Peter Murphy @ The Roxy

Peter Murphy @ The Roxy

[music | Leonard Cohen - Jazz Police]

Ali Eskandarian opened. I have no pictures of him, because I didn't want to get bounced since the place was still pretty empty, but he was a spaz. I especially liked his cohort, whose name I can't find. He looked just like Early Grayce (Brad Pitt) from Kalifornia, and did a good job of engineering the bleeps and bloops.

More and Pics

The Peter Murphy set was great. The sound could have been lots better, but his connection with the audience is like no other. It seems as if he probably stared straight into the eyes of each audience member and, for a couple of lines, sang directly to them. He also had a fun question and answer period. The best quotes (paraphrased):

"The Dresden Dolls BETTER be here...Amanda, get the fuck out here, where are you, fuck it..."

"You can ask questions about Bauhaus, It's okay, really"

"We're (Bauhaus) all good guys, but when we get together, we're just such a bunch of Marys"

"They can play the music, which is important, but who can sing the songs to you? Only me, right? Well there you have it"

He made a point of mentioning that he isn't saying anything about "The Incident", which precluded a Bauhaus tour in support of Going Away White.

He was hilarious and amazingly interactive with the audience. The setlist was a great mix of old and new, Bauhaus and Solo, with lots of Dadaist random snippets of lyrics mixed into whatever song he was singing ("We're Jammin' in the name of the lord", "Telegram Sam, he's my main man", Doors songs, more Bauhaus lyrics...). I feel so lucky to have seen two Bauhaus shows (one opening for NIN), plus this, in the last couple of years, and have a live CD from the Orpheum show. I'm sorry that a Bauhaus tour didn't happen, but it really was good to see a Peter Murphy solo show, with non-Bauhaus material, performed his way.

All in all it was a great show with lots of love from both sides, and lots of angular hopping spinning dancing, which I liked. I had this vision of Peter Murphy's day, watching Oprah or Ellen and hopping for an hour in front of the TV to keep in shape to perform.

Here are some of the better pictures, there are more at Flickr. "People playing the Melodica" (one, two)is now one of my favorite things to take pictures of, however there wasn't really much of an angle tonight, so I didn't really score well there: