When I was writing my first novel in 2000-2001, I would often want to play some kind of music in the background. Unfortunately, I'm a very active music listener, and lyrics would distract me from the writing I was trying to do. Even some instrumental albums, like Dave Brubeck's Take 5, would distract me. The only thing that seemed to work, and in fact inspire me to write, was anything by Dead Can Dance.

I don't know much about this group, even after having listened to five of their albums fairly constantly. I do know that they are two people, Brendon Perry and Lisa Gerrard, and that they are from Britain. Given the evidence of their albums, they have a strong interest in world music, particularly the Middle East, as well as the musical heritage of their own land.

For my birthday, Jill bought me tickets to see them at the new Strathmore Music Center, as much to give this new venue a try, which I saw being constructed during my daily walks to and from work at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, where I took a job after finishing my novel and my Masters in Creative Writing. She knew I liked them from the fact that I had five CDs in the rack.

Strathmore is a premiere venue--the seating and acoustics are suburb, and I like the fact that they are willing to use it for more than just the Baltimore Symphony and other orchestral concerts. From the first notes, the beat of the drums and the combination of Gerrard's wail and Perry's resonating bass, the hall just seemed to live with sound. This was apparent in every song, but none more so than when they cut back on the instruments, such as Gerrard's acoustic English ballad, "The Wind that Shakes the Barley." When the full band played (Gerrard and Perry were often joined on stage by three percussionists, a bass guitar player and two keyboardists, not to mention the all-important two sound men on the mixing boards) and filled the hall, you could still hear individual parts of the music, something lost in most any normal rock concert.

After opening the concert with the full band for a few songs, the two proceeded to alternate tunes, often leaving the stage during the other's performance. Most of Gerrard's songs would feature her incredible voice (with at least a three octave range, that often would tease about becoming four) and the two keyboardists on slowly repeating synthesizer parts, while Perry's songs often focused on a combination of his sonorous vocals and multiple drums. After the third of fourth of Gerrard's songs, I was beginning to tire of her Middle Eastern-influenced tunes, she slipped into the aforementioned English ballad that was easily the best song of the evening. Perry did at least two songs that I did recognize from my album listening, because they were two of the few songs that actually did have recognizable lyrics: "The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove" (perhaps one of the best song titles ever) and "How Fortunate the Man with None." They also did, as Perry put it, an instrumental that was the number one song for the summer of 1461, complete with Perry on what I think was a hurdy-gurdy.

I would definitely return to Strathmore for another concert. I also plan to do a little active listening to my Dead Can Dance albums, now that I can connect the songs to something more than an atmospheric background to my writing.

UPDATE: Ginger Stampley provides her impressions of Dead Can Dance at Radio City Music Hall a few days before the concert I attended.