The gothfather cometh

I'm a lot more blasé than I used to be about live shows. I'm no longer the wide-eyed music virgin I was in high school. Just because someone I kind of like comes to town doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to disrupt my busy schedule to go see them. However, this past weekend someone came to town with that rare, time-stopping, drop-your-shit, influence.

For the past few years, ever since I've really picked up post-punk and goth music, I've always had a top three. Joy Division, Gang of Four, and Bauhaus. Joy Division is defunct now for obvious reasons, GoF always seems to pass over Houston, and Bauhaus broke up again two years ago. I never thought I'd be able to see any member from any of them. Luckily, in a strangely unheralded way, Bauhaus front man Peter Murphy rolled into Numbers just in time for me to catch him.

Murphy started the show with his solo song "low room", launched into some new material of varying quality including "velocity bird", and even played a some Bauhaus ("Stigmata Martyr" and "Silent Hedges"). The man looked pretty good for his age. He was balding a bit and had a drawn-looking face but was immediately recognizable. He had boundless energy and never once lost his composure or voice. Murphy was so vivacious he even made out with a few young women!

The rest of the show was devoted to some well-executed solo numbers and even a cover of "hurt". The conclusion was my favorite part though. Murphy ended with "Too Much 21st Century" a Bauhaus song off the band's very last album, a time when they didn't tour too extensively. He killed it.

Reflecting on the days when Goths were Goths: Bauhaus!

Last year, I started investigating lots of influential post-punk bands after falling in love with Joy Division. Post-punk music led me into early goth bands like The Fall and the Birthday Party. I learned that goth, in its truest definition, has nothing to do with the little Hot Topic wearing, attention-seeking posers who have succeeded in hi-jacking the word over the past ten years. Early goth, true goth, is dark, dancy, and provokes melancholy, contemplation, and restraint.

The vocals are dramatic and frequently tinged with a bowie-esque British accent. The intensity of goth vocals often points to an almost operatic style of music; good goth bands are dramatic without being totally overboard sentimental. A singer who paved the way for the stylings of many goth/dark post-punk bands that followed was James Murphy of Bauhaus fame. Murphy's vocals are beautiful, warbling, staccato cries of pain and mourning that differ greatly from genre pioneer Ian Curtis whose voice was a crooning baritone. Curtis idolized Jim Morrison of the Doors and this probably inspired the low booming voice he used while singing, which is strangely very different from his high British speaking voice. The vocals of James Murphy are high and shrill but have the potential to be just as grave and jarring as Curtis'.

Bauhaus carried on and expanded on the Joy Division tradition of simple but infectious beats the rely on repetitive and great-sounding drum and bass patterns which ultimately carry the guitar part in most songs (think of Shadowplay by Joy Division, very drum and bass driven). At times the guitar is only a means of tying together the drums and bass like in the Bauhaus song "Muscle in Plastic" where the guitar is simply used for ambient clicking noises and offbeats. Of course there are some guitar driven songs like "All We ever wanted was Everything" but they're outnumbered by the snappier songs that turn darkness into danciness and through a controlled punk sound (hence post-punk).

Albums I recommend (in no particular order):
-Bela Lugosi's Dead
-Mask
-The Sky's Gone Out
-In the Flat Field