Cabaret Voltaire - The Voice of America
#291
July 1980Cabaret Voltaire
Voice of America
Genre: Does anyone really like Cabaret Voltaire?
2.25 out of 5
On occasion I have quoted myself in some reviews. Harkening back to reviews from my blog, Septenary, I have chosen paragraphs that I felt adequately expressed my thoughts on a particular record rather than rewrite them. This usually happens in the comments.
This is the first time I am going to copy from a Listening Post review that won’t come up until later in the chronology but, dammit, I’m just doing it.
Fuck it.
"When I was in college I somehow managed to find myself in the cast of an off-off-off Broadway show called "DaDaDaDaDaDa". It was a post-modern musical about the creation of the Dadaist movement. I played Tristan Tzara.
It was a weird show. I was proud of it. There was absolutely no good reason for me to be in it. I lost sleep, nearly failed out of school because the rehearsals knocked me out and it was highly mediocre. The lead actress was going through a divorce and trying to sleep with every thing she came into contact with, myself and my roommates included.
The director and other main actress were a couple and were students with my teacher in Lawrence, Kansas. I have sporadic memories of the show. I rememeber Rusty, the comic relief and have wondered, often, what has happened to him.
I bought the Seven Dada Manifestos to better understand my character.
I fell in love with Tristan and the movement and it's embrace of chaos and the random.
They built their art movement at the Cabaret Voltaire in Vienna.”
But here’s the twist. This time I think Voltaire comes closer to the spirit of Dadaism than on their other records.
It isn’t good. It’s off putting and annoying. Like the Dadaists. It doesn’t serve to offer a view of a placid world apathetic to the horrors of war, but then again, once the Dadaists got through that phase, what were they really about anyway?
Being annoying. Exactly.
In that respect, this is my favorite Cabaret Voltaire album.
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