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| Life Less Lived: The Gothic Box | 
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| Artist: Various Artists
Label: Rhino / Wea
Category: Music
List Price: $64.98
Buy New: $38.70
You Save: $26.28 (40%)
New (36) Used (14) from $38.70
Avg. Customer Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 57292
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 4
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 11 x 7.7 x 1.1
MPN: 73374
UPC: 081227337421
EAN: 0081227337421
ASIN: B000GIWS4M
Release Date: September 19, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New sealed product. Immediate shipment
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| Customer Reviews:
 AFI..??? October 25, 2006
6 out of 12 found this review helpful
Well, for most of the old schoolers reading these reviews, I tend to think most of us will have all if not most of these songs anyway. For the newbies, I would recommend it, god knows the newbies need some guidance on what is good Gothic music and what is not(coughing while muttering the name,AFI..AFI.) So is it worth the 50 or 60 dollars? Depends, If you out there have Limewire or another way of downloading some of these artists first, then try that before you buy this. If not look for it cheaper. It has a good lineup, but, like I said before..the old schoolers need not apply...and just because some band does a remake of the Cure song, "The Hanging Garden"..does not mean they deserve to be on a Gothic comp!!(AFI)...It is nice to see Charlotte Sometimes on a comp. My fav Cure song!
 wonderful set September 23, 2006
5 out of 9 found this review helpful
Rhino has really pulled out the stops with this release. The packaging is quirkily cool, and they have gone above and beyond with the overall presentation. People are naturally going to argue about the track list - but that's the way things go with compilations like these. "A Life Less Lived" is probably the best primer for gothic rock - REAL gothic rock - that we are likely to see. The DVD of music videos is a nice touch as well.
Annoying. November 18, 2006
5 out of 33 found this review helpful
Nothing annoys me more than articles written by smug music critics who don't fact-check and apparently don't care. Yes, I am talking about the know-it-all liner notes in this product, in particular those pertaining to Christian Death. Anyone knows that the original lineup wrote one, ONE, album together - "only theatre of pain." This joker claims that the original lineup wrote three albums together and THEN R. brought in Valor and crew. Wrong. And this person claims to have written 80+ books on rock, including biographies on the Cure and Joy Division. Let's hope he paid more attention to detail in those.
While we're at it, we'll move on to the musickal selection.
Why are the following bands on this compilation?
1) THROBBING GRISTLE. Industrial, not goth.
2) Ministry. Crap, not goth.
3) The Cult. Umm...
4) Cocteau Twins. So. Totally. Not. Goth.
Well, there's more, but I've wasted enough time already.
This was given to me as a gift. I wouldn't have reviewed it at all had the liner notes not made me furious. Don't waste your money. L-a-m-e.
 Needs more music December 4, 2006
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Three stars because I mostly enjoyed what was on here - and found more than a few tracks that I never heard before and enjoyed a lot - but not five stars because there's not nearly enough music.
I would have much preferred a fourth disc of music to a DVD. And the DVD only has twelve videos - maybe an hour long, if that. A DVD can easly hold, what? 2 1/2 to 3 hours of material? There's a LOT of wasted space there.
The first two discs are good. (I don't understand the need to include an Ian Astbury (Southern Death Cult, Death Cult, The Cult) track on each of the three discs, but other than that, good stuff.) Kudos for NOT including "Bela Lugosi's Dead", which we've all heard waaaaay too many times.
This set was worth it for me because of bands and songs I had never heard before. Revelations for me were Nick Cave and The Birthday Party, Alien Sex fiend, The Mission UK, The Creatures, The Cranes, Fields of the Nephilim, and (surprisingly for me) Echo and the Bunnymen. These bands are probably old news for you long-time Goths out there (I can hear you snickering!!) , but I didn't get out much back then. Poor me.
I bought this expecting to find bands and songs I hadn't heard before, and the third disc had too much familiar (and as many here have pointed out, arguably non-gothic) material. The Misfits I've listened to since high school (too long ago). Ministry and Skinny Puppy, I got those when they came out.
And the only bum tracks for me were on the third disc - The Virgin Prunes I didn't like at all and Throbbing Gristle is just completely annoying. So the third disc was, for me, largely useless.
If you're a brand new Goth, this is a good place to start in your quest to get into some new/old music. (If you are an old hoary Goth, you're giggling into the back of your hand at the very idea of this box set, so what are you reading my review for, anyway?)
If there had been a fourth CD instead of a DVD, I'd have given this four or even five stars.
Gothic 101 January 17, 2007
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I really love this box set. I grew up in the age of goth was around for it's birth. Of course at the time I never considered myself a goth in anyway and I wouldn't have looked the part either. But the music is another thing altogether and I truly loved the music that became known as GOTH. This is great example of some great songs from the goth age and well represented across the genre and through time. Although I owned most of these songs already, either on CD or Vinyl, there were some gems in the mix that I didn't have. I also liked the DVD, which features some videos for songs that didn't make it onto the music CD's themselves. My friends and I had a great laugh as well when we read the instructions on how to dance goth. As funny as it read, it was dead on with my memory of how "goths" danced at the clubs I visited in my youth and maybe, just maybe, it rubbed off on how I danced at the time as well. All in all a Life Less Lived is a great box set for those who love goth or for those who wish to get a definitive initiation into the goth music genre.
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