Bauhaus!

[Edie St Pierre]

Bauhaus!

I always thought it meant she'd been at a party that was filmed with special effects by Lunatic Hendrix (or whoever). The film is now in the can, and the song is about her attendance at a subsequent wrap party.

[Reed John]

Bauhaus!

That makes me understand it less. Why would somebody write a song about that?

[Spearmint Rhino]

Bauhaus!

Hang on, what? You're asking why someone would write a song about an actress?

[Reed John]

Bauhaus!

Yes. I don't understand what happened to her.
I don't understand early 1980s goth culture.

But I imagine, the guys in Bauhaus didn't say they were goth. I thought I read somewhere that true goth bands always say they aren't goth.

[WOM]

Bauhaus!

Well, they wrote a song about an actor. And he was dead. Or undead.

[Spearmint Rhino]

Bauhaus!

Well, it's an impressionistic, fractured lyric that doesn't make complete sense, but which throws up aesthetically-interesting imagery. And that's fine. Not everything has to be a linear narrative.

Bauhaus were one of the first wave of bands (along with Siouxsie And The Banshees, The Cure and Joy Division) to be called 'gothic rock' by journalists, but they weren't part of any gothic scene or movement, because there WAS no gothic scene or movement when they came along.

That whole thing was to follow, when other bands started imitating the first wave, and kids started copying their look. Bauhaus had all but split up by then.

[Renart]

Bauhaus!

I don't listen to them often anymore, but I loved, loved, loved them when I was in high school. (Love and Rockets and Dali's Car, too, though my favorite Bauhaus spinoff is Tones on Tail, whose record I just put on this weekend.) I am not ashamed at all to say I love Bauhaus.

"She's in Parties" is definitely about an actress in a film. "Learning lines in the rain," "It's in the can," etc.

[Edit: Sorry, I took too long and didn't see various intervening posts covering the same ground about She's in Parties.]

[Reed John]

Bauhaus!

Yes, I see. I think it's the "parties" bit that throws me off. It sounds like she's in a noir or a rom com or perhaps a porno.

I noticed on YouTube that Peter Murphy does a lot of Joy Division covers.

I quite like Joy Division and I like at least the "hits" from Bauhaus. That whole vibe is very appealing. It seems very "now" and it's very hard for me to imagine what it would have been like to see that in 1979. If I or my parents or anyone I or they associated with in 1979 had seen Bauhaus perform, they would have looked at it in the same way a time-travelling Thomas Jefferson would have looked at the latest Transformers film.

[MsD]

Bauhaus!

Theatre of Hate supported them in 1981, I think that was the main reason for (our/my) going to see them at the time. Those gigs were big dressy up occasions for the Blitz kids, including Boy George, but no, it wasn't yet anything "goth" as we came to know it.

[Alderman Barnes]

Bauhaus!

The first time I encountered that song was during a particularly boring chemistry lesson at school when we were writing down our current top tens in our rough books to pass the time.

One lad had written down something called "She's In Panties". This intrigued me greatly, and great though the song is, I must admit that when I actually heard it for the first time, it was not without a twinge of disappointment.

[evilC]

Bauhaus!

Right!... Haven't been able to contribute to this thread until now, due to work and then social commitments, but... The great thing about Bauhaus was that they weren't limited to one particular style of music. Seriously! You listen to the first two albums of Bauhaus (and the 'Searching For Satori' EP) and you'll hear disco basslines, dub rhythms and effects and, of course, straight-up 4/4 minimal rock and pop, plus a whole lot of experimentalism in between. This was kind of reflected in their appearances, too. Two of what appeared to be 'hardcore' Goths and two relative geeks! They just seemed like they should never have been in a band together.

When you compare them to their peers - Sisters Of Mercy, Virgin Prunes, Play Dead, Alien Sex Fiend and even Siouxsie and the Banshees - they made all of those seem really quite limited in their stylistic palettes. The Banshees went on to be at least as broad-ranging in time, but never on one album, I'd argue.

However, yes - they could be ridiculously pretentious. This was mainly down to Pete Murphy, the lead singer. David J was prone to the theory side of things, too, but was less outright pretentious, I feel.

There was an ill-fated reunion tour, a few years back, which was fractious from the start, by all accounts. It came to a very premature halt after just a few dates when they were performing 'Bela Lugosi's Dead' as an encore (I think) at one of their shows. Pete Murphy was at the front of the stage, striking a dramatic pose in one of the lulls in the song, but the lull never ended.- It turned out Dan Ash (the guitarist) had walked offstage mid-song after a dressing room spat before the encore. Murphy eventually sheepishly rose, confused, from his posture and had to wander off, backstage to find out what was happening, while the two Haskins brothers kept the rhythm going onstage! No more tour was the outcome!

Similarly, last year Murphy was supposed to be taking part in a joint project and tour with (fellow dubious Celt) Brendan Perry, once of Dead Can Dance. However, Murphy apparently called the tour off on its eve for not a particularly good reason and Perry pulled him up on this, in public, on Facebook. A very open spat ensued which soon descended into a bout of "I'm more Irish than you" ...between two men from Northampton and Whitechapel! I believe that in the end Perry had the good sense to no longer engage with Murphy. I'm not sure if there's been any change since then, though.

Anyway... in a reiteration of probably my most frequently retold tale on here, I have to recall how I took part in the video for their cover of 'Ziggy Stardust'. There was a 'call' for fans who wanted to take part in the shoot, on Anne Nightingale's radio show, the night before. (I don't think it was on John Peel's show, although it might have been.) Unbelievably to me, almost none of my close friends could come with me (I had to bunk off college, effectively) but in the end, after about a dozen phone calls (this was before the internet, of course) one - Dave Gordon - said he could come along ...in his mustard coloured 'puffa' jacket, as it turned out! :-) Mind you, I was not much better, in my dinner suit, with slicked-back hair and ...well, not much else to distinguish me, really, in retrospect! We were only 16, after all.

The shoot took place in the bowels of the what-was-then-abandoned Roundhouse, in Chalk Farm. It took nearly the whole day, too. Needless to say, Dave and I didn't get picked to be at the front of the crowd scenes in the 'crypt', nor the aloof bastards strolling down the tunnels to the central catacomb. Still - between takes, up in the bar, Dan Ash dumped one of his fag butts in the fire bucket next to where I was sitting and, when he looked the other way, I fished it out and pocketed it! It took pride of place, pinned to my bedroom wall for years! Not that I was a sad fanboy, or anything!

If you look at the video, you won't see us - we were toward the back of the crowd on the left, pretty much out of shot. If you are wondering how come the fans in the crowd seem to be so apathetic at times, when confronted with their idols (and there were some sad clones there, I can tell you!) it's probably that after the 20th take or so, even their enthusiasm was starting to wane. In fact, at one pause between acts, David J began to play 'the bassline from the Panatella ads' on his bass, much to everyone's amusement. The other main 'talking point' for everyone was how, on one occasion, when Pete Murphy executed the climactic stage-dive into the crowd, he caught one tall woman (with a tattoo of '666' next to her super-narrow but flat mohawk) with his elbow to her temple and knocked her unconscious, briefly. Needless to say, she received a little personal attention from her assailant before the shoot could continue ...which probably made her day, actually. :-) He might have been a pretentious arse, no doubt, but Murphy could still be alright on a personal level, like that.

However, it was a just a nice experience for teeny-fans like us, really, and one of the few things I've done in my life, to be honest.

These days, I can look at them dispassionately and see that yes, sometimes they were far too pretentious for their own good. (Most of 'The Sky's Gone Out') But they were at least more varied than the Sisters Of Mercy, for a start! If they'd called it a day after those first two albums, they would still be worshipped as gods today, I feel. However, they just kept at it for slightly too long and over-egged the pudding. At least Haskins, Ash (and J(ay)) could later laugh at themselves, with Love And Rockets and The Bubblemen.

[Spearmint Rhino]

Bauhaus!

I know that feeling of being shunted to the fringes of a video shoot. In my case, for looking TOO goth. British Whale's "This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us". Until The Darkness lads intervened and invited me down the front.

I don't think it's right to see The Sisters Of Mercy as peers of Bauhaus. By the time the Sisters got an album out, Bauhaus were two years dead. The Sisters were the start of the second or even third wave, as I see it. (Then by the time you got the third or fourth wave, with hopeless fucking copyists of the Sisters, it was time to pack it in. Which I did.)

Not that I really know about this stuff first-hand, cos I didn't get involved in goth till late 86.

[evilC]

Bauhaus!

Yeah, you're pretty much right (of course). I got the 'Alice' 7" - their second release, in 1982, but once they released the album, it was clear they were in fact terribly formulaic and almost paved the way for the 'rock revivalism' which Goth seemed to turn into in the latter half of the 80s: long hair, leather jackets, the right guitars, the right amps, etc. - all a formal and established language of pop. None of the genre-bending that Bauhaus and others were attempting a few years earlier.

[Edie St Pierre]

Bauhaus!

I love `The Sky's Gone Out'! Some of the oddest and most idiosyncraritic pop music ever made. Tunes like 'Three Shadows: Part 2' and 'All We Ever Wanted' are like some sort of Edwardian Opium Eater's versiom of the blues, and 'Swing The Heartache' is my favourite of their minimalist exercises. Actually there's not a tune on that album I don't love, come to think of it. Every home should have a copy.

Cracking story by the way, Clive. I should say too I s'pose that a mate of mine bumped into Pete Murphy in a bookshop and said he was a lovely feller.

[Spearmint Rhino]

Bauhaus!

What killed goth was people from the North getting involved. They should have left it to Londoners.

(Yeah I know, Bauhaus were from the midlands...)

[Edie St Pierre]

Bauhaus!

You mean like Barbara Windsor and The Kray Twins?

[Cal Alamein]

Bauhaus!

I have a couple of their 45s and Press the eject and give me the tape LP which I quite like. The live version of Dark Entries is fantastic.

Didn't care much for Love and Rockets.

[Purves Grundy]

Bauhaus!

Excellent stuff here by Mat, SR and EvilC. Bauhaus were terrific, warts and all.

[wingco]

Bauhaus!

Okay, so I watched "Double Dare" and I'm afraid it confirmed a lot of my misgivings about Bauhaus. It feels not contemporary with, but derivative of post-punk - in this instance, a steal from The Banshees' "Metal Postcard". Sure, they tick a lot of the boxes - scratchy, abrasive, lots of guitar overspill, etc, but here, as elsewhere, I feel that all they're doing is getting off on the fumes, the resonance, the grandeur of post-punk, rather than being an intrinsic energy generator. In other words, they're the point at which post-punk becomes Goth; a bit too interested in its own reflection. All of which might be deemed no bad thing by some but doesn't really do it for me.

[Spearmint Rhino]

Bauhaus!

wingco wrote:

Okay, so I watched "Double Dare" and I'm afraid it confirmed a lot of my misgivings about Bauhaus. It feels not contemporary with, but derivative of post-punk - in this instance, a steal from The Banshees' "Metal Postcard". Sure, they tick a lot of the boxes - scratchy, abrasive, lots of guitar overspill, etc, but here, as elsewhere, I feel that all they're doing is getting off on the fumes, the resonance, the grandeur of post-punk, rather than being an intrinsic energy generator. In other words, they're the point at which post-punk becomes Goth; a bit too interested in its own reflection. All of which might be deemed no bad thing by some but doesn't really do it for me.

The trouble is that you watched it. I knew I should have picked a version without moving pictures.

[wingco]

Bauhaus!

I shut my eyes after a bit.

[Reed John]

Bauhaus!

Okay, so I watched "Double Dare" and I'm afraid it confirmed a lot of my misgivings about Bauhaus. It feels not contemporary with, but derivative of post-punk - in this instance, a steal from The Banshees' "Metal Postcard". Sure, they tick a lot of the boxes - scratchy, abrasive, lots of guitar overspill, etc, but here, as elsewhere, I feel that all they're doing is getting off on the fumes, the resonance, the grandeur of post-punk, rather than being an intrinsic energy generator. In other words, they're the point at which post-punk becomes Goth; a bit too interested in its own reflection. All of which might be deemed no bad thing by some but doesn't really do it for me.

So which were the "intrinsic energy generators" of post-punk? It seems like a very narrow time window between punk proper and the post-post-punk era.

I'm very interested in the the music coming out of the UK in this period, but the history of it is a bit confusing to me, not least of all because it didn't follow the same path in the US, as we've discussed.

[wingco]

Bauhaus!

For me, it's PiL, Joy Division, Wire, Siouxsie & The Banshees, The Fall. Gang Of Four maybe. I'd also include This Heat, Throbbing Gristle, Pere Ubu, Cabaret Voltaire. I ought really to include Magazine but for some reason, I never managed to get into Magazine.

[Jah Womble]

Bauhaus!

Wingco calls it right viz the main protagonists that drove post-punk (one might also chuck The Slits, Pop Group and The Cure's 17 Seconds and Faith into the mix somewhere), but I really don't think Bauhaus were anywhere near as bystanding as this suggests. They, after all, were Goth before Goth.

Like much pop fruit, it all got stale a bit quickly, but the 'haus had their moments: 'Bela Lugosi's Dead' and 'Terror Couple' didn't sound like anything I'd heard before, and I'd heard Bowie.

[wingco]

Bauhaus!

Yeah, Jah, The Slits and The Pop Group are certainly chuck-in-able and The Cure deserve a mention. Anyway, here are the lyrics to "Bela Lugosi's Dead".

White on white translucent black capes
Back on the rack
Bela Lugosi's dead
The bats have left the bell tower
The victims have been bled
Red velvet lines the black box
Bela Lugosi's dead
Undead undead undead
The virginal brides file past his tomb
Strewn with time's dead flowers
Bereft in deathly bloom
Alone in a darkened room
The count
Bela Logosi's dead
Undead undead undead