Rabid Rabbit's dark take on opera at New Capital's 24HRS/25DAYS celebration
Posted by Luca Cimarusti on 12.06.12 at 02:00 PM
- MARIAH KARSON
- Rabid Rabbit
With Gloomy Sunday, the band—along with an awesome cast of some of Chicago's weirdest noisemakers, including Mark Solotroff, Dave Rempis, and Bruce Lamont—reimagined the 1930s song into a massive, plodding dirge full of chants, noise, and saxophone skronk. The original "Gloomy Sunday" is best known for an urban legend surrounding it: the recording was banned from the radio after causing at least 19 suicides in Hungary and America (though the suicides are difficult to verify). While it's impossible to prove if there really is a link between the music and the deaths, one thing is for sure: Rezső Seress, the man who composed the song, definitely killed himself by jumping out of the window of a building in Budapest in 1968 (although Wikipedia says he survived the fall, only to strangle himself to death with a wire while recovering in the hospital). No wonder the twisted monsters in Rabid Rabbit chose something this gnarly for source material.
On Saturday they'll be tackling the third act of Richard Wagner's Gotterdammerung opera. I know next to nothing about opera, but I can tell you this much: the third act is where everyone starts murdering each other, culminating in a climactic, all-consuming funeral pyre. Pretty heavy. Rabid Rabbit will be covering the movement that features Siegfried's death and funeral march.
The earth-moving band's rendition is not to be missed, especially after seeing how excellentGloomy Sunday turned out. The show is free, and New Capital is located at 3114 W. Carroll.
