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Out of the blue I received a pair of tickets to see Mr. Peter Murphy in Milwaukee. I’ve seen him on a number of different tours, going back to 1995. I’ve seen a pop tour, a rock tour, an acoustic tour, a turkish-ethnic tour…and now he’s back doing a kind of rock thing again.
It gives me hope, though - the guy’s in his early 50’s and he can still just bring it onstage. His voice sounds as good as ever, he’s still bounding about the stage like a 19-year old, and he’s still doing his crazy bendy dances onstage. Okay, it looks a little weird to have a 52-year-old skipping around a stage to a Bauhaus song, but aside from that, he still has an enviable amount of stage energy and presence. His backing band seemed to be roughly half his age, too.
He also did possibly the best cover a Joy Division song I’ve heard.
Sadly, the show was not particularly well-attended. The venue did a fairly piss-poor job of promoting the show, which was sad. Still, it was also nice that even given the low attendance he didn’t just phone it in.
I admit I haven’t been the rabid Peter Murphy fanboy I was back in the mid 90’s, but I still have a healthy respect for the dude, and damn can he perform.