Zrbo's Favorite Songs

Thought I'd start a series discussing a few of my favorite songs. Let's go!

The Sisters of Mercy - Dominion/Mother Russia

AKA- Andrew Eldritch in his Indiana-Jones-meets-Dave-Stewart-from-the-Eurythmics period. For a Sisters of Mercy video they sure went all out, maybe because Jim Steinman was the album's producer. Filmed in the city of Petra in Jordan, this video looks like it's a trailer for some Indiana Jones inspired adventure romp. Why is Patricia Morrison hunting down (blind?) Andrew? What are they looking for in those ruins? And why does Andrew look like Dave Stewart?

Seriously, is this Dave Stewart or Andrew Eldritch?

The video ends right at the beginning of Mother Russia (technically the song is Dominion/Mother Russia, with Dominion just flowing into the latter), which is unfortunate since it has some amazing lyrics (listen to it here):

We serve an old man in a dry season

A lighthouse keeper in the desert sun 

Dreamers of sleepers and white treason

We dream of rain and the history of the gun

There's a lighthouse in the middle of Prussia

A white house in a red square

I'm living in films for the sake of Russia

A kino runner for the DDR

And the fifty two daughters of the revolution

Turn the gold to chrome

Gift nothing to lose

Stuck inside of Memphis with the mobile home sing:

Mother Russia, Mother Russia

Mother Russia rain down, down down

Dave Thomas from AMG writes:

"It is an astonishingly powerful piece, a 12-minute piece that Eldritch confessed disguised an anti-American diatribe flavored by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

For the accompanying video, Eldritch and Morrison traveled to the ancient city of Petra to film amid the ruins, but in an interview with Melody Maker, Eldritch painted the portrait that he truly intended, America "huddled in their mobile homes while Mother Russia rained down on them. They deserve it." Among the song's most pointedly effective lyrics, the Dylan paraphrase "stuck inside of Memphis with the mobile home, sing" has few peers."

Next time: I promise my Big Games of 2011 post will be up soon. No, seriously.