Heartland

Nikolas Vitus Lagartija wrote:Thanks, @Rien for the quick review. Sounds like you have a very cool Dad !

Dominion: the ultimate combination between rock-opera, gothic and glamour

The Dominion music video is still my favorite video all time and for Some Wear Leather, Some Wear Lace I did serious effort to find promotional photos made in Jordan. For a book you need the HQ and original photos, so it requires tracing those back. Story goes that the result of the promotional shoot were given to the record company and were never seen back. Neither I got my hands on HQs of the behind-the-scenesphotos. With the stressing deadline for the manuscript, it became an impossible task to include (unseen) ‘Dominion’ photos in Some Wear Leather, Some Wear Lace. But.. who I did get to speak to was the director of the Dominion video: David Hogan!

Not the espionage-theme (FIY: Andrew was not looking for the holy grail!), the irony of wearing white by the then band-members Patricia Morrison and Andrew Eldritch, and the overly seriousness of the video make it so memorable, but especially the location, the City of Petra in Jordan was the best choice. If shooting the This Corrosion video would go well, the record company would give The Sisters of Mercy a green light for Jordan. David Hogan, a well-known music video director was willing to do the not-so-awful job.

The filming was during the first Persian Gulf war and the King of Jordan turned out to be very helpful to the the American director and his crew. For instance, they could borrow a military helicopter! A large part of the video was smoothly filmed with help of this huge chopper. However, not everything went well: Andrew is scared of horses, the first day it was snowing in the dessert(!), and the camels were a pain to work with! Hogan almost had to cut all the camels out the scenes. The animals definitely didn’t appreciate the cameras and never wanted to do what Hogan planned. One of the Bedouin men suggested they should dress up the camera with cloaks, so it looked like a person. It was a hit.

The local people were polite and helped cast & crew, says Hogan: Several of the elder Bedouins even had experience working in front of the camera on Lawrence of Arabia. But that only the men could be on camera was something Hogan didn’t know: “In their society it’s impolite to say no, which is a blessing and curse, when it comes to production. Everything they promised was delivered, but when I requested three women in traditional clothing (covered in burqas) my bodyguard told me yes, when the answer was absolutely no. Photographing Arab women is strictly prohibited!�

Smoking joints in Petra, horse racing with Bedouins during sunrise in the dessert - Hogan has good memories filming here. Also, Patricia considers Petra as her favorite �The Sisters of Mercy�-memory. And for me? For me it is a great memory too: it was the first Sisters of Mercy song that I heard - the combination of a bombastic song and the impressive video made me an instant fan.
http://nowthisisgothic.tumblr.com/post/96361350572

F.O.System is clearly influenced by Postpunk bands from the '80s. Which ones for example? How did you know of these bands? (magazines, vinyls, tapes, musicvideo, fanzines?)
Amongst others, New Model Army, Siouxie and the Banshees, Christian Death, The Cult, Killing Joke, Sisters of Mercy, The m*****n influenced us. We got to know these bands by tapes and music magazines sent by friends, mostly. Even in those times, one or two small underground shops carried some of these releases under the counter.

Also, on promotion photos I see the bandmembers wearing pointy boots and bandshirts of postpunk bands - where did you get those back then? (was this before or after the fall of Sovjet Russia?)
This happened before the fall of the Soviet Union and before the wall came down, and those clothes and accessories were not available here then. Once a year, we were allowed to travel to the West and we could buy these items for ourselves and our friends. Even those spendings were limited, as we were only allowed to bring a certain amout (50 USD per person those days) of Western items to the country.