Monday, November 5, 2007

Daisy Chainsaw

     Some people find it difficult to integrate music into a category like cult classics because the word "classic" tends to strike people as meaning "old". This is sooooo not true here at Cultarama. You see, "Cult" is the keyword, meaning the campy, the fun, the shocking, the intriguing, and anything that isn't really mainstream or something that took word of mouth to gain popularity. The word "classic" therefore doesn't mean "old", it means distinguishable. People, I feel, should not be excluded from this category, and people can pretty much fit into any category.  In this case, it falls under the category of music, so here we go. 

      Daisy Chainsaw was a really fun band that sprang up in the early '90s, fronted by the lovely but truly bizarre Katie Jane Garside. This woman can do the strangest things with her voice. Honestly, though it isn't for everyone, nothing ever really is. Katie always wears dirty, tattered dresses with dead flowers in her hair and is usually barefoot. She smashes her head into drumsets, and basically has little regard for her welfare, at least on stage.  

     Daisy Chainsaw only had one full album "Eleventeen", which was a huge hit on the hard rock, grunge, goth, riot girl scene, even though technically they didn't really fit into any of those classifications. People tended to group them together with other girl bands like Hole, L7, and Bikini Kill, but I found that insulting because there was nothing else out there like Daisy Chainsaw.  They created the mold and when they were done with it they broke it.  Their sound is extremely gritty, tinged with hilarious lyrics, backed up by a thrashing energy. Only one single from the album made the charts, a song called "Love Your Money" about how record companies are only about profits, no matter how your music sounds. 

     Unfortunately, the band did officially break up in the mid-'90s and Katie Jane Garside along with former Daisy Chainsaw member, and guitarist Crispin Gray formed a new band called Queen Adreena. And with albums like "Taxidermy", "The Butcher and the Butterfly", and songs like "Medicine Jar" and "Pretty Like Drugs", that hint of Daisy Chainsaw is still there. It's a new band, but essentially it includes everyone that we liked from Daisy Chainsaw and is still fronted by Katie Jane Garside. It may not be Daisy Chainsaw, but it's an incredible facsimile.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I remember these dudes! Had the album...