Goodbye Horses

Goodbye Horses by Q Lazarus, famous to most from either the film Silence of the Lambs or Clerks, was omnipresent in my younger years going out at night. Be it a goth/industrial party like West Queen West’s DARKRAVE series or a late night come-down classic at a more indie/brit spun night, that tune would creep into your ears and by the 2nd bar of the drum intro (with that recognizable slapback reverb on the snare drum) you instantly knew what was about to happen.

 A seriously interesting backstory supports the tune if you’re in the know (give it a google!). It's one of those rare tracks that feels beloved by all, the punk kids, the disco kids, the alt kids. Similar to maybe a group like ESG or artists in the vein of Arthur Russell, it's familiar enough to the general populous but beloved by a wide sample of muso loving weirdos. 

Now, if you were one of those DJs playing this tune out, you had options. You could burn it onto a CD and play it on the club/venue's CDJ units. You could play it off your laptop. When I was young, CDJ players did not accept USB keys to read files like they do now, so that wasn't possible then, but it certainly is now. But what if you wanted to play this out on vinyl. Let's say 99% of the rest of your night is spun on vinyl, you like the feel and the tactile-ness of it all. You're certain "this is what dj'ing is". I'm not here to argue.

There was a trick to having this track on vinyl. There's one 7" copy of the record available on online retailer and arguably the best and most well known collector to collector or shop to collector outlet Discogs.com, right now listed at $328 CAD + shipping. 

If you want the 12" single with the extended 6 minute version, well you're in luck because there's actually TWO copies available on the website right now but the cheapest starts at $1226.15 CAD.  Wild. 

So here's the trick that allowed me to pick up a slab of wax with this tune on it to play out, and a second copy for less than $5 total. 

Prior to using the track in Silence of the Lambs, director Jonathan Demme had used it in a previous film, Married to the Mob. Not only does this soundtrack contain Goodbye Horses, it also has some great cuts from Sinéad, New Order and Brian Eno. And for the longest time this comp was in every sub $5 bin you could find in a record shop. 

Sometime in the late aughts, with the popularization of Discogs where even the older shops who may have never been online were now using it to keep updated on what records were selling for, the cost of this compilation spiked above $10. A quick search on Discogs as of the day of typing this shows them even more expensive there, nearing $30 (for a compilation from a forgotten film from the late 80s!) as I assume this trend will only continue with every sync-license and commercial placement this song continues to acquire on top of young people discovering it from their favourite bands taking a stab at cover versions. It's popularity remains, through my youth into adulthood and whatever stage I'm at now. 

When I picked up this beautiful hand-painted paint by number piece a few years ago, the song started looping in my head. That magic sounding vocal. I wondered if I'd ever catch myself out dancing to Goodbye Horses again. Was that period of my life just over?  

Late last year I caught wind of a "goth night" happening at the local no-cover, usually punk bands playing watering hole the Jimmy Jazz. It was long after midnight and I was getting a bit sleepy, but out of the corner of my ear, I heard that drum-beat fading in, with the snare and I smiled so big, like seeing an old long lost friend again.