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Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

I have a spotify playlist with a bunch of Morricone's pieces on it, and oddly I discovered him as a teenager listening to a super weird goth band called Fields of the Nephilim, whose schtick was basically dressing up as vampire cowboys, and they sampled Morricone as a leitmotif throughout a whole bunch of their songs. Most familiar will be this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mcg-iCBivbw

It's easy to miss that there was a lot of truly great art wrapped up with what we were taught was kitsch, camp, and schmaltz.

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Didn't think I'd ever see The Fields of the Nephilim mentioned on HN :) I first saw them live at the Glasgow Rooftops club when they released Dawn Razor back in 1987. As you mention the music basically riffed off of the Spaghetti Western genre and took it to a darker place. That first Neph gig was a genuinely unsettling but amazing event...the lighting, the band's sartorial schtick with the long "dusters" coated in flour (I believe), the thumping beat and McCoy's growl. Add to that, the Rooftops was a bit of a shadowy seedy joint littered with shady customers and the gig not starting until after midnight.

The first track on the Dawnrazor album is a cover/rework of Morricone's "The Harmonica Man" which sets the album up quite nicely:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLkqtb_AVjQ

As an aside from the Morricone thing, they were one of the best live bands I've seen in all my gig going history having been to see them aroun 10-12 times over the years.

> It's easy to miss that there was a lot of truly great art wrapped up with what we were taught was kitsch, camp, and schmaltz.

I had a similar revelation seeing Don Rickles perform about 12 years ago. I went to see Rickles with a friend, but my primary motivation was to feel superior by basking in the kitsch of a dinosaur comedian from my parents' generation.

What I ended up seeing was a remarkably talented man who could sing, dance (in his 80s!), tell a joke, and hold the audience in the palm of his hand.

* edit: I also love this song by Morricone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G54OHh8lib0

I remember Fields of Nephilim - listened to them again recently & they actually hold up pretty well. Psychonaut is a good one..

Can you share the playlist?

Sure, there's a bunch of other stuff in it for classic guitar as well since I assembled it essentially as workout music for schooling horses in the summer with some guitar repetoire: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5nFrK21I8wIZin0T7i71zH

YMMV, but there is a Morricone highlight reel in there, along with some other epic stuff. If you are a Quentin Tarantino fan, you'll recognize things like L'Arena and others from Kill Bill, with a bunch of other homages.

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