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DAMIEN
YOUTH: a man of many contradictions
(From Swedish magazine GROOVE. written by: By Peter Sjoblom)
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the legendary Louisiana heat trembles above the small community in Hammond
while a man in his best years crouches over his portable home studio. He
strums a few chords on his guitar, clears his throat, and starts singing.
But it's not blues with the Mississippi splashing in the background that
sticks to the tape; it's peculiar little pop tunes. One would almost think
it's the missing Darwinistic link between Robyn Hitchcock and the
English 60's psychedelics, Kaleidoscope, sitting there
- add on a few hereditary factors from Syd Barrett. Damien
Youth's songs are like yellowed pictures from another time. But as
it's true with old pictures they come alive - contradictingly so - out of
the yellowness, colours seep through - clear and imagination invoking, like
a DALI painting. |
His
answer to my question, what he would have been in a different time,
doesn't surprise me; "An eighteenth-century family's schizophrenic
little daughter." That is a contradiction to the present, and there
are so many paradoxes surrounding Damien Youth, particularly
in his upbringing.
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"I
grew up in a little town in the bible belt of the south" he says, "raised
by a fanatically religious mother and a sinful father who was obsessed with
death. It made me start writing simple escapist folksongs and songs about
cosmic paradoxes. I learned the art of performing from the best in the business,
the Southern preachers! And that's exactly what I was raised to be - a preacher."
But thats not what happened. When Damien was 15 years old, he attended his
first concert - The Kinks. When he met Ray Davies afterwards
he made up his mind: he was going to be a rock star! Well, his rock star
status can be debated, but one thing is for sure: apart from an incalculable
amount of cassette releases a decade or so ago, he has released 3 cds: BRIDE
OF THE ASYLUM, SUNFIELD,
and SONGS FROM BLACK TOWER. All
of them are more or less privately distributed through Blackberry
Records, and all of them contain memorable pop tunes covering a wide
emotional range.
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photo
courtesy of Elizabeth Black |
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