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9/25/2020 ROUND 1: (6) FIELDS OF THE NEPHILIM 173, (11) Lords of the New Church 153 — March Plaidness BRACKET OF THE GRUNGE ERA THE GAMES SCHEDULE / RESULTS BRACKET ESSAYS POEMS SUBMISSIONS WTF ENTER THE LOTTERY FOR MARCH FAXNESS 2022 MARCH BADNESS 2020 MARCH VLADNESS 2019 MARCH SHREDNESS 2018 MARCH FADNESS 2017 MARCH SADNESS 2016 THE SADNESSES OF MARCH FIRST ROUND GAME (6) FIELDS OF THE NEPHILIM, “PREACHER MAN” EDGES (11) LORDS OF THE NEW CHURCH, "DANCE WITH ME" 173-153 AND ADVANCES TO THE SECOND ROUND Read the essays, watch the videos, listen to the songs, feel free to argue below in the comments or tweet at us, and consider. Winner is the aggregate of the poll below and the @marchvladness twitter poll. Polls closed @ 9am Arizona time on March 2. marchxness.com/round1-fieldsvslords 1/32 9/25/2020 ROUND 1: (6) FIELDS OF THE NEPHILIM 173, (11) Lords of the New Church 153 — March Plaidness pastures.” —Carl McCoy, “Night Flight,” the sum of its parts as it is everything 1988 else. Lords of the New Church is that very thing: a goth-punk supergroup. Members “I think Nephilim was originally a came from the Dead Boys, the Damned, Hebrew word meaning ‘giant.’” —Tony Sham 69, the Barracudas—punk heavy- Pettit, “Flour Power,” Sounds, 1988 hitters on both sides of the Atlantic. But reading about Lords of the New Church usually involves at least as much “We just chose it ’cos we liked the time spent reading about the fractures story it was in and it’s quite mysterious. that led to their formation. Their music, as It doesn’t give too much away.” —Peter it strays further away from these roots, Yates, “Flour Power,” Sounds, 1988 gets less attention. A goth-punk supergroup is like the other kinds after all: close to what people want, but not it. “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they There is a live performance of “Dance bore children to them. Those were the with Me” on YouTube, frontman Stiv mighty men who were of old, men of Bators and the rest of the band at the renown.” —Genesis 6:4 Marquee in London. Supergroup, maybe, but this is Stiv’s show. He slinks around It wasn’t until May 4, 1987, that British the stage, his eyes rimmed Alice ears were first treated to the Fields of the Cooper-black, his hair glam rock-big. He Nephilim’s debut album, Dawnrazor: an has one lace glove and his shirt is eight track gothic rock oddity that critic perfectly and enviably clawed down the Dan Dickson from the British music mag back. He is not one music scene. He is Kerrang! billed as having created a new them all. goth rock subgenre: “Spaghetti-metal.” Stiv was, by all accounts, a notorious For indeed, the conceit of the goth rock performer. To watch him is to understand album is Spaghetti-Western, from the that he wasn’t concerned with the pretty twangy guitar riffs and sweeping side of things. In other performances, he background windscapes which evoke falls into joint-defying backbends, those of a barren American West stretches improbably from the drumkit to landscape, to the intro track—“intro (The the mic stand, wraps the microphone Harmonica Man)”—which, a month after cord around his neck—a stunt that was the album release, was panned by the taken too far and led his being clinically marchxness.com/round1-fieldsvslords 3/32 9/25/2020 ROUND 1: (6) FIELDS OF THE NEPHILIM 173, (11) Lords of the New Church 153 — March Plaidness very same Dave Dickson, who noted that dead for a non-zero amount of time at a the band “plagiari[zed from] the master 1983 show. musician of Spaghetti Western, Ennio The “Dance With Me” part of the Morricone.” And it’s true: the track Marquee set is, by those standards, samples Morricone’s “Man with the calm. Still, my first reaction to Stiv’s Harmonica” from Sergio Leone’s 1968 onstage persona is discomfort. The epic, Once Upon a Time in the West, exaggeration of it all, like his feelings are starring Henry Fonda. While Dickson so big they needed to be worn, rated the album 3.5/5 stars for the displayed, twisted, not just felt. Too close album’s plagiarism and “truck loads [sic] to the surface, they might as well be of effects” used to conjure a western unleashed, and it’s hard to watch at soundscape, Dickson also gave the times. album a second rating—5/5 stars; for That kind of desperation, that after all, Fields of the Nephilim had neediness to be seen -- it’s too created their own cowboy goth rock supergroup, too literal. Too much like a subgenre. mirror. Yet oddly, Dawnrazor’s UK release did not include “Preacher Man,” the album track that perhaps most embodies the Lords of the New Church had one song Wild West. However, the U.S. release of that could be defined as a hit, and it’s not Dawnrazor included “Preacher Man” as “Dance With Me.” “Dance With Me” track six—a fortuitous decision by the reached only as high as 85 on the UK band, as it still holds a venerated place in charts, and that’s as close as they would the Fields of the Nephilim discography. get to commercial success, after a Though the song remains a Nephilim promising start. classic, surprisingly, it’s not the most “Dance With Me” is not political like popular Fields of the Nephilim song, “Open Your Eyes,” or as rough as slotting in at fifth-most-listened on “Russian Roulette,” two singles from their Spotify. However, on YouTube, “Preacher first album. It’s not the Damned. It’s Man” clearly holds the most-watched polished. It’s got keyboards. It doesn’t spot, beating out the next most-watched feel experimental, necessarily, but Stiv, as Fields of the Nephilim video by 65,000 an uncredited speaker in a preview for a views, largely, it would seem, because of planned documentary about his life says, its exquisite 1987 music video that the “was finding out different facets of his band recorded, a video that was re- creativity...because the music of Lords of released (and uploaded to YouTube) in the New Church was very different than 2002 as part of their “Revelations / the Dead Boys, obviously.” Forever Remain / Visionary Heads” triple That quote is followed by Stiv saying, marchxness.com/round1-fieldsvslords 4/32 9/25/2020 ROUND 1: (6) FIELDS OF THE NEPHILIM 173, (11) Lords of the New Church 153 — March Plaidness Which song pleases your black heart? (Vote by 9am AZ time 3/2) Preacher Man Dance with Me Vote Results Created with PollMaker Fields Of The Nephili… ROBBIE MAAKESTAD AMY ROSSI ON ON “PREACHER MAN” “DANCE WITH ME” “Some angels were cast out of the The term supergroup brings to my mind heavens, and they came down to the indulgence—indulgence to the point of earth, and they bred with the women miscalculation. This is maybe unfair, since on the earth, and produced like this the term technically encompasses the supernatural race of giants, and the likes of Cream, the Highwaymen, the giants sort’ve roamed the earth for a Traveling Wilburys, and Crosby, Stills, while and they were supposedly Nash & Young. wiped out during the flood, but there At its best, it’s still a spectacle. At its was a few survivors, but no one really, worst, a supergroup is a cash grab, is really knows what happened to them. you loved us all separately so now you I mean, no one knows enough about will love us together, is Sammy Hagar, is the Nephilim anyways, it’s just like a toothless versions of songs you legend, so we took the name on remember made generic for a new because it’s quite a mysterious thing, millennium. and we added ‘Fields’ as in like A goth-punk supergroup, though, ‘magnetic fields,’ drawn in towards the must be something different. Fuckless Nephilim rather [than] like in green but not feckless, as unconcerned with marchxness.com/round1-fieldsvslords 2/32 9/25/2020 ROUND 1: (6) FIELDS OF THE NEPHILIM 173, (11) Lords of the New Church 153 — March Plaidness DVD release, which included live footage “Our music is a combination of the last from 1988 and 1990 concerts, and seven thirty years of rock and roll.” music videos from their most recent And so “Dance With Me” falls album Revelations. somewhere in between what people In the first twelve seconds of the wanted Lords of the New Church to be “Preacher Man” music video, what and the truth. sounds like an angelic chorus sings a single note that increases in volume while an electric guitar strums faster and faster, as if a small hammer had been dropped upon one guitar string, bouncing until coming to rest. The music video, (which has skewed timing from the song itself due to a kitschy amoeba- patterned title screen that silently takes up the first 17 seconds of the video), Original art by Christina Collins opens upon a yellow warning sign shrouded in roiling smoke that reads “Zone Perimeter: Radiation Contamination.” A quick cut takes us to a The supergroup doesn’t just assume our silhouette of front man Carl McCoy, love, our interest. It asks for us to hold flanked by the slightly more visible fast to the original magic of a band and silhouettes of the four other band believe that it can be recreated, better.

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