I went to a Love and Rockets concert in 1986 at Seattle's Moore Theater. A band called Soundgarden opened for them. This was before Ben Sheppard replaced the slightly goofy Hiro Yamamoto on bass. The spirituality that burst from Kim Thayl and the sincere eclipse that was Chris Cornell's voice defined rock n roll for a 16 year old. They scorched the stage.
Then onto stage floated Daniel Ash, David J, and Kevin Hoskins. Minus Peter Murphy this is Bauhaus. There are few groups of individuals that have so many great songs in so many different formations: DoubleDare, In The Flat Field, She's in Parties, Bella Lugosi's Dead, Christian Says, Lions, Go, No New Tale to Tell, Kundalini Express, Life in Laralay, All in My Mind, So Alive, Deep Ocean, Vast Sea, I'll be Your Chauffeur... on and on into the night. Bauhaus, Love and Rockets, Tones on Tail (with Glenn Campling on slide bass), Peter Murphy solo, David J solo: the songwriting present in all these formations is more than what constitutes the root of the gothic genre. They didn't have to scream or curse to convey primal fear. They were gentlemen. The real roots of Peter Murphy and Daniel Ash's dark style actually comes less from Bowie dark glam and T-Rex art school power, and more from coffee houses in Istanbul under whispers of asalm-u-aleykum. Bram Stoker. Heroin laced fangs. 100 Years of Solitude. Love and Rockets took the Goth that was Bauhaus, planted it in a garden, and it grew into Zen.
The first time I heard Bauhaus was on a cassette tape that Scott Miller gave me on which was written: Bauhaus 1979-1983. Scott, Steve Bearg, and I had been hanging out all night at John Fugich's house out on the KP. John was the guitarist for our band Stationary Voices (with Steve Fisher, Kelly Kono, and John Barnett). I was dating John's goth sister Janel of whom pierced one of my ears. This was 1984. Van Halen had just come out with their album of the same name with the single Jump. Half of my friends still listened to Van Halen, Motley Crue and Iron Maiden. The other half listened to Bauhaus, The Cure, and Ministry. This is goth. I found myself liking the goth music better than Van Halen and the Crue. This was not the Van Halen I from 1978. Something had changed in Van Halen's lyrics and tone like they were bragging about something that was fluffy at best. My friend and neighbor John X. had first introduced me to David Bowie and the Violent Femmes a couple years before. It was such a weighty decision to change from KISW (rock) to KYYX (new wave). In hindsight, I so wish I had changed to KYYX much sooner. I feel like I missed so much. The lyrics of the bands they played like Bauhaus and the Cure were more cutting, self critical, cynical, questioning, like John Keats or W.B. Yeats (and Wilde, but he was with The Smiths and will be in a future review...). This type of music did something to a room. This was when I would sneak into Pacific Breeze, an 18 and up club in downtown Tacoma walking through the smoke of clove cigarettes in my Fluevog shoes and safety pinned pant legs. The material of these songs was Nosferatu in black and white film, A spy in a taxi cab, The Hunger with David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve. Gothic music was less of a questioning about sexuality and more of pushing the limit of whatever identity you were. This is Lord Byron flying under a cape sneering. This is Peter Murphy with mascara and Clockwork Orange eyelashes.
All this has to be understood to begin to understand what Love and Rockets are. The weight of Peter Murphy (one person) was equal to the weight of Love and Rockets (three people). But without the wonderfully oppressive Murphy onstage between Ash and J, Love and Rockets meshed into an arguably better fabric. The album they were touring in 1986 was Earth, Sun, Moon. This was No New Tale to Telland Mirror People. They also played all the songs from Express which was a more rocking album (with the slightly out of place Temptations cover: Ball of Confusion). As life went on, goth became: Skinny Puppy, Joy Division, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, and Siouxsie and the Banshees (actually the Cure came from Siouxsie). Goth bands did something with Fear. They made friends with it. They could walk down a dark hallway with Dracula and it was okay because they all had matching Crucifix ear-rings. Gag me with a spoon. Now we have the wonderful Marylin Manson and Rob Zombie. This type of fear is actually more comforting than the real fear that is portrayed in albums from the previous decade like The Wall by Pink Floyd. Much of the music, phrases, and visions from previous Floyd LPs with Sid Barrett came through in Bauhaus and Love and Rockets, but more like horror candy. Not like the real horrors of World War I, shell-shock, racism, and losing love. This is hip horror. Like David Lynch.
For the last two years I've been lucky enough to see David J. (bass player for Bauhaus/Love & Rockets, and singer-songwriter/guitarist for David J solo LPs) for a living room concert at the home of Matthew Counts (Hawthorne Stereo) in Seattle (David J pictured below). What a treat. This guy is a gentleman. He played lots of his solo material as well as songs he wrote for both Love & Rockets and Bauhaus. He even played a song by Miley Cyrus that pretty much sums up my whole experience from the first Bauhaus cassette tape I heard to the Love & Rockets show where Soundgarden opened to every vinyl LP of all of these artists that I have enjoyed over the years: [I Came In Like A] Wrecking Ball... -GHA
Alphaville -Forever Young
In December of 1985 Bill Bearg drove his brother Steve, Dave Pazourek, and me to Crystal Mountain to go skiing. Steve and Bill had Rossignol skis, and Dave and I rode K2s. We all wore Vuarnet sunglasses. The albums listened to while driving were: Scritti Politi, New Order, The Bronski Beat, The Violent Femmes, Tangerine Dream, and Forever Young by Alphaville. The simple classical music for dummies song structures of Alphaville became an obsession for me after hearing it for the first time on this drive. I can write songs like that. Alphaville is a German new wave band with 2 hits: Big in Japan and Forever Young. Big in Japan's opaque lyrics I now assume have something to do with European and American musicians touring Japan and perhaps making it bigger than they might have in their own countries, giving a nice kick start to their popularity. Like Cheap Trick. Or the Scorpions. Or Queen, Bon Jovi, Neil Sedaka, and The Osmonds. Forever Young, the 2nd hit from the album, is basically Pachelbel's Canon in D with a drum beat and ethereal lyrics. Forever Young was the first song I learned when I got a Casio CZ-1000 synthesizer from Gary Gonter at Bandstand Music in Tacoma. The keyboard solo is surprisingly similar to Eddie Van Halen's in Jump (played backwards). The song's sappiness was apparent as it played during most high school dances in the late '80s (like my band Stationary Voices did at Peninsula High School in 1986), but the song does have legs: JayZ covered it in 2016. This album in its entirety gave a blueprint of how far sound technology had come. I later got a Casio CZ-1 from Jack at Sluggo Music on 6th avenue in Tacoma and learned every song on the album. Steve Baerg, who had a Yamaha DX-7, and I started a dual synthesizer band called The Twigs (oddly no one asked us to play in public). The synthesizers and drum machines used in this album were not only cool, but they were ones you could buy yourself and make similar music: Roland Juno 106, Akai AX-60, Korg Wavestation, Oberheim OB-XA, Roland TR-505 and TR-808, etc. These keyboards now carry the same type of nostalgia as an original Intellivision or Nintendo game. You can store their entire sound banks on a single pen drive, making the shells antiquated. There are 2 songs on this album, To Germany with Love and Fallen Angel that are the hidden gems of this album. These are keyboard compositions that flow seamlessly into new age thought (easily by-passing the theme of love that most people attribute to them). This album is Taoism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Scientology, Utopianism, all rolled into a few difficult, yet heavenly moments on the dance floor with Napoleon Dynamite.
Prefab Sprout -Steve McQueen/Two Wheels Good
The original title of Prefab Sprout's 2nd album was Steve McQueen as it was released in the UK in 1985. For the U.S. release, the Steve McQueen estate threatened to sue, thus the title was changed to Two Wheels Good. In 1986 my friend Casey gave me a cassette tape with Vitamin Z on one side and Prefab Sprout on the other. I still have this cassette, but the metal spacer that kept the tape against the playback head has been replaced so many times it sounds garbled. From 1986 to 1999 the only copy of this album I had was this mediocre recording. In '99 I did get a copy of Two Wheels Good on CD. It was not until I got Two Wheels Good on vinyl in 2003 (an original pressing purchased at Everyday Records in Seattle) that I began to remember the importance of source, pressing, and generation. I shouldn't use the word remember, because I didn't know about those things, but I did know that there was something special about that tape and where it came from. The tape I had gotten from Casey had been recorded from vinyl likely on a fairly good turntable. So the tape I'd listened to/rewound over and over was a 2nd generation, but from a pretty good source. The pressing of that particular album I'll never know as to the run or quality, etc. The CD that I'd purchased in 1999 was good, clean, no scratches, but for some reason didn't make me want to play it over and over again like the tape. Probably a combination of an okay quality CD and a bad quality CD player. Listening to the first vinyl copy that I purchased on increasingly better quality turntables, reminded me why this album is so special. This Thomas Dolby produced album takes the best of Gershwin, the best of Sinatra, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ry Cooder, and Elvis Costello as seen through the lens of falling autumn leaves on a crisp morning. Is that too much? I don't think so. This LP shivers slanted jazz guitar chords, female harmonies, and suggestive cutting lyrics. Their U.S. radio hit When Love Breaks Down, unlike many one hit wonders from the 80s like Nena and Haircut 100, weaves seamlessly into the rest of the album resulting in one organic concept. These days, I buy this LP whenever I see it. I usually have about 20 copies under both titles depending on how many I give to friends. Not everyone will fall in love with this album at first. It's an investment in time meditating with Paddy McAloon (Prefab Sprout singer/songwriter/guitarist) just like it's an investment reading Ulysses by James Joyce. The rewards come not in finishing it, but in continuing to mine it for the rest of your life. -GHA
Nirvana -Nevermind
In 1989 I smoked a joint behind the Ellensburg Public Library with Kurt Cobain and a couple other scragglers. Cobain had just played with his band Nirvana in the conference room as the "headliner" after local bands King Krab and Tree House. There were about 20 people in the audience. The Nirvana show itself was fairly unremarkable other than being heavy, loud and kind of scary. Not much was visible onstage except hair (Cobain's was down to his knees) and guitars. At that time there were 2 guitarists and a bassist in front of the drum set. The drums were punctual, but this was before Dave Grohl, so the sheer attack and aggression was not quite there yet. The sound of Cobain's voice was that rare pureness behind most cliches: a primal scream. How it could be inserted into catchy Beatles-like pop structures remained unrevealed to me that evening. The only song I remember them playing was Negative Creep, and I certainly had never heard of Mudhoney so I understood neither the tone nor the reference. I didn't like the show much and went right home to get my head right by listening to Prefab Sprout on headphones. I do remember Cobain seemed quiet and pleasant. A couple years later Teen Spirit started playing on 107.7 The End between "retro" songs like Sex Dwarf by Soft Cell and Living on Video by Trans-X. That week I heard Cobain and Novaselic interviewed on The End saying that Teen Spirit was indeed a great song, even though it was just a re-do of most Pixies' songs. This grounded the song for me because I'd heard that the Pixies were pretty much a re-do of Husker Du with female back-up. Looking back on this Butch Vig produced LP I don't think it was a redo of anything, not even John Lennon. This rare pureness is... well... whatever, nevermind. -GHA