undead undead undead
i discovered 120 minutes around 1988. up to that point my childhood/adolescence had been all about the headbanger's ball and metal edge's latest pin-up boys. then my cousin, god bless her, introduced me to the cure while RIP magazine was initiating my love affair with a short-lived mother love bone. i was hitting my musical puberty in a way i suppose.
through the magic of commercial radio, if you can believe it, i was introduced to love and rockets. not that god-awful (sorry, daniel) "so alive" nonsense that was all the rage in 1991 (or so)... but "no new tale to tell" - even at 11 i had an idea of how brilliant those first few lines about going against nature were. it was so weird, but i LOVED it... and when i saw the video weeks on, and then the bizzaro one for their cover of "ball of confusion..." a transition began.
a year or so later, i discovered what is still one of my favorite songs, "cuts you up." it's no matter that this is probably the only peter murphy song a lot of people know, it's still compellingly beautiful.
and never once in all those 3 years or so did i put it together in my young, naive little mind that these guys had anything to do with one another. until one night, late on a sunday, up way past my bedtime (oh to be 13 and defiant again) there appeared something even more strange to me than even the strangest cure video. "she's in parties" - incredible to me not only because of its black-and-white-and-violet creepiness, but who was this guy with black hair who looked like peter murphy and why were love and rockets hanging around in the background?
i had joined too late to see tag at the beginning and thus had no idea what i was witnessing, but i was so very intrigued (if not only by how much i suddenly noticed that daniel ash looks kinda like bono)... and so when the tag appeared at the end... it was such a revelation.
goth and metal travel in a lot of the same circles. occassionally the t-shirt ads in my heavy metal pin-up mags had bauhaus and skinny puppy shirts lined up right alongside the metallica and la guns ones. sometimes there would be a mention of the name in the "news briefs" featured in those same rags. i knew the name, and gathered its importance...
but it was PETER MURPHY AND LOVE & ROCKETS????? HOLY SHIT!!!!!!
(remember folks, i WAS 13 at the time)
the news almost made me cry...
fast forward to 1998. my (now ex) boyfriend is sitting across from me lamenting that he wants to go to this game demonstration, but his boss - the store owner - can't go because he's stuck going to this concert with his wife and he can't get out of it. after all, who's gonna take the ticket on such short notice and who the hell wants to see bauhaus anyway?
um... me.
seriously?
um... are you really having to ask me twice if i wanna see peter murphy?
right. let me call steve.
and hence, joshua got to go to his freakshow and i ... well, i guess i got to go to my own.
there followed the greatest concert experience of my life. i have continued to declare it so for the seven years since, in spite of radiohead at stone mountain and travis in scotland and any decemberists show which is the only show to come second in sheer theatricality... if you've seen or get a chance to see the "gotham" concert video bauhaus released in dec 99, you'll get the idea, but only the idea. the thrill of witnessing this - and as a bauhaus virgin no less - cannot be justified with any written word.
"dare" sung from inside a television... "boys" sung while peter changed his wardrobe onstage behind a purple curtain held by boys in pleather hot pants... what seemed like a 15-minute standstill before peter opened up the 15-foot wingspan on that cape, twirling about for "bela lugosi"... the serenade to the audience.
again, there's nothing i can write that will describe it with any accuracy.
but imagine my elation to learn... that they're reuniting again.
last february i had the surreal pleasure of driving mr. david (j) haskins about while a theatre in whose employ i was at the time produced a short play he'd penned. as i was the one who used to insist on peter murphy's mug as a desktop, it was figured i had earned this privilege/punishment (punishment only b/c i was nervous and starstruck as hell).
driving he and his wife (who i was in almost as much awe of as david himself - damn she's awesome) to the airport on a rainy sunday in d's old school honda with its shotty wipers, i finally got up the hoohas to talk shop with him. (hi heidi. nice to meet you i am david. - yes. yes you are.) he'd told me there was probably not much in the way of reunion touring in the future of love and rockets (and bauhaus by association) as daniel was having some serious surgery done - on his leg if i recall correctly - undo some damage inflicted by a motorcycle mishap.
now imagine my elation again. this time rising from a disappointment i had been settled upon, now lifted.
and the hope that peter will sing suspended from the rafters like at coachella.
through the magic of commercial radio, if you can believe it, i was introduced to love and rockets. not that god-awful (sorry, daniel) "so alive" nonsense that was all the rage in 1991 (or so)... but "no new tale to tell" - even at 11 i had an idea of how brilliant those first few lines about going against nature were. it was so weird, but i LOVED it... and when i saw the video weeks on, and then the bizzaro one for their cover of "ball of confusion..." a transition began.
a year or so later, i discovered what is still one of my favorite songs, "cuts you up." it's no matter that this is probably the only peter murphy song a lot of people know, it's still compellingly beautiful.
and never once in all those 3 years or so did i put it together in my young, naive little mind that these guys had anything to do with one another. until one night, late on a sunday, up way past my bedtime (oh to be 13 and defiant again) there appeared something even more strange to me than even the strangest cure video. "she's in parties" - incredible to me not only because of its black-and-white-and-violet creepiness, but who was this guy with black hair who looked like peter murphy and why were love and rockets hanging around in the background?
i had joined too late to see tag at the beginning and thus had no idea what i was witnessing, but i was so very intrigued (if not only by how much i suddenly noticed that daniel ash looks kinda like bono)... and so when the tag appeared at the end... it was such a revelation.
goth and metal travel in a lot of the same circles. occassionally the t-shirt ads in my heavy metal pin-up mags had bauhaus and skinny puppy shirts lined up right alongside the metallica and la guns ones. sometimes there would be a mention of the name in the "news briefs" featured in those same rags. i knew the name, and gathered its importance...
but it was PETER MURPHY AND LOVE & ROCKETS????? HOLY SHIT!!!!!!
(remember folks, i WAS 13 at the time)
the news almost made me cry...
fast forward to 1998. my (now ex) boyfriend is sitting across from me lamenting that he wants to go to this game demonstration, but his boss - the store owner - can't go because he's stuck going to this concert with his wife and he can't get out of it. after all, who's gonna take the ticket on such short notice and who the hell wants to see bauhaus anyway?
um... me.
seriously?
um... are you really having to ask me twice if i wanna see peter murphy?
right. let me call steve.
and hence, joshua got to go to his freakshow and i ... well, i guess i got to go to my own.
there followed the greatest concert experience of my life. i have continued to declare it so for the seven years since, in spite of radiohead at stone mountain and travis in scotland and any decemberists show which is the only show to come second in sheer theatricality... if you've seen or get a chance to see the "gotham" concert video bauhaus released in dec 99, you'll get the idea, but only the idea. the thrill of witnessing this - and as a bauhaus virgin no less - cannot be justified with any written word.
"dare" sung from inside a television... "boys" sung while peter changed his wardrobe onstage behind a purple curtain held by boys in pleather hot pants... what seemed like a 15-minute standstill before peter opened up the 15-foot wingspan on that cape, twirling about for "bela lugosi"... the serenade to the audience.
again, there's nothing i can write that will describe it with any accuracy.
but imagine my elation to learn... that they're reuniting again.
last february i had the surreal pleasure of driving mr. david (j) haskins about while a theatre in whose employ i was at the time produced a short play he'd penned. as i was the one who used to insist on peter murphy's mug as a desktop, it was figured i had earned this privilege/punishment (punishment only b/c i was nervous and starstruck as hell).
driving he and his wife (who i was in almost as much awe of as david himself - damn she's awesome) to the airport on a rainy sunday in d's old school honda with its shotty wipers, i finally got up the hoohas to talk shop with him. (hi heidi. nice to meet you i am david. - yes. yes you are.) he'd told me there was probably not much in the way of reunion touring in the future of love and rockets (and bauhaus by association) as daniel was having some serious surgery done - on his leg if i recall correctly - undo some damage inflicted by a motorcycle mishap.
now imagine my elation again. this time rising from a disappointment i had been settled upon, now lifted.
and the hope that peter will sing suspended from the rafters like at coachella.
posted by trixievw at 10:30 AM
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