Bauhaus

But they're what I'm listening to in the car these days... I still find their music to be great listening.

Seems like you and me were typin' at the same time....

Oh, how I hate Muse now.

"Yin and yang, lumber punch/Go taste a tart then eat my lunch."

My reasons for loving Bauhaus have already been elucidated on this forum, tho strangely on a thread about sax solos. (Because Bauhaus's fantastic sax squalls were such a brilliant pisstake of the sax solos discolouring everything from Bowie to Spandau Ballet in the 80s.) Bombastic, over the top, overblown art school freaky-weirness, stylistic genre-sluts (Gothic was only one of their many moods). The best BASS of any record in the 80s that wasn't made by Joy Division. And, as Suzy would say, they came with a SYLLABUS!!! They introduced me to many wonderful things, from Bill Burroughs to Lautremont to Joe Orton to German Expressionist silent cinema. (That's Conrad Veidt on the single cover, not Bela Lugosi, for trainspotters...)

And you wouldn't have Suede without them. Oh no.

So you are not wrong, they are very very brilliant. Oh dear, it's winter, my musical taste is about to take a turn for the goth again.

Peter Murphy said as much once. Suede themselves have carefully steered clear of any admissions. ;-)

Another hilarious incident involves the usual after-school trip downtown to buy records (affordable) and drool over/try on the designer clothes at Dayton's ("Waaah! The 'smoking' in the YSL Rive Gauche section NOT ON SALE!'). Catherine Deneuve was doing an instore appearance to promote her fragrance and was SURROUNDED by skinny Goth boys in leather jackets with Bela Lugosi's Dead sleeves painted on the back. She looked a little bit bemused (but the opening to The Hunger still gets my vote as a fast, cool piece of cinema, even if the rest of it is a total perfume commercial and it makes me do my thing of filling up with tears when Bad Things Happen To David Bowie)

Funny that people mention Jane's Addiction; way back in 1987 Ashley and I went to see Love and Rockets play the old fleapit theatre in Port Chester. My college friends from LA had been raving about the support band, which was Jane's when they were still putting out records on Triple X. They'd been specially selected by the headliners so there was an element of patronage there.

And - oh! - what about Tones On Tail? I still have the red 12" for 'Go' in a big record box in Minneapolis. Loved it. At college just outside NYC, as regular posters may know, our Saturday dances were enlivened by our friend Margaret's ex-boyfriend from Greenwich, Moby Hall, our DJ. He played that CONSTANTLY and of course it became the backbone sample for his first single, also 'Go'.

I bought my first Bauhaus album today...well, it's the Volume 1 best of (79-83), because I wanted to see what I was getting into before I started in on the albums.

I can't believe it took me this long to get around to listening to them, because they're EXCELLENT. Way more punky than i expected, for some reason I pictured the music differently because of all the Goth assosciations. I like Peter Murphy's voice. That's the other thing I like about the music, not only punky but theatrical as well, which I always dig.

Double Dare is my favorite song so far. I've got the album on repeat while I'm cleaning the bathroom, and I'm very very pleased with myself that I've discovered a 'new' band for me to play with.

So after everyone finishes beating me up for being such a stupid latecomer, I'd love to hear stories about people seeing them live, albums to buy, etc.

Well your timing was good in ways since of course they just did a one-off at Coachella which by all accounts essentially slaughtered Coldplay's attempts to follow as the headliners. (Then again this couldn't have been too hard, but I digress.)

No beration, people find them as they do. Check the AMG for my various rantings on them. Since you have Vol. 1, might as well go for V. 2, and from there search out the four albums -- work in order: In the Flat Field, Mask, The Sky's Gone Out, Burning From the Inside. You audibly hear the band accidentally found a style through fusion, kick against it desperately while still perfecting it, try a variety of digressions, and then finally wrap up on a 'let's just get it over with even as we're clearly trying eight million things at once' note. There's also the amazing must-get live album Press the Eject and Give Me the Tape. In *all* cases search out the Beggars Banquet pressings with the bonus cuts (in the case of In the Flat Field, 4AD) -- in America, Sky's and Burning were only issued in lame A&M versions on disc, so ignore those and get the imports. The rest have surfaced domestically.

The Peel Session collection, Swing the Heartache, is the other must have in terms of albums. Some great alternate versions, total rarities ("Poison Pen," a cover of "Nighttime") etc. I am however not sure of its in-print status. Rest in Peace, the full recording from the 'final' show when the band first wrapped up its existence, is an interesting curio (among other things you get Peter's vocals on songs that he didn't sing on Burning due to an illness that almost killed him) but suffers from a murky, low-volume mix. Gotham, the live album from the 1998 reunion, is a treat but less essential unless you are me. Finally there's the original "Bela Lugosi's Dead"/"Boys" single, out of print on Small Wonder but find it if you can -- I believe the single disc comp Crackle has both, and it's kinda essential you get those songs. The live "Bela" on Volume 1 is enjoyable, but you simply MUST hear the original if you've not. It is among other things one of the best dub singles ever recorded and anyone who disagrees can get bent.

There are three videos out there -- Gotham was also on DVD and is good to see what they were like in 1998 for the reunion shows (saw them four times on that tour and I was so glad I did, excellent performances each time and they seemed to keep getting better as they went, concluding with one mother of a show at UC Irvine that wrapped up the American tour). But if you can find them, Shadow of Light -- a compilation of the studio videos plus some live cuts -- and Archive (all live cuts) are both equally necessary. I could be wrong but I still think they are not on DVD, and frankly that pisses me off -- but I treasure the VHS copies I still have.

My words from an AMG review of In the Flat Field sum up what I think was core about the band, really:

Few debut albums ever arrived so nearly perfectly formed; that In the Flat Field practically single-handedly invented what remains for many as the stereotype of goth music -- wracked, at times spindly vocals about despair and desolation of many kinds, sung over mysterious and moody music -- demonstrates the sui generis power of both the band and its work. This said, perhaps the best thing about the album isn't what it's supposed to sound like, but what it actually does -- an awesomely powerful, glam-inspired rock band firing on all fours, capable of restraint and complete overdrive both, fronted by a charismatic, storming frontman.

a) TREEmendous rhythm section
b) Murphy not so much histrionic as phoning it in from a distant galaxy
c) This kind of skeletal reigned-in economy in the deployment of their weapons - less is more
d) Mr Raggett got two good ears and explains this better than me
e) Did I mention the rhythm section?

Hey you might be able to help me, because the clerk at Virgin couldn't help me in the slightest. (We stopped by on our way out of the cinemaplex to get NIN With Teeth while it was on sale). While my husband & I were poking around in the Bauhaus section, we found a Japanese import of what looked like Volume 1 greatest hits. But it had a black cover & gold cover, like Volume 2, but the whole thing was a very thin cardboard sleeve. It also contained what looked like 2 discs and a vastly different track listing to the Volume 1 we ended up buying. Husband mused that perhaps it was v1 & 2 together, but there wasn't enough detail on the cd sleeve to decipher it. Clerk didn't know, computer didn't pull up any useful information & we were left wondering.

Thoughts?

Speaking of obsessive, there is one official track that was never released on CD and apparently will never be -- when the band broke up, they released a final single via their fan club, "The Sanity Assassin." This song did surface later on V. 2 and the Burning CD, but the B-side never did -- a cover of Norman Greenbaum's irregularly revived/recovered early seventies Jesus-hippie-rock hit "Spirit in the Sky." Funny stuff! There's also a one-off studio track from the late nineties reunion that surfaced on the Heavy Metal 2000 soundtrack, "The Dog's a Vapour," while Gotham includes the other studio track the reunited band did, a cover of Dead Can Dance's "Severance," which was covered to absolutely brilliant effect on the tour (there's a live version on the disc as well).

Excellent! I will pass that on to my friend Hina, she will be pleased. :-) Come see Peter's solo show! It'll be much different in intensity but he does the occasional Bauhaus number and is still a riveting performer on his own.

:-D

And a pity about the V.1/V.2 confusion! But this might help -- the only track on V.2 that isn't on the studio album CD versions is "Paranoia Paranoia," which is a great song but is essentially a tweaked dub version of Sky's Gone Out's "Silent Hedges," so not quite as necessary. It is however a fine instance of the ability of the band to pulverize their own work as needed.

Peter once said that Daniel could take three notes, play it on his guitar and make it sound like the end of the world. This is in fact perfectly accurate.

When will the solo tour start? How big of a tour is it? Actually the reason I went & bought Bauhaus in the first place was because of what I was reading about their performance at Coachella. Even having never heard them, they sounded like something to look into a little more. I'm glad I did!!

http://www.petermurphy.info/

And here's the tour info -- got it slightly wrong, the tour isn't beginning until next week:

UNSHATTERED TOUR ITINERARY
click on individual show dates for venue and ticket information

MAY

12 Lake Buena Vista, Florida - House of Blues
13 Atlanta, Georgia - The Masquerade
15 Washington DC - 9.30 Club
16 New York, New York - B.B. King's Blues Club & Grill
17 Cleveland, Ohio - Odeon Concert Club
18 Chicago, Illinois - Metro
20 Denver, Colorado - Ogden Theatre
22 Portland, Oregon - Roseland Theatre
23 Seattle, Washington - The Showbox
24 San Francisco, California - The Fillmore
26 San Diego, California - House of Blues
27 Los Angeles, California - Henry Fonda Theatre
28 Anaheim, California - House of Blues
30 Mexico City, Mexico - Salon 21

Go for the SF show! You'll really like it, I predict. :-) I've seen Peter now solo and in Bauhaus a total of...*thinks*...ten times. He has never once failed to seriously put on an excellent show -- a committed performer, he doesn't take his audience for granted, while he never seems to lose his sense of humor either.

Keep in mind that there's also the wonderful music by everyone else in the band -- Love and Rockets of course, but Tones on Tail, the solo stuff by Daniel Ash and David J...

Love and Rockets IS Bauhaus, just without Peter. :-) They didn't immediately become L&R, though -- Tones on Tail was the project that Daniel and Kevin started a bit while Bauhaus was still going, with Glenn Campling on bass, and they continued that for a while after the Bauhaus collapse. There's a double disc, Everything, which I highly recommend -- it's just as enjoyable schizophrenic as Bauhaus. "Go!" was their most famous song, which you might have heard here or there. David's solo career was in full swing around the same time, he recorded two solo albums and enough singles to warrant a rarities collection. AND he was performing with the Jazz Butcher at the same time, which is a whole other story! And then he has released a number of solo discs off and on over time since -- David's solo stuff is generally calmer, lower-key, witty and warm folk/rock/blues, he's a prince of a feller. Daniel's solo stuff is his 'rock never dies!' dream impulse and he often does a good job with it.

Bauhaus were on the best post-punk bands around. It is just too bad they are mostly remembered as thee GAWTH godfathers instead one of the better of the post-punk canon instead. Nothing wrong with the former, but the latter is often grossly overlooked.

As much as I love this typo, I really meant to say: Bauhaus were one of the best post-punk bands around.

I'll be interested to read Simon R.'s take in the post-punk book. Keep in mind that many writers flat out HATED Bauhaus -- not all, mind you, there were defenders like Alan Moore (yes, that Alan Moore -- a member of the Sinister Ducks, a collaborator with David J elsewhere -- to the point where J. released a V for Vendetta single in 1984 or so -- Moore freaks will recall there's a part in the story where the titular figure is playing a song called "This Viscious Cabaret" at a piano, that's an actual song David and Alan cowrote and David released) and Helen Fitzgerald. I've got a great unofficial collection of many press articles that complements Beneath the Mask, and it's interesting reading both the praise and condemnation from the time itself, without the burden of 'goth' as such, though intriguingly it was brought up very early by some writers, so the tag was already starting to coalesce.

MAKE THE MOST OF A MILLION TIMES... yes?

Great article! I still listen to "Hope" regularly to this day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4zPCKtIqcc

http://www.slicingupeyeballs.com/2013/10/14/peter-murphy-peads-guilty-meth-probation/

Kick in the EEEYYYYYYEEEEE! Oh! Oh! Oh!

ooooooo-OOOOOOOH-oooooooh ooooooooh-OOOOOOOH-oooooh...

(I thought there was another Bauhaus thread that was longer and had Bimble bimbling with love all over it, but I should read behind the cut of this one, I guess.)

Ned Raggett from days of yore...

Noodle of course nails the real killer thing -- that rhythm section. Absolutely nothing against Peter or Daniel of course, the whole band is essential as a combination, but the sheer ability, stop-on-a-dime mania as well as careful restraint of David J doing his King Tubby-meets-Can imitations and Kevin Haskins essentially doing similar is mind-bogglingly great.

...

To give an example, meanwhile, of Peter and Daniel getting their due...there's the audio on Press the Eject but the video on Shadow of Light during the performance of John Cale's "Rosegarden Funeral of Sores" when Peter is half-draped over Daniel yelping "SCREAMING WHORES!!!!" while Daniel, playing along without a hitch, is delivering these rhythmic agonized yelps is pure transgressive violence as art project. And oh I love it I love it I love it.

As fucking brilliant as that particular scene is, it isn't even the best part of that video. Which is when Peter goes over to the other side of the stage and attempts to drape himself in a similar fashion over the besuited and dark sunglassed David J. Who pulls a slightly pained expression, raising one ginger eyebrow, dislodges him with a faintly reptilian shrug which somehow seems about a billion times *weirder* and more outre than all of Daniel's fishnets and alien-sex-god antics, then, as Peter walks away... HIS FISHNET TUNIC THING CATCHES ON THE TUNING PEGS OF DAVID'S BASS. David, with the same reptilian cool, tilts his bass neck - without ever losing track: not a beat dropped, not a pitch even slightly faffed - of the insanely complicated line he is playing on a fretless fucking bass - and casually unhooks him as if tossing an unwanted minnow back into the sea.

I love Daniel and all, but seriously, in a band as weird and insane and hilariously out there as Bauhaus were, the most *freakish* and bizarre thing was actually turning up to work every day in a suit. David J always was the coolest member of that band, against stiff competition.

Time to revive this thread I think! In that I interviewed David J for Bandcamp.

https://daily.bandcamp.com/2016/07/07/david-j-interview/

nice interview Ned.

we did have a artist poll this year in case you missed it: We POLL Our Audience: You, The Night and The Music - BAUHAUS - Love and Rockets, Tones on Tail, Peter Murphy etcetera - ILM artist poll number 73 - results thread

david's doing a house show in SF this weekend. not sure where.

NOT a reunion...but:

http://www.post-punk.com/david-j-haskins-and-peter-murphy-are-set-to-reunite-to-perform-bauhaus-songs-together-for-the-first-time-in-over-a-decade/

Like I muttered on the Peter solo thread, of all the intertangled relationships between the core four, theirs has to be the weirdest.

tell us more...

Well just based on their clear moments of evident disdain/anger towards each other -- Peter's public comments on the ending of the last full Bauhaus reunion (resulting in the song "I Spit Roses" as well) followed by David's hardly less flattering ones in response in his book, etc. Money talks, whatever, but all four of them are clearly intertwined for life one way or another, and I think their evident chalk-and-cheese approach over decades is one reason why it can never fully work, or only does so for bursts at a time. (Just happened that the first burst was, well, THAT big, subculturally.)

I'm actually beyond surprised that this is happening.

since this thread got bumped. i ran a Bauhaus poll awhile back and never linked to this thread. my least popular artist poll but i still had fun.

We POLL Our Audience: You, The Night and The Music - BAUHAUS - Love and Rockets, Tones on Tail, Peter Murphy etcetera - ILM artist poll number 73 - results thread

missed that i actually already posted that link in this thread, sorry. going too fast.

Meanwhile, Daniel Ash, Kevin Haskins and his daugther Diva will be playing in my city soon as Poptone. The ad says they play a mix of Bauhaus, Tones On Tails and Love & Rockets songs! Has anybody here seen them?

^ damn I just scheduled a camping trip for when they're coming to Atlanta :[

xp my friend saw them in Portland and LOVED it, he is a huge fan

Yeah saw the show here in June, really great -- totally scratches the itch for anyone bummed that they never saw Tones on Tail (which, since they only toured here the once in 1984, is pretty damn near everyone). Quite honestly the only song they didn't perform which I wish they had was "Real Life" but I'm not surprised that didn't make the cut -- otherwise, every ToT cut you could want (even "Heartbreak Hotel"!) plus a couple of other covers, "Slice of Life" and a clutch of L&R songs. Between that and this Peter/David combination -- well, I've seen the reunited Bauhaus about six different times but I'll take this as an addendum.

I saw Bauhaus in 2005 and they were excellent. Ferocious even. I'm really excited to hear Tones On Tails songs live now!

I haven't listened to any Bauhaus for ages, but these thread revivals have got me wanting to hear Mask ...

The two singles/Best Ofs are my goto Bauhaus. Never felt the need to own the albums.

Peel Sessions are great, too, but then they almost always are.

i picked up one of those 5cd box sets on amazon for £16 in 2013. still available - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Albums-Box-Set-Burning-Singles/dp/B00FE1XIBS

that's actually cheaper than a single one of those white or black best-ofs (which might be out of print looking at the prices on amazon)

A last little trick up their sleeve:

https://bauhaus.bandcamp.com/album/the-bela-session

The Bela Session is a full release of Bauhaus' first studio session from January 26 1979, where the iconic "Bela Lugosi's Dead" was recorded. This is the first and only official reissue of "Bela Lugosi's Dead" on vinyl, and the first time 3 of the 5 tracks have been released. This EP has been produced directly by the band with Leaving Records, in advance of the band's 40th anniversary.

Tracklisting:

1. Bela Lugosi's Dead (Official Version) 09:36
2. Some Faces
3. Bite My Hip
4. Harry
5. Boys (Original)

"Harry" saw release as a B-side in 1982; the rest as indicated haven't officially surfaced, though "Bite My Hip" was eventually recorded and entitled "Lagartija Nick" well down the road of their original existence. This is also different from the Live in the Studio 1979 EP that surfaced with Behind the Mask.

wow!

https://louderthanwar.com/peter-murphy-thrown-gig-sweden-former-bauhaus-singer-bizarre-incident/

"Last night Peter Murphy had a meltdown at the gig in Stockholm (Nalen).

Annoyed at a small sector of the crowd ignoring his show he was apparently throwing bottles at the audience one of which landed on the mixing desk which broke it and ended the concert after 2/3 of the gig. Following this there was an altercation with the security at the venue which saw him thrown out of the venue."

Fucking hell. Is he still on the crystal meth?

Well, here we go once more.

BAUHAUS announces HOLLYWOOD PALLADIUM SHOW

Bauhaus, featuring Peter Murphy, Daniel Ash, Kevin Haskins, and David J, will play the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on November 3.
Tickets on sale Friday, September… https://t.co/d4or2gN9NE

— Peter Murphy (@petermurphyinfo) September 10, 2019

There's something...weird in realizing they're announcing this reunion to take place in the spot where they played the first reunion shows in 1998. Double nostalgia.

Double nostalgia excitement!

Crazy to think that more time elapsed since that first reunion than between that and their initial split

More and more I appreciate the sweet innocence of this being called what it is when it was released in 1992:

https://www.discogs.com/Bauhaus-Rest-In-Peace-The-Final-Concert/master/324249

Anyway so they're still back together and they have a new song and they've pulled the ol' "1. David Jay 2. Peter Murphy 3. Kevin Haskins 4. Daniel Ash" trick again. And you know, why not?

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bauhaus-new-song-drink-the-new-wine-1325242/

Their North American tour has been canceled. Peter Murphy has checked himself into rehab "to attend to his health and well-being."

Disappointing, to say the least.

Was just coming here to post that

After rehab maybe they can tour

https://www.brooklynvegan.com/bauhaus-cancel-north-american-shows-as-peter-murphy-enters-rehab/

So for the Pop Conference this year I had some thoughts, at least in terms of archiving and legacy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYpT_GKxz3k

Great stuff. Still getting over the white and black albums bit. Ha!

The vinyl 1979-1983 version was something my then girlfriend introduced me to and that really ignited my Bauhaus love, having previously only heard the hit singles. Really interesting to hear that over there a lot of people found Bauhaus through their Love & Rockets fandom.

I came to the band at an odd time, circa Burning from the Inside, which is still my favorite. We used to play it at the record store I worked at near closing time. It was pretty good at clearing the store.

'she's in parties' is a highly recommended gothdub. i like that album; good bridge to tones on tail.

honestly Burning is my fave album overall

(of theirs)

my intro was The Sky's Gone Out upon release, I did not really know what to make of it. then I heard that green 4AD EP of the early singles and I got it.

Great stuff. Still getting over the white and black albums bit. Ha!

Haha. It struck me out of nowhere and as I'm now thoroughly sick of the Beatles Industrial Complex I decided to include it.

Really interesting to hear that over there a lot of people found Bauhaus through their Love & Rockets fandom.

Oh absolutely the case. Bauhaus had zero chart presence at the time, even though over here for the third and fourth albums they ended up on of all labels A&M. (Perhaps not too surprising given the Police and a sense that they could have a new wave thing going -- they had the Cure at the same time too! A&M was almost an arch-goth label!) But Love & Rockets really clicked over here in LA -- I like to think both the Bauhaus tours and the one Tones on Tail one here created enough of a fanbase that when L&R started really connecting on both college radio and stations like KROQ by the time 1986 rolled around, them going Top 40 with "No New Tale To Tell," along with the MTV boost thanks to the video, made absolute sense. That's how I learned about them and by the time of early 1989 with "So Alive" in the near offing -- I think the "Motorcyle" single had already caught my attention as well -- I heard enough stories about 'this band called Bauhaus,' as well as learning a bit about Peter Murphy (Love Hysteria had been a notable college/KROQ era hit thanks to "All Night Long" in particular), that I started to backtrack a bit. The white/black comps were easily available on import CD as well as a number of the albums -- Sky's and Burning got A&M CDs but I waited until I could get the UK versions with the extra tracks -- and the Peel Sessions comp Swing the Heartache came out shortly afterward as well.

Neds 100% right in regards to L&R and that history is my history, can't wait to watch this.

My order:

In the Flat Field (1980)
Mask (1981)
The Sky's Gone Out (1982)
Burning from the Inside (1983)

You slave to chronology or something.

Hardly but for Bauhaus albums, absolutely. Burning from the Inside doesn't have enough Peter Murphy and therefore the worst.

thanks Ned. Very interesting.

i think I'd go for the same order as Bee OK.