The term lich comes from the Slavic licho, which means "evil"; an alternative spelling is "liche". The word is cognate with modern German Leiche, meaning "corpse".
In modern fantasy fiction, a lich is a type of undead creature, usually an evil magician. The usage of the term "lich" as a specific type of undead creature originates in the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game; previous works of fantasy fiction, such as Clark Ashton Smith's "Empire of the Necromancers", had used the term as a general term for an animate or inanimate corpse.
In old Roman Catholicism, the "lych" or "lych gate" is a covered area at the entrance to the cemetery where the casket awaits the clergy before proceeding into the cemetery for proper burial. As such, the suggestion as to the fantasy undead creature, the Lich, is of an undead creature that was never properly buried, never made it to the grave. This is different from other types of undead creatures, such as vampires and zombies, who were buried and returned from the dead. Since most religions maintain that only God or a god can bring someone back from the dead, there is also a suggestion of hubris in the idea of anyone but a deity reanimating dead. Hence, the idea of Undead is the idea of an unclean, unholiness.
In the Dungeons & Dragons game (and many unrelated works of fantasy fiction that draw upon D&D for inspiration), a lich is a spellcaster who seeks to defy death by magical means. Liches convert themselves into an undead skeleton by means of black magic and necromancy, storing their souls in magical receptacles called phylacteries. In some sources the method of becoming a lich is referred to as the Ritual of Endless Night. The lich creation process is often described as requiring the creation and consumption of a deadly potion which is to be drunk on a full moon. The potion invariably kills the drinker but if the process is successful he rises again some days later as a lich. Occasionally, this metamorphosis occurs by accident as a result of life-prolonging magic.
Unlike most other forms of D&D undead creatures, the lich retains all of the memories, personality, and abilities that it possessed in life- but it has a virtual eternity to hone its skills and inevitably becomes quite powerful. Like other powerful forms of undead (such as a vampire or mummy), a lich has unnatural powers owing to his state. For example, he can slay mortals with a mere touch, and can, through force of will, summon other lesser undead to protect him. Liches can radiate an aura of horror which can send weak-willed would-be foes to flight. The lich is capable of sustaining tremendous physical damage, and is immune to disease, poison, fatigue and other effects that could not affect something which is not alive. However, despite all his undead "gifts", a lich's most valuable resources are his vast intellect, his supreme mastery of sorcery and limitless time to research, plot and scheme.
Since a lich's soul is mystically tied to his phylactery, destroying his body will not kill him. Rather, his soul will return to the phylactery, and his body will be recreated by the power keeping him immortal. Thus the only way to permanently destroy a lich is to destroy the phylactery as well. Therefore, the lich will generally be extremely protective of the priceless item. The phylactery, which can be of virtually any form (the default form is a metal box filled with rune-covered papers, but it usually appears as a valuable amulet or gemstone), will often be hidden in a secret place and protected by powerful spells, charms, monsters and/or other servants; the phylactery itself is usually of magical nature, meaning its destruction will generally be little easier than attaining it.
Liches are usually among the most powerful undead creatures in almost any setting in which they appear, and are one of the most powerful non-unique undead creatures in the D&D game. Several D&D gods were liches before becoming deities; these gods include:
Other well-known liches are:
Still in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, one can also encounter the Archlich, which is not, as the name implies, a more powerful type of lich. Archliches are good liches which are able to memorize spells through intuitive nature and do not need spellbooks; they also do not become demiliches (see below) but remain in their form for eternity.
If a lich exists long enough, it may reach a point where it feels it cannot learn any more in its present state and seeks other avenues to attain knowledge. The lich's interest turns away from the physical realm, and its soul voluntarily leaves its undead form and phylactery, using astral projection to travel across other planes of existence. The magics preserving the lich's body against the ravages of time weaken, usually causing the body to gradually deteriorate until only a skull or even a single skeletal hand remains; this advanced form of lich is known as a demilich. Despite its ruined body, a demilich is far from powerless; if disturbed, the skull will levitate and suck the souls from nearby living creatures. The most notable demiliches are Acererak, found in the classic adventure Tomb of Horrors, and Kangaxx, one of the most powerful adversaries in the PC game Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn.
Other races also have their own special versions of the lich, which are not necessarily evil; for example, an Elf from the Forgotten Realms setting can become a baelnorn, or an Illithid can become an illithilich, also known as an alhoon; a powerful Beholder wizard can become a death tyrant. A dragon can also become a dracolich. Dracoliches are greatly feared, for they are far more powerful than ordinary liches. A dracolich that becomes a demilich would be an extremely powerful monster, even by dragon standards.
Many other works of fantasy fiction have borrowed the term and concept of the lich from D&D to lend an element of supernatural fear to their cast or atmosphere. Such works include the computer and video games NetHack, Warcraft III, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem and Gauntlet: Dark Legacy, the Might and Magic, Final Fantasy, Tales of Phantasia, Warlords and Ultima, ADOM series of computer and video games, the Mage: The Ascension and Shadowrun role-playing games, and the novel The Scar by China Miéville. They also appear in The Kingdom of Loathing, but are featured as "lihcs" because they are found in the "Misspelled Cemetary". David Drake's Lord of the Isles series of novels used the term to mean the corpse of a drowned man, animated by magic, which can only be destroyed by smashing its skull. In the video game Disciples II, the most powerful liches are referred to as Arch-liches, though several other varieties of this term have appeared in other works. Andrew J. Offutt's Conan and the Sorcerer, a 1978 pastiche of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian, features the Sand-Lich, Tosya Zul. The book series Rise to Heaven features the lich Soveliss, who chose the path of lichhood instead of succumbing to a life-threatening disease.
Other notable sightings include:
While this usage of the term "lich" is particular to Dungeons & Dragons and other modern fantasy fiction, the underlying idea of eluding death by means of arcane study and black magic is not. It can be traced to Middle Eastern folklore, and the method of achieving immortality by placing one's soul in a jar (which is usually hidden in some vast fortress) is suggestive of the burial practices of Egypt. This would make the Lich a very-far-from-its-roots mythologization of Egyptian pharaohs. It should be noted that the Ancient Egyptians did not fear death (they were not eluding death), and that the creation of the mummy was for the soul to fly back to; it was free to exist in both the afterlife and physical world (to commune with its descendants).
Eastern Slavic legends tell of a powerful dark wizard or a demon, Koschei the Deathless, who evades death by having his fiery soul placed in the eye of a magical needle. The needle is inside an egg, which is inside a duck, which is inside a hare, which is locked in an iron chest, placed at the roots of a great oak tree, on a magical island of Buyan. Koschei can be killed only by breaking the magical needle, which is much like a phylactery of a lich.
Like many of the creatures found in Dungeons & Dragons, the Lich was derived from monsters found in classic sword and sorcery fiction, which is filled with powerful sorcerers who used their magic to triumph over death. Many of Clark Ashton Smith's short stories feature powerful wizards whose magic enables them to return from the dead. The term "lich", used as an archaic word for corpse, is commonly used in these stories. Other imagery surrounding demiliches, in particular that of a jeweled skull, is drawn from the early Fritz Leiber story "Thieves' House".
"Garage rock" is a raw form of rock and roll that enjoyed wide success in the United States and Canada from 1963 to 1967.
The style had been evolving from regional scenes in the USA as far back as 1959. "Dirty Robber" by the Wailers, from Tacoma, Wash., is often cited as the first "garage rock" song. Aside from the Wailers, in these early years very few American bands could truly be called garage artists. The Rumblers, from Downey, Calif., came close in 1962 with their grungy take on surf music with "I Don't Need You No More" released on Dot (a national label).
In 1963 garage bands crept into the national charts. These bands were all products of local scenes, and included: The Kingsmen (Portland), Paul Revere and the Raiders (Portland), The Trashmen (Minneapolis) and the Rivieras (South Bend, Ind.). This was before the Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan Show (Feb. 1964), which mitigates somewhat the theory that the British Invasion was solely responsible for the emergence of garage bands.
Nevertheless, the British Invasion of 1964-1966 did greatly influence the garage band sound as many local American bands (often surf or hot rod groups) began augmenting a British Invasion sound. The British Invasion also inspired new, and often very amateurish, bands to form. Garage rock peaked both commercially and artistically in 1966. It went into a slow, but irreversible, decline beginning in the Fall of 1967.
One reason, perhaps, it declined is that that it was not an identified genre in its own time. The style was first identified in the early 1970s by record collectors. Originally it was called "punk rock." However, when the Sex Pistols/Ramones era dawned, it was renamed "1960's punk" to avoid confusion. Eventually, likely in the 1980s, the punk rock tag was dropped altogether in favor of "garage rock."
"Garage rock" comes from the perception that many such performers were young and amateurish, and often rehearsed in a family garage. This connotation also evokes a suburban, middle-class setting. It is, of course, quite simplistic to conclude that all garage bands met this demographic dynamic.
The best songs of the genre conveyed great passion and energy. The performances were often amateurish or naïve. Typical themes revolved around the traumas of high school life, and lyin' and cheatin' girls. Superficially, this implies that the music was very limited. In reality, "Garage rock" performers were quite diverse in both musical ability and in style. Bands ranged the gamut from one-chord musical crudeness (e.g., The Seeds, The Keggs) to near-studio musician quality (e.g., The Knickerbockers, The Remains). There were also regional variations in many parts of the country with the Pacific Northwest states of Washington and Oregon having the best defined regional sound.
Thousands of garage bands were extant in the USA and Canada during the era. Several dozen of these produced national hit records, including "Psychotic Reaction" by The Count 5 (1966), "Pushin' Too Hard" by The Seeds (1966), "Gloria" by the Shadows of Knight (1966), "96 Tears" by Question Mark and the Mysterians (1966), "Talk Talk" by The Music Machine (1966), "Louie, Louie" by The Kingsmen (1963-64), and "Dirty Water" by The Standells (1966).
A larger number produced regional hits. Examples include: "Where You Gonna Go" by the Unrelated Segments in Detroit (1967), "The Witch" by the Sonics in Seattle (1965) and "Girl I Got News for You" by the Birdwatchers in Miami (1967). As one would expect, the vast majority of garage bands were commercial failures. This is despite most of the better bands being signed to major or large regional labels.
By 1968 the style largely disappeared from the national charts ("Question of Temperature" by the Balloon Farm was a notable exception), and was only being played as a trace element at the local level as new styles had evolved to replace garage rock (e.g., progressive rock, country rock, Bubblegum, etc.) and as the music industry withdrew its support.
Record collectors began to document this music beginning in 1970 as first reported in Greg Shaw's Bomp Magazine. In 1972, rock critic Lenny Kaye assembled a collection of some of the more commercially successful songs of the era on a compilation LP called "Nuggets." This record, with decent record sales, reacquainted many of these mid-sixties bands to the attention of collectors and mainstream rock fans for the first time. It also helped to coalesce an identity for the genre.
In the later 1970s and early 1980s, compilation LPs surfaced which more deeply explored the extent of garage rock than Nuggets ever did. These records became widely known to record collectors. The better of these are the Pebbles, Boulders and Back from the Grave series. Largely because of the success of these compilations beginning in the late 1970s a full-scale revival of the music occurred. This revival peaked around 1987, but the garage rock revival continues into the present, and has helped influenced a similar form of music, garage punk.
The first garage rock revival occurred in the mid-1970s, when bands such as The Dictators, DMZ, The Hypstrz and The Fleshtones emulated the look and sound of sixties garage rock. Several of the "punk" bands that emerged in the later seventies, notably The Ramones, were heavily influenced by the sixties garage acts, as were proto punk bands of the early '70s like Iggy and The Stooges and The New York Dolls. Iggy had even been in a mid-sixties garage band, The Iguanas, who released a fab version of "Mona" in 1966.
In the 1980s, another garage rock revival saw a number of bands earnestly trying to replicate the sound, style, and look of the '60s garage bands (see The Chesterfield Kings, The Fuzztones, The Milkshakes, and The Cynics as examples of this); this trend coincided with a similar surf rock revival, and both styles fed in into the alternative rock movement and future grunge music explosion, which some say was partially inspired by garage rock from Seattle like The Sonics and The Wailers, but was largely unknown by fans outside the immediate circles of the bands themselves.
This movement also evolved into an even more primitive form of garage rock that became known as garage punk by the late 1980s, thanks to bands such as Thee Mighty Caesars, The Gories, The Mummies, and The Devil Dogs. Bands playing garage punk differed from the garage rock revival bands in that they were less cartoonish caricatures of '60s garage bands and their overall sound was even more loud, obnoxious, and raw, often infusing elements of proto punk and 1970s punk rock (hence the "garage punk" term). Garage rock and garage punk coexisted throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s with many independent record labels releasing thousands of records by bands playing various styles of primitive rock and roll all around the world. Some of the more prolific of these independent record labels included Estrus, Hangman, Rip Off, In The Red, Telstar, Crypt, Dionysus, Get Hip, Bomp! and Long Gone John's Sympathy for the Record Industry. Also in the early 2000s, a few bands playing garage rock actually gained mainstream appeal and commercial airplay, something that had eluded garage rock bands of the past. These included The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Vines, The (International) Noise Conspiracy and garage-punkers The Hives. Other lesser-knowns such as The Detroit Cobras, The Young Werewolves, The 5.6.7.8's, The Dirtbombs, The New Bomb Turks, the Oblivians, Teengenerate, The Makers, Guitar Wolf, Lost Sounds, and others enjoyed moderate underground success and appeal.
In the late '90s, Steven van Zandt ("Little Steven") became a torchbearer, spokesperson, and proponent for garage rock, promoting concerts and festivals in New York City and also, in 2002, starting a syndicated radio program called Little Steven's Underground Garage and also launching an Underground Garage channel on the Sirius Satellite Radio network.
Noise pop is a term used to loosely describe a number of alternative rock bands that fuse punk rock's attitude and anger with the atonal noise, feedback, and free song structures of noise music, presented in a decidedly pop context. Most noise pop bands owe a heavy debt to the influence of the Velvet Underground, but the style truly began in the 1980s underground scene: chief purveyors include The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo, and Dinosaur Jr. Noise pop bands are considered inspirations for the shoegazing scene of the late 80's and early 90's; in fact, many shoegaze bands could be considered noise pop. The genre continues to be a force in the indie rock scene of today. Some more modern, but lesser-known examples are Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu and The Double, all of whom are popular with the indie music website Pitchfork Media.
Space rock is a style of music; the term originally referred to a group of early mostly British 1970s progressive rock and psychedelic bands like Hawkwind, characterized by heavy bass and drums, synthesizers, and science fiction and drug references (such as Spacemen 3's legendary quotation: "taking drugs to make music to take drugs to"), though it was later repurposed to refer to a series of late 1980s British alternative rock bands with a more shimmering, melodic sound.
More than most genres of music, space rock has a single seminal album, Hawkwind's Space Ritual (1973), a two-disk live album advertised as "88 minutes of brain-damage" documenting Hawkwind's successful 1972 tour of their blow-out show complete with liquid lights and lasers, nude dancers (notably the earth-mother figure Stacia), wild costumes, and psychedelic imagery. This hard-edged concert experience provided an alternative to the increasingly relaxed work of Pink Floyd (and across the Atlantic the Grateful Dead) and attracted a motley but dedicated collection of psychedelic drugs users, science-fiction fans, and motorcycle riders.
The science fiction author Michael Moorcock collaborated with Hawkwind on many occasions: for example, he wrote the lyrics for many of the spoken-word sections on Space Ritual including the paranoid classic "Sonic Attack", and "The Black Corridor" included verbatim quotes from Moorcock's novel of the same name. More amusingly, Moorcock (with Michael Butterworth) wrote the band into fiction as superheroes in a post-apocalyptic England in 1976's Time of the Hawklords (with a later sequel written only by Butterworth titled Queens of Deliria).
An album The New Worlds Fair by "Michael Moorcock and the Deep Fix" was released in 1975, which included a number of Hawkwind regulars in the credits. ("The Deep Fix" was the title story of an obscure collection of short stories by "James Colvin" published in the 1960s). Moorcock wrote the lyrics to an album track entitled "Black Blade", referring to the sword Stormbringer in the Elric books, by the American band Blue Öyster Cult: Moorcock has even performed this song live with BÖC. The cyberpunk author John Shirley has also contributed to the lyrics of BÖC.
By the early 1990s, mainly British alternative rock genres like space rock, twee pop, shoegazing and noise pop emerged into the mainstream with the explosion of Britpop bands like Blur, Suede and Oasis. By 1991 (see 1991 in music), though, the original space rock bands had mostly fallen apart, and the musicians had moved on to new bands or new styles.
Shoegazing is a style of alternative rock that emerged in Ireland and the United Kingdom in the late 1980s. Isn't Anything by My Bloody Valentine, released in 1988 (see 1988 in music) is said to have defined the sound.
Shoegazing is characterised by a self-deprecating, introspective, non-confrontational feel. Generally employed are distortion and the fuzzbox, droning riffs and a Phil Spector-esque wall of sound from the noisy guitars. Another way to describe the guitar effects would be "lead-guitarlessness", typically with two distorted rhythm guitars interweaving together and giving an exceptionally muddied sound. Although lead guitar riffs were often present, they were not the central focus of most shoegazing songs.
Vocals typically are subdued in volume and tone, but underneath the layers of guitars is often a strong sense of melody. While the genres which influenced shoegazing often used drum machines, shoegazing more often features live drumming. Chapterhouse utilised both samples and live drumming, while drummers such as Chris Cooper of Pale Saints and the late Chris Acland of Lush often displayed complex drum patterns.
The name was coined by the New Musical Express, noting the tendency of the bands' guitarists to stare at their feet (or their effects pedals), seemingly deep in concentration, while playing. Some fans will argue another story, that shoegazing music was originally made with the intention of being listened to while taking heroin,[citation needed] and that the name refers to a passage from the book Naked Lunch. Melody Maker preferred the more staid term The Scene That Celebrates Itself, referring to the habit which the bands had of attending gigs of other shoegazing bands, often in Camden. The key record labels associated with the genre were Creation Records (My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Slowdive) and 4AD.
The Velvet Underground was often cited as a major influence, as the band had been on the C86 movement before it. Many of the bands eschewed the punk era altogether, although punk-era bands such as The Cramps, Pere Ubu and The Birthday Party proved influential in some cases, especially with the forerunners of the genre. However, artists such as The Jesus and Mary Chain and especially the Cocteau Twins and Spacemen 3 (and later Spiritualized) gave birth to the genre directly rather than through oblique influences.
Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life traces shoegazing to a Dinosaur Jr tour of the United Kingdom. While not generally classified as a shoegazing band, Dinosaur Jr did share a tendency to blend poppy melody with loud guitars. Early Boo Radleys tracks were firmly modelled on the first two Dinosaur albums.
The first stirrings of recognition came when indie writer Steve Lamacq referred to Ride in a review for the NME as "The House of Love with chainsaws". In the US the music is sometimes now referred to as "dream pop".
The genre label was quite often misapplied. Key bands such as Ride, Chapterhouse and Slowdive emerged from the Thames Valley and as such Swervedriver found themselves labelled 'shoegazers' on account of their own (coincidental) Thames Valley origins - despite their more pronounced Hüsker Dü stylings. Curve were once described as "the exact point where shoegazer meets goth" and the genre did overlap with others to some extent. It was certainly the case that bands such as Blur, on occasion, adopted elements of shoegazing ('She's So High' for instance) on a purely commercial basis. The careers of Thousand Yard Stare and Revolver were caught up in a general backlash which affected the scene. In spite of this, bands like Chapterhouse, Ride and Slowdive ("the My Bloody Valentine Creation can afford" went one wry review) did leave behind several albums that on reflection have stood the test of time as indicative of 90s British indie.
After the initial first wave of bands whose careers petered out in the early 1990s, or moved in different directions, a number of bands such as Bethany Curve and Brian Jonestown Massacre were able to take inspiration from these groups and pursue new audiences. In recent years the NME has recently pointed out the shoegazing influence in a number of up and coming bands, which it has called "nu-gazing". Bands of this nature include Televise, Alcian Blue, A Place To Bury Strangers, Air Formation, Scarling., Autolux, Amusement Parks on Fire, Skywave, The Radio Dept, Mahogany, Readymade, Los Sonidos Distantes, Joy Zipper, M83, Ulrich Schnauss, Oppressed by the Line, Heroes of Switzerland, Experimental Aircraft and Engineers, and most recently Serena Maneesh. The genre is very strong within its own ranks, much alluding to the ideal "the scene that celebrates itself." Clubs such as Club AC30 and Club Violaine, along with the support of such labels as The Gaia Project and Bella Union are supporting more and more dream-pop and shoegaze bands. There are many holdouts of devoted players and listeners on both sides of the Atlantic, and a strong following in South America.
The first two albums by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club are influenced by shoegazing.
There is another thread of shoegazer-influenced music, that maintains the emphasis of texture (through the use of guitar effects pedals and digital signal processing) but departs, to some degree, from the rock structures and full band instrumentation of shoegazer music. Also, there are little to no vocal elements. This “post-shoegaze” glitch and experimental electronic music has achieved some critical praise, especially the more recent releases by Fennesz and Tim Hecker. The duo Belong released an album in 2006 that also falls into this category.
Often using the digital studio of a computer, these artists focus a lot of attention on creating space and atmosphere. The Max/MSP software program is one tool that allows for guitar signals to be processed for the creation of music that is characterized as much by its textural aspects as its melodies, if not more so. The outcome tends to be compositions ranging from ambient stretches of droning tones, distorted walls of sound, and reverb-laden atmospherics. What separates this from other strands of glitch or noise compositions and places it in the realm of shoegaze are the inclusion of melodies that call to mind pop and rock music.
The genre, though derided to some extent by the music press at the time, has left something of a legacy, as the new crop of bands demonstrates. The last album by My Bloody Valentine, Loveless, released in 1991 is critically acclaimed to be the landmark album of shoegazing, with Ride's first album Nowhere seen as a close contender.
The term ''acid rock'' was much used in its heyday of the late 1960s and early 1970s, but has fallen into disuse except for putting this music into its historical perspective.
When hard rock and heavy metal became prominent in the late 1970s, the phrase "acid rock" was sometimes generically and erroneously applied to these genres. This use of the term was often negative in nature, and was generally attributed the heaviest forms of rock; often perceived as abrasive or un-listenable to the individual using the phrase. Over time, the common use of the term "heavy metal" replaced "acid rock" for these styles of music..
Historically and more accurately, the term refers to the relationship between music and lysergic acid diethylamide, or [[LSD]], commonly called "acid". "Acid rock" can connote music recorded under the influence of LSD, or intended to be experienced in conjunction with LSD. These associations can be a matter of the musician's intention, the listener's intention, or even just a general perception on the part of the person using the term. Often the lyrics deal with drug induced psychologoical themes as well as references to mind altering techniques.
Characterized by an off-beat style, vivid imagery, and sometimes strange sound/musical effects (ie, backward recorded music), acid rock often settles into a hypnotic groove wherein a listener (and possibly even the band) can "get lost" within a song.
Acid rock is characterized by long solos and its influence from Indian Ragas and the use of Wah-Wah pedals. Acid rock was influenced by Chicago blues and the use of a strange fuzz tone with melodies appearing in unexpected places.
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