Where have I been? What time do you call this?

How long has it been??

What can I say? It's been a topsy turvy set of months. I've been trying to tighten the purse strings for a while and then the smack in the face I really didn't want was the collective genius known as Brexit.

It seems to be a hippy dream ideal to want to live in a world where borders, race, sexuality and gender need have no real profile and are irrelevant, but that seems a dream moving further from reality. In a short period where David Bowie has left us and the world seems to have hardly noticed the legacy that just one man left behind, the country I live in seems to becoming more and more intolerant and regressive as time passes.

Why is this relevant I hear you say? Because the vote by the British public whether to leave the European union has its many sides to argue, but out of it has come an intensity of bigotry and a licence for intolerance. For those that may not know what has happened in this country, the place where I dropped from my mother and therefore am expected to have allegiance in gratitude, every person eligable to vote was asked to decide whether to leave the European Union. While I have my own opinions on the matter, the biggest argument to come out of the debate to leave was to stop the "legions" of foreigners "taking over our beloved country". This seemed to give voice to an otherwise quietly shamed population of ageing racists that revelled in the opportunity to be brash about their colonial attitudes.

But I digress, the outcome of this shameful set of proceedings was the majority vote going to the campaign to leave the European Union. Out of this moment of genius, the British pound slumped making the vast majority of what I needed to collect, stupidly expensive. Just Great! So apart from racism becoming a little more of an acceptable attitude and, of course, the rest of the baggage that goes along with those bigoted opinions, prices in the rest of the world have shot up, including postage rates.

There have been some interesting developments that have not gone by unnoticed in my slow period though. There have been some interesting statements that some of the earlier 4AD releases came in glossy covers and the later ones had a more matt finish. This has only been on a couple of UK releases, but I can't verify at the moment if there is any truth in it, but I am on the case. There was also a release, again from the UK, that came with both the negative and positive female wrestlers photos on the centre label. Again, I have to get this verified myself before I can give any definitive answer as to whether it's true, but I will update my findings here.

Another interesting development over the past year has been the number of music collection exhibitions taking place. These have ranged from photographic collections and memorabilia to actual record collections. These have been rare and scattered over Europe, but an interesting development none the less. I find this interesting because it is what I am aiming to do with my collection in 2030, on 4AD's 50th anniversary. I still have no idea where, or if anyone in the world will be remotely interested in it, but I'll worry about that nearer the time.

I was also fortunate enough to see Sex Gang Children recently as well. As with the Peter Murphy tour done recently, there is a new trend for older bands to play either an old album or do a tour playing the songs from an earlier period. The Peter Murphy gig was mindblowing, playing just the old bauhaus songs. All the songs had so much energy and were so fresh and new, 35 years on. Sex Gang Children did a similar thing, playing songs from the Song and Legend era. The music was just so refreshing and unique and full of ghusto. I was fortunate enough to meet Andi Sex Gang after the show and I just had to tell him how privileged I felt to be able to see himself and Peter Murphy play such material having been too young (just) to miss it the first time around. As I said to Andi Sex Gang, I find it so strange that with the acceptance of all types of music nowadays without the extreme elitist tribalism that always used to be so prelevant that, of all the music styles being performed by the younger bands, hardly anyone picks up and experiments with these styles of music. There is simply nothing like early Bauhaus and Sex Gang Children around anymore, which is such a crying shame.

I also have the knack of coming across the most amazing finds when I'm strapped for cash. It's been a tight year financially and the collection has had to take a back seat. It's always under these circumstances when one of the Lonely As An Eysore boxes comes up for sale. Predictably one has. This is arguably THE 4AD collection piece, a beautiful wooden box, limited to 100 copies, of which only 30 ever went on general sale to the public. It exchanges hands for around £1300 on a few occasions and rarely comes up for sale. Needless to say, once again it's outside my grasp, darn it!!

Finally, in keeping with the spirit of this blog entry and as an "up-yours" to the growing intolerance I seem to be noticing of late, I wish to inform my wonderful readers of the latest book by the author of "Facing the other way the story of 4ad" Martin Aston. He has a new book that came out on October 13th called "BREAKING DOWN THE WALLS OF HEARTACHE: HOW MUSIC CAME OUT" and described as "a comprehensive history – spanning a hundred years, starting in 1920s Harlem – of the queer pioneers of Popular Music with over 90 new interviews."

Hopefully I won't stay away so long next time

From a time when music was inventive...Bauhaus

Years ago, as a young lad hungry for music, I spent many a year just going to any gig going. When I wrote my Fanzine in 1991-92, I went around the local counties interviewing bands and seeing concerts. Then when I joined a band and did gigs around the country, I inevitably saw a lot of other bands also doing the same thing. Then on top of that, going out nearly every weekend and then several times a week, meant seeing a lots of bands that just happened to be on.

Unfortunately, I would say in my humble opinion, that the vast majority of bands I saw were somewhere between OK and terrible. On the rare occasion that there was something that had potential or promise, they were never seen again. For me the early nineties were a turning point in music, where popularity started to mean more than originality in music. Even in the marginalised gothic culture that I was heavily into, anyone who thought the big goth four were just ok (Mission, Sisters, Nephilim, Rosetta Stone) and preferred more of the diversity of the culture, were even marginalised within a marginalised culture. Where goth music had sprouted out from the roots of punk, by the early '90's it had drifted heavily into standard stadium rock and the diversity was drastically diminishing. Every band on the scene was trying to either emulate the big four or emulate each other emulating the big four. The only hope at the time was from outside the UK.

So in my older years, I got more picky about what music I went to see. In the yesteryear, before the internet and a million young bands, the only way of finding new music was either taking a chance and buying it or going to copious gigs in the hope of stumbling across something worthwhile. Of course today, anyone can spend an eternity looking for new music on the interweb. There was an interesting statement in this months record collector magazine about how the easy access to music has cheapened it for many of today's youth, to the point that the majority just don't see the worth in music and have very little attention span for it.

In the past fews years I have seen some of the best gigs of my life. I've already gone on before (at great length you may think...sorry) about how good Dead Can Dance are live, or even better a Lisa Gerrard gig. But this week I went to a gig that really blew me away. Peter Murphy is currently doing a world tour, playing only Bauhaus music. I saw the first leg of the UK part of the tour this weekend and I have to say it was one of the best gigs I have ever seen. I came out it thinking about how privileged I am to be able to listen and witness the kind of music I am exposed to at the moment. I was too young to have seen Bauhaus when they were a live act, so be able to just grab a snippet of that experience before either I or the creators of this music pass away has been a rare honour indeed and one that I would encourage anyone to see before the tour is over.



What also struck me about the gig and has also been the elements that I found the most fascinating about goth music when I first got into it, were the strong combinations of drums and bass. Bauhaus' music was built on this combination, with everything else being an additional flavouring on the top. Today the bass guitar seems a forgotten instrument, unfortunately. My love of Joy Division and The Cure also had this same element, where the bass accompanied by some skilful and diverse drumming patterns, makes the music so powerful and strong, that the additional of a guitar or keyboard becomes almost an afterthought. The rhythms punched out at the Peter Murphy gig from the songs Dark Entries, Stigmata Martyr, In the Flat Field and Kick In The Eye were so powerful and strong it kicked the audience into a frenzy. These songs are over 30 years old now and still there is nothing like it around. I couldn't help but think how the younger generation are missing out on such music as there was practically no-one under 35 years old at the gig.


So just in case you are under 35 years old and starting out in a band, for goodness sake, give this stuff a listen, the world needs more music like this.


Then send me a copy of it please.
If you have the chance, go and see Peter Murphy on his tour. http://www.petermurphy.info/pmlive.html


The one surprise song from the set was a cover of Dead Can Dance's Severance, which wasn't done that well, but then I would think that Dead Can Dance wouldn't do a Bauhaus song very well either.


Just a quick message to TinyPie that I have seen your comment. There seems to be yet another version of the Bauhaus single Dark Entries which TinyPie has found, so that would bring the tally up to eight versions, will this end I ask myself while pulling the remainder of my hair out! I will get this added soon. Thanks again to you all for reading, let me know if you have seen Peter Murphy on this tour and let me know your thoughts

I have twice the standards, they're double standards

I know, I know, don't nag me, I've taken too long to post again. I have been a busy chappy. The book I'm writing is taking considerably longer than expected, but is slowly progressing. I have also been hit by numerous small disasters at home, which hit the home finances somewhat, making buying 4ad stuff a secondary priority. So far this year we have suffered a bathroom leak, a central heating blockage, a total washing machine failure, my wife going off to Australia for two weeks and the car needing tyres, brake discs and pads. Then we had a holiday booked in Italy, but that was the inspiration for this blog entry.

I don't generally go mad when it comes to gigs and paying for high ticket prices. I have seen over the past few years how concert ticket prices have soared. When the average ticket price for a large stadium size gig a few years ago was around the £20 to £30 mark, many large stadium concerts today have ticket prices of £100, £150 or even £200.

As a consumer I have always thought that I have a responsibility to help maintain the market. There should always be a level where a price is just too much for a service or an item. If we, as consumers, have no limit and are willing to pay anything, then we encourage a market to over inflate a price because the market knows the consumer will pay it. This is evident in car insurance for young people. Years ago, a teenager couldn't afford several thousand pounds a year on car insurance, so had to forgo owning a car until they were a little older. This reduced consumer demand and the insurance was cheaper than today. Today, teenagers feel that they cannot do without a car, that having a car is not a luxury, but a necessity and therefore are willing to pay any price to be insured and be able to drive, even if that means getting into a large debt at an early age.

This is also true of any shop a consumer visits. During my holiday in Italy, I visited a second hand shop in Florence. To my surprise, the shop had loads of stock that I wanted and was desperate to get. But I had to walk out empty handed because the prices were just too high, about double what they should have been. To pay the prices would allow that business to carry on inflating the prices which would reflect back on me and other customers again the next time we visit, because the prices would likely have increased. I do talk quite a bit about the worth of certain records in monetary terms, but this is one of the reasons. When buying records, there has to be a standard set where the price paid is too much and the retailer is just being greedy, but then the price has to be a certain level so that the retailer can keep a job and help us source those records we want. So a balance has to occur.

I think this is the same with concert tickets. There has to be a level set where anything over a reasonable price, the promoters are just taking the piss. But unfortunately if a minority are willing to ruin it for the majority by paying any price for a concert ticket, then the prices will just keep going up. I can understand when a concert is a rare event and the punters are afraid of missing a rare event. When Led Zeppelin decided to reform to do just a couple of concerts, after nearly 30 years since they split up, many of the fans must have been willing to pay just about anything to have seen them. But in the end, it's just a gig.

But then, to be a complete hypocrite, I'm tempted to break the rules to see Dead Can Dance, but I wouldn't directly break them. Some artists are worth the extra effort. When I saw that Dead Can Dance were to play a Roman Amphitheatre close to the city of Florence, I thought it was an opportunity not to miss. I live in the UK, so it would be quite a trip just for a gig. So I decided to wrap a holiday around it, giving me the chance to see the lovely Italian countryside and the incredible history that Tuscany had to offer. So I didn't break my own rule directly as the ticket price was just at the top end of what I'm willing to pay, but the rest of the trip, the flights, car hire and holiday added immensely to the price of the ticket!

The concert was worth it, as also was the rest of the holiday. About half way through the concert, behind the stage and over in the far distant mountains, a huge thunderstorm brewed and exploded into a fantastic light show as though the Roman gods themselves approved of the music. Quite a unique experience and worth every penny.

This weekend I'm going to see Peter Murphy play a lot closer to home. He is touring, playing only songs from Bauhaus. Will it be a good gig? I'll let you know quite soon.