez and Paris lead singer Jeanine Acquart were restless for some action. The two are longtime fans of fellow New York Goth singer/songwriter Margot Day, and they approached her with the idea of performing some shows together-nothing elaborate, just a few select dates. Word got out though, and within a matter of weeks, Lopez and Acquart found their e-mail flooded with requests from Goth bands begging for a slot on the still nonexistent bill. But it wasn't until fans got into the act that an actual tour seemed possible. From Boise, Oklahoma City, Wichita, and every other seemingly un-hip town in middle America, ravenous followers of the music begged for a tour stop, offering clubs, abandoned houses, churches, any place a band could plug in, so long as the music came to their town. Two months and many hours of missed sleep later, Lopez found herself at the helm of an eight-band, 18 city traveling carnival. Beginning on June 16 in San Diego, Scream hits one town per night on its way back to San Antonio for a July 3 appearance at The Wild Club.. Scream runs on personal credit, favors, and good faith. According to Day, the goal is not to take away but to "share our music with the fans and leave each place with an overwhelming awe of what the artists are doing". Lopez half-jokingly describes Scream as the "Other Lilith Fair," both musically and conceptually... Once the audiences witness the artistry of the performers, the focus will return to where it rightly belongs: the music. For most of Goth's 20 year history, it has taken second seat to image and perceived intent. Despite common misconceptions, Goth is not the sole property of depressed teenagers with a predilection for black clothes and H.P. Lovecraft novels. Nor is it occult music inextricably tied to the recent rash of teen homicides, as some critics have charged. These are broad generalizations, to be sure. Yet their knee-jerk superficiality suggests that Goth possesses something we cannot or or don't want to acknowledge. Sure, Goth forgoes the patented and commercially viable boy-meets-girl less easily digestible themes of life, death, sin, and God, but it does so with an eye toward clarity and hope, not desolation. "It's like life," says Day about the genre's ill deserved image. "You have light and dark, and you can't embrace the light without also embracing the darkness." If this is mistaken as sinister, so be it. But that misses the point: style and subject aside, artistic honesty - the desire to say anything, no matter how taboo or painful, and the audacity to do so - is what distinguishes Goth from most popular music and what has kept it entrenched in the cultural substrata. And this is what will make the Midsummer Nyte Scream Tour the most lucrative package show this summer". -- Jim Wyko |
