BAUHAUS: PRESS THE EJECT AND GIVE ME THE TAPE (1982)
1) In The Flat Field; 2) Rose
Garden Funeral Of Sores; 3) Dancing; 4) The Man With The X-Ray Eyes; 5) Bela Lugosi's
Dead; 6) The Spy In The Cab; 7) Kick In The Eye; 8) In Fear Of Fear; 9) Hollow
Hills; 10) Stigmata Martyr; 11) Dark Entries; 12) Terror Couple Kill Colonel*;
13) Double Dare*; 14*) In The Flat Field; 15*) Hair Of The Dog; 16*) Of Lillies
And Remains; 17*) Waiting For The Man.
Visually, Bauhaus live were not vastly
different from any other punk / post-punk act of the era — their act was much
less theatrical than the music would suggest — but in terms of sound, it was
primarily on the stage that they played out their «goth rock» reputation in
earnest. The setlist concentrates on the darkest songs in the catalog, and the
towering centerpiece is ʽBela Lugosi's Deadʼ, longer, grander, and weightier
than anything else on here — nine minutes of grave macabrity that Alice Cooper
would probably have rejected for being too pretentious and humorless, but for
Bauhaus, it is their life, as Murphy gets to get so heavily into character and
Ash gets to scatter round his entire bag of guitar tricks, imitating every
single variation of a bat wing flap on his instrument and feeling quite at
home.
On the whole, the live Bauhaus experience has
little reason to be experienced outside an actual theater — the songs are not
significantly modified from their studio bases, usually retaining the
structures, the tempos, and the general dynamics. But yes, if you need to hear
it from me, both Murphy and Ash do behave more wildly on stage: Murphy becomes
a bit more of a screamer, and Ash allows himself to fool around with even more
feedback effects. So if you decide that songs like ʽStigmata Martyrʼ rock
harder and blow up more nerve cells here than in the studio version, I am not
going to argue — I just happen to find the difference sort of negligible, and
even more negligible on the short dance-oriented stuff from Mask, such as ʽDancingʼ or ʽIn Fear Of
Fearʼ, where I was almost afraid at once that they'd simply put some audience
noises over studio takes (well, you can't blame me for not memorizing every studio nuance of those tracks).
Technical notes: most of these songs were
recorded in October 1981 and February 1982 in London and Liverpool, so there
is predictably nothing included from The
Sky's Gone Out; and, in fact, the live album itself was originally released
as a bonus addition to Sky, only later
gaining the status of an «autonomous» LP — initiating a rather strange
tradition which eventually resulted in Bauhaus having as many live albums out
as they have studio ones. Furthermore, the CD re-release added a bunch of extra
tracks recorded at a December 1981 show in Paris, with ʽDouble Dareʼ as a
particular highlight for those who love the Murphy scream, but the tracks also
have significantly poorer sound quality. The most curious, and the least
professionally recorded, inclusion is that of a Manchester performance where
they join forces with Nico on a delightfully (atrociously?) chaotic rendition
of the VU's ʽWaiting For The Manʼ.
On the whole, I would probably recommend
skipping this, but apparently, the Old Vic London show from 1982 had also been
videotaped, so this is a good bet to check out the young Murphy in his prime, belly-dancing
and all, while Ash and his supercool mohawk are weaving guitar rings around him
(really piss-poor lighting job, though, based on the bits I have seen). But as
for me, I do not care much for that early 1980s visual stylistics anyway, and for
those who think that Bauhaus are better heard than seen, Press The Eject will not be of much use.
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