Artist: Bauhaus
Title: She's In Parties
Format: 7" Single
Label: Beggars Banquet
Catalogue Number: BEG 91
Year of Release: 1983
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Tracklisting
A She's In Parties (3:45)
B Departure (4:49)
Returning to the movies for inspiration, She's In Parties is a song, on one level, about Marilyn Monroe. Another interpretation would have that it is more widely about the general fakery of everyday life, and our projections of false images to the world. Yet another would be that it's pretty bog-standard 80s goth single, from a band who seem, ironically, to have had the life blood sucked out of them.
Bass line isn't bad though.
The B-side is much, much better. Taken from a Peel Session recorded in the previous year, the bass line is once more the main feature, a simple four-note walking-bass for the most part, with light percussive taps the only other rhythm. Guitars are minimal and heavily effected. A story that owes a lot to the work of Edgar Allan Poe is read over the top of this, but I'm not sure by which band member (Here is the full story on waste.org). After the line "The latch became a fingertip, touching his own" the bass plays an amusing flourish, then each note in the bassline is played twice, which propels the story on beautifully.
They reverse this effect towards the end of the track, where Pete Murphy shouts "Into the hills then!" to the tune of the bass flourish, and the bass itself goes back the slower walking pattern of the start, this time allowing space for overlaid vocals to bring the track to its conclusion. The final verse laying Pete's hammy half-singing with the flatly-spoken part, and a backing vocal chorus of "Dum-dum-dum-dum".
It sounds wonderfully overblown, even now, and I recommend it to anyone who is 13-15 years old, and likes to burn incense in their bedrooms, or anyone who wants to remember a time when they were. See also their Party of the First Part on the B-side to the Ziggy 12".
