Anne Rice, the author of horror classics like Interview With The Vampire and the Witching Hour, turns 71 today. She's a talented and complicated lady that all goths owe a debt to for recreating the vampire as a lonely, Miltonian figure that was at home in seats of elegance or on a rock and roll stage as he was sipping blood from a neck wound. Without her, I doubt we ever would have had a character like Bill Compton from True Blood.
Of course, without her we also probably never would've had Edward Cullen, but let's cut her some slack on that. Without Faith No More there never could have been Limp Bizkit; it doesn't mean we wish Faith No More had never existed.
We lost her for a while there, as she discovered or rediscovered a deep attachment to Christianity and the life of Jesus, something she chronicled in two novels that are honestly pretty damned good. In the end she left her Roman Catholic faith because of the Church's official stance on gay rights. Now she's back to putting out great, fur-crackling books like the Wolf Gift, as well as being a very prominent Facebook personality after the publicity of her shift in views brought her.
That's all well and good, but let's keep this train on the proper track. Anne, you've given me and a lot of other people some really great afternoons, and many more late nights, immersed within your modern goth tales. I still crack open Taltos and The Mummy regularly, and Wolf Gift proves you've lost none of your touch. This week I dedicate my playlist to your own bad self.
6. Bryan Ferry, "Slave to Love": Exit to Eden is, for my money, Rice's best erotic work. It's a wonderful taboo-blasting page-turner that will leave you questioning whether or not you've lived your sensual life quite to the fullest.
The movie... not so much. You can't cast Rosie O'Donnell in a BDSM story and expect any good to come of it. The soundtrack was pretty amazing, though, including a choice tune by Bryan Ferry.
5. The Damned, "The Dog": Man, you forget just how brilliant a band the Damned is. Strawberries was a troubled time for the group, with Paul Gray and Captain Sensible leaving the project not long after its release.
"The Dog" deals with one of Rice's best-known characters, the child vampire Claudia that is adopted by Louis and Lestat. Trapped forever in a child's body, her bloodlust is terrible to behold and she lives in envy of the womanly forms around her and in hatred of her physical weakness.
