(no subject)
bauhaus:
I wasn't expecting it, but among dresden dolls, nin and bauhaus, the last's show was the most enjoyable.
The night did not start that way. The theater is in the heart of Times Square, and I had to brave the throngs of tourists there before finding the entrance. I often felt like covering my face, the clausterphobia was so bad.
The theater itself was a nice space. Really nice for a rock show. But where were all the goths? There was a smattering of velvet dresses and corsets but for the most part, the crowd was just ... old. And it made me feel old as well. Two college students in front of me asked if I could buy beers for them (as they aparently didn't have fake ID, or whetever the heck else NYC college students do to get served), and they asked nicely enough, so I did.
This helped, as it gave me people to talk to. People, moreover, who looked like they belonged at a show rather than an I love the 80's high-shool reunion party.
The bass was thunderous as the band came on. By the second song I was jumping up and down, by the third I had lost all self consiousness of being at a revival show (Daniel Ash was standing on the Amps playing sax, sillhouetted by the lights), and by about the seventh I felt like I was back in '88 seeing love & rockets as a kid. Peter Murphey has a bald spot, but his voice is spot-on.
The big difference between love & rockets '88 and tonight was that l&r was the 1st show i'd ever slam-danced at, whereas tonight an awful number of people were just standing still. On the floor, 10 rows back mind you, just where the pit should have been.
What I remember from seeing shows as a kid is that the crowd would be dancing, and people would be bumping into you even if you weren't in the pit. I would have expected at least that level of energy, but no. Butt-twitch and sway were as far as it went, for the most part. The college women in front of me, bless their hearts, we moving around, and off to the left a tall East-asian guy was jumping up and down, but right in front of us was a huge guy with frosted Rod Stewart hair, wearing a jean jacket embroidered with a US flag, and he didn't move at all for the first 2/3 of the show.
I know I bitch a lot about the lack of crowd participation at shows. Big NIN was pretty good in the seats (and real good on the floor), and little nin was bloody amazing since it was all floor. I expected some of that crowd to show at Bauhaus, and I definitely expected the Albion crowd to be there, but it seems bauhaus has gone the way of the Stones and Zep revivals. It pisses me off, because it shows me up for being a 35 year old listening to the music of an 18 year old.
Should I suck it up and start going to jazz clubs instead? Because if I and the rest of these hosers did, then David J could have sold out the theatre on his own, playing his solo stuff, and the crowd energy would have matched the music's energy. But so long as we Gen-Xers insist on holding on to aged music, we're stuck in these incongrous and often ignonimous gigs where music that used to be raw and emotionally dangerous gets spoon-fed to a bunch of people that don't feel it anymore.
Rock really is fucking dead for us. Rock is about youth and rebellion, and let's face it, we are the establishment now. We are the ones who drive the SUV's and vote for people who drive SUV's. We don't riot when the government lies to us and goes to war. Yeah, we might complain about it, or even march in the street about it once or twice, but when it comes down to it, we want our paychecks to keep coming, and so we really can't afford to shake things up too much. It's the paycheck, after all, that allows us to play the sex pistols on the CD changer of our SUV, while we drink mochachinos on the way to the bauhaus concert.
Brett Easton Ellis got it right in American Psycho. The relationship that we now have to rock music is the same that the characters in that novel had to U2 and Huey Lewis. It's so fucking empty that it takes a serial killer to liven things up for us.
So it was a really good show, but fuck bauhaus. They, as a contemporary group, are irrelevant. Let them live on through vinyl, cd, and memory. Bring-on the next David J album.
Who's next? While I'm told they still do *really* good shows, I think I can bring myself to pass on seeing the cure. Peter Gabriel I would see. Aside from that, I'd rather buy 3 cds than shell out $65 to get reminded how old I've become! Cuz that just makes me feel sad. Sad for what has died in me.
I'll end on an up-note. In retrospect, I've all the more respect for Trent Reznor. 'Cuz he's managed to stay relevant, musically and emotionally. And the motherfucker has the energy of all of bauhaus combined.
I wasn't expecting it, but among dresden dolls, nin and bauhaus, the last's show was the most enjoyable.
The night did not start that way. The theater is in the heart of Times Square, and I had to brave the throngs of tourists there before finding the entrance. I often felt like covering my face, the clausterphobia was so bad.
The theater itself was a nice space. Really nice for a rock show. But where were all the goths? There was a smattering of velvet dresses and corsets but for the most part, the crowd was just ... old. And it made me feel old as well. Two college students in front of me asked if I could buy beers for them (as they aparently didn't have fake ID, or whetever the heck else NYC college students do to get served), and they asked nicely enough, so I did.
This helped, as it gave me people to talk to. People, moreover, who looked like they belonged at a show rather than an I love the 80's high-shool reunion party.
The bass was thunderous as the band came on. By the second song I was jumping up and down, by the third I had lost all self consiousness of being at a revival show (Daniel Ash was standing on the Amps playing sax, sillhouetted by the lights), and by about the seventh I felt like I was back in '88 seeing love & rockets as a kid. Peter Murphey has a bald spot, but his voice is spot-on.
The big difference between love & rockets '88 and tonight was that l&r was the 1st show i'd ever slam-danced at, whereas tonight an awful number of people were just standing still. On the floor, 10 rows back mind you, just where the pit should have been.
What I remember from seeing shows as a kid is that the crowd would be dancing, and people would be bumping into you even if you weren't in the pit. I would have expected at least that level of energy, but no. Butt-twitch and sway were as far as it went, for the most part. The college women in front of me, bless their hearts, we moving around, and off to the left a tall East-asian guy was jumping up and down, but right in front of us was a huge guy with frosted Rod Stewart hair, wearing a jean jacket embroidered with a US flag, and he didn't move at all for the first 2/3 of the show.
I know I bitch a lot about the lack of crowd participation at shows. Big NIN was pretty good in the seats (and real good on the floor), and little nin was bloody amazing since it was all floor. I expected some of that crowd to show at Bauhaus, and I definitely expected the Albion crowd to be there, but it seems bauhaus has gone the way of the Stones and Zep revivals. It pisses me off, because it shows me up for being a 35 year old listening to the music of an 18 year old.
Should I suck it up and start going to jazz clubs instead? Because if I and the rest of these hosers did, then David J could have sold out the theatre on his own, playing his solo stuff, and the crowd energy would have matched the music's energy. But so long as we Gen-Xers insist on holding on to aged music, we're stuck in these incongrous and often ignonimous gigs where music that used to be raw and emotionally dangerous gets spoon-fed to a bunch of people that don't feel it anymore.
Rock really is fucking dead for us. Rock is about youth and rebellion, and let's face it, we are the establishment now. We are the ones who drive the SUV's and vote for people who drive SUV's. We don't riot when the government lies to us and goes to war. Yeah, we might complain about it, or even march in the street about it once or twice, but when it comes down to it, we want our paychecks to keep coming, and so we really can't afford to shake things up too much. It's the paycheck, after all, that allows us to play the sex pistols on the CD changer of our SUV, while we drink mochachinos on the way to the bauhaus concert.
Brett Easton Ellis got it right in American Psycho. The relationship that we now have to rock music is the same that the characters in that novel had to U2 and Huey Lewis. It's so fucking empty that it takes a serial killer to liven things up for us.
So it was a really good show, but fuck bauhaus. They, as a contemporary group, are irrelevant. Let them live on through vinyl, cd, and memory. Bring-on the next David J album.
Who's next? While I'm told they still do *really* good shows, I think I can bring myself to pass on seeing the cure. Peter Gabriel I would see. Aside from that, I'd rather buy 3 cds than shell out $65 to get reminded how old I've become! Cuz that just makes me feel sad. Sad for what has died in me.
I'll end on an up-note. In retrospect, I've all the more respect for Trent Reznor. 'Cuz he's managed to stay relevant, musically and emotionally. And the motherfucker has the energy of all of bauhaus combined.