LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Ghost Dance
built 636 days ago
At the end of the 1980s, like so many Goth bands of that period, Ghost Dance signed to a major label and made a conscious effort to drop their "Goth" image. The results both live and recorded were disappointing. The "Stop the World" album, whilst crammed with Marx penned classics, suffered from over production as the band sought a more pop/rock audience. The cleaned up live shows of the time started to lack the camaraderie of earlier times, not assisted by inappropriate support acts. Having lost their roots and undoubtedly having failed to meet Chrysalis' expectations, the band folded and the members scattered to the four winds.
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These dramatic examples belie the fact that the Ghost Dance isn’t danced merely in Madrassahs, or fundamentalist churches, but throughout the Global Village, from American churches to Shanghai malls to halls of power in Washington D.C. and capitals around the world. It was Armageddon-obsessed Christians who helped elect George W. Bush. Prominent Christian pundits as well as some in the Pentagon have cast the Iraqi War as a holy war of biblical prophesy. The “strict constructionism” of American constitutional conservatives is a political Ghost Dance. Elsewhere, political uncertainty leads to other nostalgic looks back. Communism seemed discredited in the ’90s, but after a decade of corruption and widening divergence between rich and poor in the former Soviet Republics, a small but vocal minority advocates returning to the old order.
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After a handful of singles and EPs mostly released on the U.K. indie label Karbon, Ghost Dance was signed to Chrysalis in 1988. Their debut album, Stop the World, followed a year later. Unfortunately, the attempts at grafting a new pop sensibility onto the band\'s material were critically derided. Like many goth outfits, as the \'90s approached, Ghost Dance found themselves unable to successfully change with the times, and they folded soon afterward. Etch briefly joined the touring lineup of the Mission UK, while Steel later resurfaced in Spacehog. Tracks periodically appear on goth compilations, and rumors of reunions continue to circulate.
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An alternate interpretation of the Ghost Dance tradition may be seen in the so-called Ghost Shirts, which were special garments rumored to repel bullets through spiritual power. It is uncertain where this belief originated, although some observers such as James Mooney have argued that the most likely source is the Mormon endowment “garment†(which some Mormons believed would protect the pious wearer from danger). Despite the uncertainty of its origins, it is generally accepted that chief Kicking Bear brought the concept to his own people, the Lakota Sioux in 1890.[6]
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To bring these and the other beliefs into effect, the Indians had to practice the customs of the Ghost Dance movement and to renounce alcohol and farming and end mourning, since the resurrection would be coming soon. The most important practice to ensure the effectiveness of the movement was the dance itself.
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The world is changed when a band signs to K and gets less lo-fi, but no doubt some of the credit lies with label-guru Calvin Johnson who produced more than half of Ghost Dance's 20 tracks. Barrier's pattering guitar is allowed plenty of acreage to pound out slyly danceable rhythms. Drummer Ben Rhyne breaks his martial snare into fractal riffs. Occasional swaths of accordion, mandolin, fiddle carry traces of bluegrass and Celtic music. Sometimes things are wacky: Rhyne is credited with playing a "snake rattle", Matt Bakula with washtub bass. Tracks like "Death by Stereo" and "For Every Glass That's Empty" don't offer a lot of low-end but their hollowed-out take on sock-hop rock shake with teenage familiarity.
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Ghost Dance