Talk:Dark cabaret

Archived
Archived the old discussion. The page had grown too long, and there was little actual discussion. We need a clean slate to improve this article and set a higher standard of discussion.

Here is what I see needing to be done. We cannot continue to add artists on relatively small labels (for goth/punk/etc), artists with only one song or one album of dark cabaret material, or artists whose own pages do not mention dark cabaret or who do not have their own pages. We need to demonstrate the degree to which dark cabaret is a community outside of press hype. Bjart 20:24, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh. well...
Great! Dark Cabaret as genre is not exist! Are you happy, mr. Bjart?!! Ask the question to Sam Rosental about this - it's only market where he need to sold more Projekt's cd's and "dark cabaret" is only label, placed on cd's!

Please, delete Dark cabaret (section)!!! And destroy with this section many interesting names like Rosin Coven, Martin Martini... etc. No one band or musician don't work in "dark cabaret genre".

Thank you! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.30.225.144 (talk) 15:47, 21 January 2007 (UTC).


 * I said nothing about deleting the entire article. This is about improving the quality of the article. Look at the archived talk page and the chunk of the article I deleted. Both were full of unregistered accounts promoting one band, often with one or less albums, no inter/national tours, and only a myspace to their name. I didn't delete anything pertaining to the Projekt comp. That and some of the history are the things this article should undeniably keep. The "listening guide" including non-dark-cabaret artists like Regina Spektor don't quite fall into the same category.


 * I like Dark Cabaret. I like Wikipedia. I'd rather improve this article than see some senior editors come by and delete it on us because it became full of unsourced band advertisements. Bjart 19:51, 21 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Now that I've looked over those unregistered accounts, I see that it was mostly you who. I can understand why your feelings were hurt by my big edit. I'd recommend you look over other articles of pop music genres (especially formerly featured articles) and compare their format and talk pages to dark cabaret. The best articles are more than a collection of external links. Bjart 23:01, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Is there such a thing as an "expert" on Dark cabaret out there anywhere...? Paul S (talk) 11:46, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

"Dark Cabaret" compilation
As you can notice if you read this article, the "Dark Cabaret" compilation is referred twice, as if who wrote the second reference did not notice that the other was already there. 195.23.92.74 17:16, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh no!
I noticed that the related article on punk cabaret has been deleted. For now I will make it a redirect here, but if anyone has the time I strongly encourage them to help write a solid article on that genre. Thank you! SomethingFamiliar (talk) 23:34, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Oingo Boingo
I know Danny's film scores were very influential on alot of the Dark Cabaret artists, but has Oingo Boingo ever actually played it? I know they played alot of cabaret style music in in their early days, but when Danny Elfman took over the band they mainly just did New Wave, and a little pop and ska. Can anyone provide a good arguement and/or a source, or should I remove the reference to Boingo? Ash Loomis (talk) 23:07, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Notability: neologism?
I'm struggling to find any reliable sources to back up the term "dark cabaret" as a legitimate subgenre. Obviously, you get a lot of hits for the Projekt compilation, which confuses matters, and the Dresden Dolls certainly use the term, but I remain to be convinced the genre actually exists. Certainly, the article needs re-writing; post hoc inclusions of the likes of Soft Cell and Siouxsie Soux do not confer notability. I'll give it a couple of days, but if sources do not appear (no blogs or webszines, thank you), I'll take this to AfD. Blackmetalbaz (talk) 16:18, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
 * This is a difficult one. The terminology has changed back and forth: in Music to Die for for instance, music writer Mick Mercer uses the term "cabaret noir" (which is anyway just French for dark cabaret) but thanks to the popularity of the Dresden Dolls, "Punk cabaret" appears to have become popular, a term which they seem to have coined early in 2003 according to early Dolls' press clippings. I suspect, however, that this as a self-designation doesn't yet amount to much more than "We like the Dresden Dolls"... The only bands I know who describe their music specifically as Dark Cabaret are BirdEatsBaby, but I'm still looking. It seems to be a designation applied as much to a style of song as a musical genre. It obviously is applicable to some people, though and deleting the article because we can't find a precise term is a bit too Wittgensteinian fundamentalist. Paul S (talk) 15:44, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Kabaratte Obscura and Tragic Tantrum Cabaret also call themselves DC Paul S (talk) 17:13, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

The Real Problem
The trouble is that the term Dark Cabaret has two meanings. In the first place, it means simply cabaret dealing with some dark subject matter. In this case, it would be a descriptor of a song, e.g. "Billie Holiday's Gloomy Sunday is a piece of dark cabaret". Secondly and only roughly since 2005/2006, it's come to mean an actual musical genre, probably fed by increased visibility of the Dresden Dolls and Tiger Lillies in particular, so that it's now possible to say e.g. "Circus Contraption are a dark cabaret band." In trying to write a history, listing influences and antecedents, there is always the danger that the second meaning might be retrospectively given to artists who in fact simply performed songs which merit the first meaning as a descriptor: if someone lists (as this article initially did) Marlene Dietrich as a Dark Cabaret Artist, clearly this doesn't mean she wore whiteface on stage like Amanda Palmer. Nobody was performing what they, or anyone else, consciously recognised as part of a Dark Cabaret genre. I'd also repeat that although very few bands define themselves as Dark Cabaret even now, that doesn't mean the scene is small enough to fail notability: neither Bauhaus nor Sisters of Mercy ever called themselves goths, for example, but would be glaring omissions from an article on that genre. Paul S (talk) 19:19, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I basically agree with this (particularly the distinction between the two uses of the term). However, one important point: it's totally irrelevant whether a band describes themselves as dark cabaret... it's what reliable, third-party sources describe them as, as bands frequently invent fictitious genres to sound speshul. What will be needed to make this genre notable is a reasonable number of notable bands with reliable sources describing them as "dark cabaret". I would suggest ten or twelve would be roughly right, but there's no policy on this; however, a genre with only two notable proponents either a) doesn't exist or b) fails WP:GNG. Blackmetalbaz (talk) 07:17, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Over the past couple of years there's almost been a rush to label things as dark cabaret. NPR Music describe Anthony & the Johnsons as DC, it's a searchable category at the NME's website, here a journo from Northern Ireland describes both the Dolls and the Tiger Lillies as DC , the Prague Post uses the term and there's a LiveJournal community devoted to it . When you see YouTube tagging Stolen Babies as dark cabaret when they're obviously a metal band in whiteface, I almost sense a term being over-used. Now, there remain only three really notable bands even so, but Wikipedia does after all have a page on Nerdcore which has no notable bands whatsoever... Paul S (talk) 11:02, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, obviously WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. The List of dark cabaret artists is laughable though... Siouxsie Sioux? David Bowie? Kate Bush? No chance. Find a reliable source describing them as such and using it as a genre term for a significant proportion of their career or it should be deleted from the list. Blackmetalbaz (talk) 12:17, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I didn't know that list was still up. Adam and the Ants??? This merits extreme trimming and I may do so right now, but returning to notability, I don't think it's valid to assign a kind of formula such that X number of bands must be assigned to it, of which Y must have sold not less than Z thousand albums over a given period, or the article gets deleted. Paul S (talk) 13:24, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Stolen babies is a avant garde metal band with dark cabaret influences that’s why they have been described as “dark cabaret” 108.56.206.171 (talk) 18:40, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Goth?
I would also seriously question whether Dark Cabaret is properly described as a sub-category of the goth subculture. There may be a lot of crossover, but I don't think you can call it a subset. Paul S (talk) 13:26, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Re-write, June 2009
I've "been bold" and re-written much of the article, hopefully helping to eliminate some of the controversy, such as whether the genre actually exists. There isn't really a history before 2005, because the term wasn't really in use to mean a genre, only as a description. The history was just turning into a list of bands anyway. I've also supplied a few references, although they are difficult to find for this subject. Paul S (talk) 22:02, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
 * More citations added. Two more are still needed for The Vyllies and Shift magazine, but I don't think the lack of them makes a case that Dark Cabaret does not exist as a genre. Therefore, I've removed the Original Research banner. There should be enough references to third parties to show bands self-identifying as DC and for the music press being familiar with the term. Paul S (talk) 18:59, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

A Fever You Can't Sweat Out
Would Panic! at the Disco's first album be considered dark cabaret? When reading news articles about the album, the word "cabaret" was mentioned several times, and the song "But It's Better If You Do!" and its music video take place in a cabaret.
 * Are they "dark"? I'm not familiar with much of their work, but they get associated with the genre partly because of their playing with the Dresden Dolls. Paul S (talk) 15:42, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Punk cabaret redirect
"Punk Cabaret" redirects here, but should it redirect here or to the Dresden Dolls? As far as I can determine, no-one else is ever identified as Punk Cabaret apart from ex-Doll Amanda Palmer's solo projects and World Inferno Friendship Society (sometimes as Cabaret Punk) which features Brian Viglione, the other ex-Doll. Paul S (talk) 19:50, 10 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Also see this request @ Talk:The_Dresden_Dolls. IMHO, these modern styles of cabaret, should all be discussed in a new section of Cabaret.  Though someone more familiar with the global articles on musical styles, is welcome to make a case to add it elsewhere.  It's possible other groups already do, or will, identify themselves as punk cabaret, so including it in any one group's article is a bad choice. You also need a WP level citation, to add the claim that one or both of The Dresden Dolls originated the phrase. Lentower (talk) 00:18, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * So are you making a merger proposal, Dark cabaret into Cabaret with the appropriate redirects? Paul S (talk) 10:39, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Alice Cooper
On Alice Cooper's latest album "Welcome 2 my nightmare" there is a track called Last man on earth, which seems extremely similar to the style of Dark Cabaret artist Voltaire. Is this worth mentioning? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.231.53.53 (talk) 23:30, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Proposal: Merger of Punk cabaret with this article
A quick look at the Punk cabaret page reveals that, apart from a couple of hastily added sentences at the end, it is an exact copy of the first two sections of this article! This is overlap to the extent of it being effectively a duplicate page (WP:MERGE). Is there any notable band apart from the Dresden Dolls who are called punk cabaret anyway? Paul S (talk) 18:56, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

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Three Penny Opera not an example of cabaret
The Sources section uses Brecht's Three Penny Opera as an example of cabaret. There is no citation to support this assertion, and I am aware only of sources that identify TPO as theater, which seems the obvious category to me.

Unless someone objects, I intend to delete the reference to TPO. Karl Bildungshunger1965 (talk) 19:23, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Sources section needs complete re-do
The Sources section does not seem to be doing any work for this article.

The work the section was intended to do, if I'm reading it correctly, is to show that "Cabaret proper" had a "dark side" and this dark side influeced later musical artists. It seems that there are two major issues:

First, what is "Cabaret proper"? If this is Weimar-ear cabaret or something else, the assertion probably needs to be specific and a citation is in order.

Second, the artists described may have been influenced by hat er is meant by "Cabaret proper"; if so, useful citations are needed. The only citation that is specific enough to check -- the website on the Virgin Prunes -- does not support the assertion. The citation for Nina Hagen appears confused. Which Mel Gordon book is meant and what page reference?

Unless someone knows of some useful citations and wants to rework this section, I propose to delete it. The following sections discuss the origin and emergence of Dark Cabaret as a genre. I think they are doing the real work and the Sources section is not.

Does anyone have thoughts?Karl Bildungshunger1965 (talk) 15:57, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Tom Waits
Tom Waits has many, many songs that fit under the "Dark Cabaret" term, especially his musical "The Black Rider". Maybe he should be mentioned here, too, as he is pretty famous (at least far more known as all other Dark Cabaret artists I know) 87.139.20.65 (talk) 14:03, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Dark/punk cabaret is a real genre
I’ve been listening to dark/punk cabaret for a couple years now and I can say without a doubt that it is a genre of music. Dark/punk cabaret often that’s influence from jazz,vaudeville,burlesque,circus music,folk,punk and traditional Romani music. Also for a song to be dark/punk cabaret as a genre it needs to have a dark,punky or angry sound not just subject matter. 108.56.206.171 (talk) 18:48, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Chanson
Is Chanson also an influence on Dark Cabaret? If you compare Cabaret/Dark Cabaret and Chanson, you’ll hear many similarities. 87.139.20.65 (talk) 09:10, 12 January 2024 (UTC)