August 26, 2012
Brooklyn N.Y.

The last stop on Peter Murphy’s tour was at an interesting venue, The Wick/The Well , an outdoor courtyard surrounded by towering brick monoliths and industrial warehouses in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. As you enter, you pass through a semi-indoor bar area where drinks are served in slum-style plastic cups at uptown Manhattan prices.

An interesting mix of understated Goths as well as civilians in casual attire made up the audience of about 200 who ordered hotdogs and beer from the makeshift food stands that lined the fencing on the right flank. The left flank was made up of a row of more than adequate portable toilets.

PM came out shortly after eight, just as the sun was setting, opening with “Velocity Bird,” from his latest album Ninth (2011). The crowd was so small that one had no trouble squeezing right up to the stage, and he was quick to interact with them, engaging in on-stage antics, as is his custom. He bowed low revealing that something has been done to disguise his balding pate. He bantered and exchanged handclasps with the first several rows of the crowd. Perhaps unwisely, he let his shirt open to reveal a less than flattering, aging bosom.

The loving fans strained hard, but couldn’t hear the vocals, even though his accompaniment consisted of only drums, one guitar and a bassist. For his part, PM took note of the problem, frequently and constantly signaling the soundman to take corrective steps. Eventually, and inconsistently, the situation improved.

He followed with the great Bauhaus favorite, “In the Flat Field.” Then came a frustratingly ill-mixed “Peace to Each,” an unremarkable entry from Ninth, and “Memory Go,” the latter a somewhat better representative of that album.
“Silent Hedges” from the Bauhaus repertoire cheered the hearts of the happily singing-along audience, but was followed by new material that was difficult to connect with due to the audio problem.

Now, clearly world-weary and, can we say irreverent about his past career, PM concluded “Strange Kind of Love” by slipping into a campy parody of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” which once evoked reverence in the scene.

No PM show is complete without the anthem “Cuts You Up,” and by this time, the sound system issues had been solved. Now at last the performance showcased his fine vocals, as well as virtuoso violin and acoustic guitar solos. Then came the emotionally touching “I’ll Fall With Your Knife” from Cascade was followed by “The Prince and Old Lady Shade,” indisputably the best off Ninth. Alternating Bauhaus and PM solo works continued after the break and concluded finally with Ziggy Stardust.

Perhaps this was not his best showing ever, exhausted as he was at the end of his tour and sabotaged by poor audio. Yet charismatic PM retained, by his sincere performance and by his warm, humorous interaction with the audience, his exalted status as the father of Gothic rock

Thumbnail picture of the Aquarian page with added images from the show

BlkVampires/ July 6, 2012/ Dingbatz

By Doktor John

Clifton N.J.

The last time we attended NYC’s famous Goth music revue, Incantation, we arrived too late to hear the BlkVampires, who were just breaking down after their performance. Something special about them struck us. It may have been the gruesome costumes of the band members or possibly their stunning female entourage who helped them collect themselves after the show. Most likely, though, our fascination sprung from the fact that they were the first and only all-black Goth band we had ever come across. The fusion of black musical styles with gothic-industrial seemed to hold great potential. So when we received the announcement that BlkVampires would be performing at Dingbatz in Clifton, we made it our business to put together a small band of fans and critics to check them out.

Opening that night was the Trailer Park Mafia, a worthy heavy metal trio fronted by a powerful, bandana-sporting vocalist with a body-builder physique to match his muscular sound and a classic 80s metal style that fit Dingbatz perfectly.

BlkVampires began their set with an unusual performance-art piece in which frontman Forrest Thinner came on stage in grinning, white-face make-up and played menacingly with live fire during a hard-core piece called “Ventriloquist.” Next came a blend of R & B vocals mingled with doomsday metal to tell the tale of a control freak in “Ringmaster.” Subsequent songs ranged from almost-mainstream rhythm and blues to the truly grotesque, suitable for horror-movie soundtracks. Themes ranged from criminality in the hood to the cryogenic freezing of bodies for purposes of future resurrection. Another macabre theme was the longing a vampire feels for a girl whom he can’t reach because she inhabits the daylight. We were even treated to a reggae version of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”

Guitarist Randy Blu managed his riffs wearing a terrifyingly realistic skull mask. Capable bassist Ray had viewers doing a double take with his medieval-fetish, leather-strapped-up face, whereas drummer Ramsey wore more conventional attire.

Last month’s issue of Fangoria, the horror movie mag, did a feature on them. BlkVampires normally consists of six musicians, but was pared down to a quartet for this show. One wonders how much more impressive this versatile and entertaining band’s performance may be in full sextet presentation. Go to blkVampires.net to find out more about the band and where they are appearing next.

Review as it appears in

The Aquarian

March 6, 2012/
By Doktor John

Montclair NJ

These founding forebears of alternative rock, Janes Addiction, icons for a quarter-century of some of the most original, transgressive and explicit performance art, made their stop in Montclair, fronted as always by the semi-demonic Perry Farrell, to a sold-out and mesmerized New Jersey crowd. The show was billed as Theater of the Escapists, referring to the name of the latest album, The Escape Artist. Indeed, before the actual concert, a costumed gent in a derby and handlebar mustache (steampunk is all the rage these days) went around chaining spectators to each other and marching them around the theater and on to the stage in irons. No word on how they escaped.

The openers were an exceptionally loud metal duo from Belgium, called Black Box Revelation, whose vocal whine, together with splashy guitar and stylish drumming, generated a sound like Smashing-Pumpkins-meets-The-White-Stripes.

When they finished their well-received set, the lights went down, and recordings of Pink Floyds Dark Side of the Moon filled the air as red searchlights began to scan the stage. During the fading strains of “Welcome to the Machine,” the eager audience began to stomp, whistle and call for the headliners. When the stage lit up—a dazzling, multi-colored display— it was exactly what one would expect from Jane’s Addiction: two colossal statues of naked women, back-to-back, obscenely lit from below; plus a 7-foot, standing, stuffed bear on stage; and, in addition to the musicians, two gorgeous brunettes swinging high above the stage in huge, tent-like skirts as the band poured out their first piece, “Underground” from the new album.

Most of the show consisted of their well-established repertoire. They proceeded directly into “Mountain Song” as three oversized screens projected depressing images of various druggies getting high. Farrell stopped to announce his long-time affection for NJ and the shore. He temporarily came down off the stage into the front row of the crowd denouncing his philosophical opposition to barriers, then launched into “Been Caught Stealing,” also accompanied by black &white footage from some vintage 1950s juvenile delinquency scare films.

He proceeded to “Ain’t No Right” which he claimed was his motto, then launched into an extended, laid-back and blues-tinged version the block buster hit, “Nothing’s Shocking,” title track from album of the same name, while the two brunettes, now attired in skimpy black lingerie and perched on a sofa high above the stage began to gyrate and unravel themselves from black ribbons with which they were wrapped together. While this song went into crescendo mode on Dave Navarro’s amazing guitar riffs, the video screen showed cheesy, vintage black & white, bondage and s &m videos, and the crowd got their kicks chanting along to the line, “sex is violence.”

A track from the new album followed, then the dreamy “Classic Girl” during which the screens showed peaceful beach and surf scenes interspersed with antique footage of a busty mid-20th century, blond bathing beauty. This was followed by a little patter about living out west in L.A. which caused Farrell to utter the nostalgic (to Jane’s fans) cry “Juana’s Adiccion,” leading into the next song, the iconic “Jane Says” from Nothing’s Shocking, complete with steel drums. At the conclusion of this song Dave Navarro joined two guest bass drummers to create a jungle-like percussion soundscape for the song “Trip Away,” with high speed, jumbled footage from Africa showing on the screens. This was followed by some ultra-deep bass electronica while the lights dimmed, only to become dazzling again during “End to Lies” from The Great Escape Artist.

It was unfortunate that the sound quality of the vocals came out horribly distorted during “Three Days,” which is arguably the group’s greatest opus. Navarro’s brilliant guitar solo didn’t suffer from any sound quality issues however, and salvaged the situation. The vocal distortions were rectified midway through the song and thus this complex and symphonic masterpiece was ultimately consummated very well in the end. The videos showed a jumble of historic, military and industrial scenes, the two hot brunettes returned to the swings high above the stage, and the concert reached an initial conclusion with “Stop” from “Ritual de lo Habitual”l before a brief break. For encores the band performed two more pieces, the first of these too noisy and chaotic for this writer to identify, and the finale was “Ocean Size.” As the lights went up, all the performers came out on stage to wave greetings and appreciation to the satisfied crowd.

Addendum

One further note is worth stating. The “Theater of the Escapists,” billed on the website as “The Underground Orgy,” promised spectators a “unique blend of alternative rock, art and immersive theater.” The promotions on their website went on to claim that “barbers, photographers, poets, actors, etc.” would be set up in the lobbies of the theater.

If there was any truth to that claim, it wasn’t evident to the ticket holders who were hustled through the lobby in the usual, brusque fashion. Nor was there any validity to the claim that VIP status existed or was worth paying for. Sure, a very nice (if somewhat risque) poster was given. But anyone with VIP status who asked to sit in the stadium seating in the balcony was told that those seats wee already “sold out.” To whom? When? Furthermore, those with so-called VIP tickets stood and watched from ordinary locations while dozens of presumably even more Very Important Persons were escorted into truly advantaged viewing platforms, barricaded off from the rest of us.

Finally, there was a lack of any valid reference to the theme of “escapism.” No escape artist hung suspended in a straight-jacket from which to extricate himself. No one was shackled and immersed into a coffin-like tank of water. Nothing of that sort occurred. Instead, it was the same, generic and predictable stuff that was deemed roguish 20 years ago. Concert-goers to this music scene have again and again seen similar grainy black and white footage mainly from the 1950s, many times by now. The hype accorded to “Theater of the Escapists” constituted nothing short of false advertising.

Perry Farrell, great composer and musician that he is, has come to think of himself as the mastermind of alternative entertainment since his creation of the immensely successful Lolapalooza series. He has, however overreached in failing to create something unique or even thematically appropriate with this tour labeled “Theater of the Escapists—The Underground Orgy” which proved to be more an orgy of overstatement.

The Birthday Massacre/Mexicali Live/Dec. 11, 2011

By Doktor John

Teaneck, NJ

Mexicali Live is an excellent venue for an event featuring an audio-visual performance group like The Birthday Massacre. Besides an exceptional sound system, it features a wide-open standing room, with dinner-table seating along one side-wall and in a loft-like second level at the far end of the room. All of these provide a reasonably good view of the elevated stage which is situated against the front wall facing backward into the auditorium. TBM were the headliners on this, the tenth stop on their nation-wide tour. Earlier stops were spent opening for another band, Dir En Grey, but this night the openers were old-school grrl punk rockers Verbal Equinox, and hard-core-metal quartet P T Grimm, featuring a politically agitated, potty-mouth male vocalist supported by a pair of theatrically slutty, faux cheerleaders.

As for TBM, they pleased the sold-out crowd of die-hard fans as well as new-comers with their over-the-top, thunderous, yet melodious metal as well as with creepy costumes and make-up. The visual style of this black-clad, black-tressed band was Tim Burton-esque and gory. Theatrical blood oozed from the chin of one performer and out of the ears of another. There was the customary element of innocence-defiled in the lyrics and the actions of the cutesy female lead vocalist.

The hour-plus set drew from TBM’s half dozen albums with emphasis on the 2010 Pin and Needles and the 2011 EP Imaginary Monsters. “Red Stars” from Walking With Strangers, “Horror Show” from Violet and “In the Dark” from Pins and Needles show-cased their synth-goth style. Every song is richly hook-laden and catchy. Power chord bursts of rhythm left just enough time in between for the forcedly sweet, 70s style vocals of female lead Chibi. The overall effect was somewhat like listening to Smashing Pumpkins at their most explosive accompanying Madonna at her most child-like.

After a brief goodnight, they returned with a pair of encore pieces, “Sleep Walking” and “Midnight,” both from the Pins and Needles. The crowd was ecstatic and cried for more.

Peter Gabriel / Susquehanna Bank Center / Jun. 25, 2011

by Doktor John

Camden, NJ

The renowned father of World Beat, singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel appeared at this 25,000-seat venue which serves the greater Philadelphia area on his New Blood Tour, accompanied by a 40 piece orchestra. Apparently Gabriel, who in decades past founded the prog-rock Genesis, has abandoned rock music, at least for the moment, employing arranger John Metcalf to transform his songs into the modern classical style resembling the orchestral works of Leonard Bernstein and others 20th Century composers. Always a social activist for progressive causes, Gabriel has intensified his discussion of political issues, using the stage as a pulpit from which to preach his vision of third-world justice and liberation philosophy.

Norwegian songstress, and vocally delicate, blond beauty Ane Brun opened with two of her own folk-rock songs, accompanying herself on a classical guitar.

A dazzling, brilliant, ever changing and spectacularly-lit electronic screen served as a curtain which slowly lifted away during Gabriel’s heavy, melancholy version of Bowie’s “Heroes,” with video images of third world strife shown on a pair of twenty-foot high screens that straddled the stage.

Aside from his morose rendition of Arcade Fire’s “My Body Is a Cage,” and “Diggin’ In the Dirt,” I wasn’t familiar with many other songs in the first half of the show. Perhaps I didn’t recognize them in the symphonic style in which they were played, featuring relentless, often-discordant, full string section accompaniment and with no semblance of a rock beat. Guitars were absent, and the only drums seemed to be the tympani. Between songs, Gabriel, who remained heavy-hearted for most of the show, praised the triumph of legalization of same sex marriage in New York.

A coincidental fireworks display over the Delaware drew the attention of many during the half-hour break. Gabriel lamented that he had hoped to sing his mantra-like encomium to South African martyr “Biko” accompanied by the sounds of the nearby explosions, but that didn’t work out. Most spectators returned to their seats during “San Jacinto” which was the first number after the intermission. The ultra-close-up face of a wild animal, perhaps a wolf, blended with his own countenance on the video display, and we knew that it had something to do with animal rights or ecology.

The first really upbeat song of the night was “Secret World,” and it came as a welcome relief from all the somber topics and sounds. Gabriel soon continued with his liturgy of liberal causes invoking the names of poets and psychoanalysts, often in the context of encounters with noble, indigenous cultures. He showed a touching, grainy black and white video of himself with his now-99 year-old dad during a heart-breaking rendition of “Father Son.”

Ever topical, he introduced a ponderous version of “Signal to Noise” with a jocular commentary about the pervasiveness of cell phones in this day and age. But then the gloomy “Mercy Street”, with its mysterious beach-sand and aquatic video continued to bring people down to a contemplative state. Joy returned to the audience during the inappropriately exuberant “Red Rain,” which was played while the video showed scary, primitively-drawn cartoons of red droplets coming from clouds, from eyes and from the sky. He ended the second set skipping his thick frame across the stage to the “boom boom boom” of “Solsbury Hill.”

An encore set included the relatively cheerful “In Your Eyes” followed by a doleful “Don’t Give Up,” which he explained was dedicated to the suffering of the “Great Depression,” which he added was to be blamed on “the magnificent work of the banks.” Ane Brun, who served as one of the backup vocalists during the whole concert, took on the role sung by Kate Bush in the original.

Drawing to a close, he struck an optimistic chord by bringing up what he perceives to be the realistic possibility of endless clean energy through fusion, something he was promised was due to go online with a year.
His final number, “The Nest that Sailed the Skies,” was purely instrumental, showing a video of a child curled in fetal position in a straw bird’s nest, spinning gently as an obvious metaphor for the Earth that Gabriel so badly wants us to revere as precious.

Saturday May 14 saw the Social Distortion tour land at NJ’s historic Stone Pony Summerstage in support of their latest album, Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes. (Scroll down to see the review of the album or click on the link at right: “Recorded Music,” under “Reviews”) There were two opening bands, the first less noteworthy, and the second, a Celtic-style country band with a virtuoso fiddler, was more fun to listen to, although we never learned their name.
A slight drizzle passed through and night fell. Around 8:30 PM Social Distortion blew onto the stage with Mike Ness sporting a fedora complete with a feather in the hatband and wearing a long, black raincoat. The raincoat came off revealing retro-style suspenders over a white shirt and dark pants. They were immediately into a charged-up version of the instrumental “Road Zombie,” opening track off Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes, then went straight into “So Far Away,” off the 1990 eponymous album, Social Distortion.


Ness’s recurring theme is self-recrimination, so well propounded in the next three pieces, “King of Fools,” “Bad Luck” and “Mommy’s Little Monster.”

He then announced and the band performed a 1982 obscurity, whose title we never caught before launching into the favorite radio hit “Machine Gun Blues” from the new album. This was followed by what may be the best known and loved of all their oeuvre, “Ball and Chain” which charged the crowd both musically and emotionally.

Mike Ness took time to warm to his audience with some affectionate patter, then launched into “Don’t Drag Me Down” from White Light White Heat and the slow-dance ballad “Bakersfield.” Something at that point made Ness observe how crazy-looking certain members of the crowd appeared to be as a segue into “Gimme the Sweet and Lowdown.”

Once again he picked up the negative self-image theme with “Down Here With the Rest of Us,” but sang a song of ambivalent redemption in “Reach for the Sky” off the 2004 Sex, Love and Rock’n’Roll.
Then it was back to songs of remorse with “Prison Bound.”

He stopped to talk and to cajole the audience with the back-handed compliment that their lives were every bit a messed up as his and that they were, as much as Ness himself, the subjects of his narratives, thus introducing the much beloved “Story of My Life.”With that, they thanked us and bid us good night signifying that the main performance.

Within a few minutes they stormed back out, Ness spoke a little about NJ and the East Coast sound, making reference to Bruce Springsteen, but there was no Springsteen cover. Instead, after summoning a pair of female back-up vocalists they proceeded into “California Hustle and Flow” and the execrable “Can’t Take It With You.” Neither Mike Ness solo nor Social D as a group are shy about paying tribute, which is exactly how they ended, namely with Merle Kilgore’s and June Carter’s anthemic “Ring of Fire,” made into an American musical classic by her husband, the great Johnny Cash. This left the crowd totally satisfied.

The National/ Radio City
June 16, 2010
By Doktor John
New York

Few events are as disappointing to a music-fan as a poor performance by a favorite band. In the past few years, The National has been catapulting from Cincinnati obscurity to Brooklyn hipster notoriety to national (no pun intended) renown on a perfect mix of clever melodies, offbeat rhythms and poetic, self-effacing lyrics delivered by frontman Matt Berninger’s velvety, understated baritone.

This night, besides Beringer, there were one or two alternating backup vocalists, a couple of keyboards, guitar, drums, bass and a brass duo with trumpet (or such) and trombone. They played favorites like Secret Meeting, off the album Alligator and Squalor Victoria off Boxer; plus plenty from their latest release, High Violet, such as Bloodbuzz Ohio, Anyone’s Ghost, Afraid of Anyone and Conversation 16.

Their live performances, two of which I previously had the pleasure to attend, have provided joyous, transcendent moments of musical rapture. Why did this all fail to happen this night?

Radio City’s performance by The National went wrong, very wrong in every particular. Something about this grand, imposing venue must have provoked an insanely inappropriate intent to overstatement and bombast, the last things one wanted to hear from The National. Instead of singing in his inimitable, warm style, Berninger screamed his words, discarding all the musicality of his lyrics. His soft baritone was transformed into harsh barking.

The National usually employs touches of brass for neat, limited color accents to the songs, but here a trumpet and a trombone blasted prolonged, piercing cries over and in opposition to the melody. The bass drum and bass guitar were so disproportionately loud and thunderously deep that the audiences’ chest cavities shook, even way up in the second and third mezzanines. The people in front of me were holding their fingers in their ears to shield against the criminally painful highs with which the sound team assaulted us.

The only song in their repertoire for which this kind of chaotic, noisy approach actually worked was the hard-rocking Abel, which we heard as we exited early from the show, disappointed at being unable to enjoy the performance but still convinced that The National is one of the best bands to come along in the new millennium.