Golgotha
"# 1 Female Vocalist: Gitane Demone"
Spring 1998
by: John Ellenberger

John: Are you working on anything new at the moment?

Gitane: I am working on my first actual solo debut album. I am just getting my band together now.

John: Is this album going to feature any musicians that you have worked with in the past?

Gitane: Yes. David Glass is going to be doing the drumming and he’s going to be hitting real drums, not electric ones for a change. I think he’s got such a great drum sound. I am also working with, did you know about this band Pompeii 99?

John: Yes I have.

Gitane: Well, since I have been here, Kram who’s real name is Mark Dotten…I just met with him yesterday and it’s like for me the feeling is that you obviously have got to be able to play, at least basically but with the basic whatever you can do it’s the feeling that goes into it. When we were in Pompeii 99 we were all kind of starting out a bit except for maybe Valor, I don’t know. David has been playing for a while. Mark has been playing bass all these years and when I thought of him I thought of the passion. I have asked him to play bass with me and he has agreed to. He’s such a wonderful bass player. Also Paris from EXP and his other project Penal Colony is going to be doing keyboards. I don’t have a guitarist yet. These are (laughing) all really extreme personalities, the four of us so I am really looking forward to it and there are like twelve songs coming out.

John: Were you introduced to music at a very early age?

Gitane: Yes. There was always music around. In fact, my mother was singing in musicals and I would hang around backstage with her. They just seemed to enormous and now I realize that they must have been little (laughing), little small town productions. They just seemed so enormous when you are three years old. My mother played piano and everybody played an instrument except for me. I just really hated lessons. I did take some singing lessons and I went into a talent show at school when I was six years old and I actually won the whole contest (laughing) for singing. I didn’t know what I was doing.

John: Can you remember the song that you performed?

Gitane: I sang a song called… I think it was called “I’m Going to Write a Letter to Daddy”. My mother played piano and I was very young (laughing). It was great! Three years later, I tried doing it and I lost all my nerve and I just collapsed on stage. That was like the years from six to ten and with all of the changes going on I just thought “Well, I’m not going to sing anymore” and I didn’t really do anything with it until years and years later.

John: You are such an amazing, powerful vocalist. How do you find the ability to harness that energy and power?

Gitane: Well, maybe there are a few things I could mention. That’s a really interesting question. The role models, my heroines and the people that I look up to, I guess they are dead now. They were great at doing that so I learned from listening to them and practicing to them and trying to figure it out myself. What I found out is it takes the ability to know what you want and to practice. I have been practicing ever since I decided to become a singer. I have been practicing and I have been around for a while now so that’s like fifteen years of practice. I have finally gotten to that point where I don’t have to but I feel like I don’t then I’m going to miss out on learning something new.

John: Was it a difficult decision for you to leave Christian Death?

Gitane: Well, there were a lot of difficulties. Musically, I liked what we were doing but for me it got, it was lessening towards the end of it. Some of the pieces Valor did, they were interesting, but they were not. I don’t know. I was just ready to do my own thing. I parted on a pretty amazingly difficult note. It had to do with personal problems and band politics also. It was just time. I am really, really glad that I did. I’ve never regretted it. It has been hard but I never regretted it.

John: There have been musicians, some of whom you have worked with in the past, that have talked about a certain period in their life that they went through that they call their dark period where they kind of lost what they felt was the right way and there were certain experiences that turned them into a more positive direction. Can you relate to this?

Gitane: When I was a teenager I got really interested in Black Magic and I started trying all of them at once including Satanism, Voodoo-ism, an Witchcraft, everything. I was experimenting with them and I don’t know. My life went completely down a hell hole. I even had the physical experience of being lifted off my feet and thrown on my back by an unseen force and this voice said, “This is not for you”. I went into this hysterical sobbing thing and I realized that nothing in my life was working out well. That was really bizarre. That happened to me when I was about fourteen or fifteen. Aside from that, that was kind of a material darkness because it was things that I hadn’t divorced myself from. This continued for a period of years and then last year I started to really make some conscious changes in myself. I really wanted to make these changes and not go back to certain patterns that weren’t really good for me. Now I am on this new kick (laughing) which is honoring the sacredness of thy Self. So for me, this is the highest point in my life.

John: Do you feel that you have accomplished most of the goals that you have set out for yourself as a musician?

Gitane: No, no. I feel like I have just begun.

John: What else would you like to accomplish?

Gitane: Some kind of anarchistic kind of opera. I would like to do a lot of experimental music.

John: When you have passed on from this Earth what mark would you like to have left behind?

Gitane: I would like the people who actually knew me or the few people that knew my work to get some emotional support from it , to feel my connection.