"I wanted the music to destroy my body." - M. GIRA

I've been looking at old SWANS videos today:


COWARD



LIKE A DRUG (SHA LA LA LA)



BEAUTIFUL CHILD


and a short doc from years later with a mix of performance and interview stuff with Michael Gira:




This is another one of the bands that made me who I am today. I think I've spent some time in my life in different kinds of self-denial. I had almost forgotten how much I LOVE this music or performance art or whatever you might want to call it. I still have a bunch of SWANS stuff on vinyl records, and had pretty much stopped listening to them by the time they started putting out CDs (if you want to know how long ago I was really into them).

For me this kind of shit absolutely defines artistic integrity. SWANS were awesome and beautiful to me. I'm sorry I never got to see/feel them live, but seeing Neubauten and Crash Worship several times each probably makes up for it a little bit at least.

When I was dancing on stage wearing nothing but pieces of raw butcher shop meat (usually puchased from the now long gone butcher shop on Michigan Ave in downtown Ypsilanti) strapped to my groin I was feeling the SWANS music that had damaged my hearing in the preceeding months even if the band playing behind me (Captain Dave and the Psychedelic Lounge Cats) sounded like the Butthole Surfers playing Sergio Mendes (or was that the other way around?).

The internet is a great tool for helping the packrat scrapbooker in all of us keep our closets and basements a little cleaner while still remembering where we came from.