SUICIDE: CBGB's, August 16, 1986 - White Man's Civilization - As It Really Is

The jury is still out on the music of the 70s, but the smoke is starting to clear. It's easier to see who was truly influential, and whose avant garde pretensions were just that.

More than a decade after their debut at the now-legendary new wave spawning ground, the Mercer Arts Center, Suicide are still ahead of their time, still waiting for the world to catch up with their intrinsically radical sound.

Suicide, in essence, created the electronic roadmap for the future, stripping pop as far as it could be stripped, far beyond the already extensive demolition work done by the punk scene around them. Alan Vega and Martin Rev threw out the guitars, bass and drums and replaced them with an ear-shattering drone of throbbing organ and drum machine. They kept the attitude, though. Suicide's early performances were classic rock and roll bedlam. Vega strangled audience members with his mic cord and spit out lit cigarettes onto crowded tables at Max's, prowling around the stage like a caged animal, ready to strike at the slightest provocation.

He hasn't changed much, and neither has his music. Suicide's brilliantly minimalist work has influenced a generation of underground artists like Lydia Lunch and DNA. More mainstream performers – from the Eurythmics to Depeche Mode to Sigue Sigue Spiutnik – have picked up their imaginative use of electronics. But a visit to Suicide country is still a shock, even to the most jaded ears.

The band's CBGB's show opened with a rather romantic ceremonial piece of classical music that was gradually attacked and overcome by a relentless drum machine which got louder and louder, an aural war taking place on a darkened stage. The music retreated as if beaten in submission. The drum machine, victorious, continued. And continued. Many bands strive for an unpredictable, dangerous quality in their live shows; Suicide achieved it before even coming on stage. The drums continued, getting louder, causing confusion. How long was this going to go on? Was this going to be the whole set, just to piss people off?

Vega and Rev finally made their entrance and launched into an aggressively cold synthetic beat, with Vega's echo-laden war hoops screeching above the throb. The effect was that of the No. 6 IRT subway train, roaring into the 14th Street station – when you're stuck on the tracks. Many metal bands pride themselves on a drum beat that's loud enough to be felt by the audience. That quality is present in every note of Suicide's sound. They don't play, they attack. The sound crawls up your face, infiltrates your bloodstream. It has a thickness, like the humidity on a hot city day, that settles in your chest cavity, making it hard to breathe.

The "song" droned on like an endurance experiment, as if Vega was conducting a top secret military test for some new weapon which causes insanity through sound wave damage. Suicide create mutant rock and roll for the Road Warrior age – the apocalyptic choir of machine drones, spewing forth killer noise.

Vega has mellowed a bit since his earlier performances; his worn-looking face and fattened body hint that it's rough out there on the edge in Suicide's vision of reality. Unlike the high, cerebral cool of many noise bands, Suicide's music has deep emotional impact – it's frightening and haunting, and it's coming to get you.

Vega's stage presence is similarly disturbing. He radiates anger, pacing back and forth in sharp, ominous movements – one minute suggesting ancient Egyptian religious rites, or kung fu the next, wrapping his wrists in the mic cord, simulating bondage.

Vega does not sing, as he does on his much more accessible solo albums. With Suicide, he is a living sound effect, ranging from animal barks to shrieks from the netherworld – like screams of a psychotic locked overnight in the city morgue. In sound and movement, he is both frantic and controlled, always combative, hitting an audience member's hand, prowling in and out of the stark white light provided by a ceiling spot.

It was a performance that was more to be admired than liked, and the CBGB's crowd had a mixed reaction. Many fled in the middle of show. Someone in the audience called out "turn on the jukebox!" during the one and only silent moment of the set. Suicide played only four songs, including "Ghost Rider" and "Rocket USA" from their brilliant groundbreaking 1977 self-titled debut album, thought by many to be a classic (and due for re-release on CD this month). But, considering the relentless intensity of their performance, 35 minutes was quite enough.

In an odd interview, when asked what his advice would be to the youth of America, Vega answered, "shoot up." Though not a heroin addict himself, Vega still clearly lives in a junkie's mindset – divorced and alienated from mainstream society, vehemently uncommercial, not giving a shit if he's likable or not, immersed in the sadness and decay of modern urban life.

With their morose, discordant grunts and harsh electronic whispers and screams, Suicide convey these feelings of extreme malaise more effectively than most groups who have lyrics and melody lines at their disposal. Perhaps someday, say, 1999, mass audiences will have grown sophisticated enough to appreciate them. Or perhaps not. But in the meantime, seeing Suicide live is still a memorable experience – rather like watching a nuclear reactor melt down before your very eyes.

This review originally published by The East Coast Rocker on September 10, 1986. 

THE CURE / 10,000 MANIACS - July 8, 1986 - The Pier - The Only Thing Predictable Here Is Nonpredictability.

The Cure do what they damn please; it is both their strength and their curse. During their ten years together, the band has changed attitude and musical approach at will, going through record companies the way most people go through socks. They follow no one's rules but their own.

In these days of performers who calculatingly search for a hot sound and then hang on to it for dear life, their attitude is refreshing, but also leads to a rather erratic live show, as was the case at the Pier.

Leader and group conscience, Robert Smith likes to surprise people and did so immediately by showing up with short, Marine-cut hair instead of his trademark wild foot-high doo.  Though he probably just did it because he was hot in the summer weather, this simple act: a) rendered every existing publicity shot obsolete; b) made all the Robert Smith clones in the audience look stupid (no doubt, causing deep consternation to both clones and Elektra, their current label). It was, actually, perfectly symbolic of what the Cure is all about.

The band's artsy, melancholy quality seemed incongruous at the Pier, with its sunny, festive atmosphere, vigorous beer-selling by the concert's sponsor, Miller, and ironic backdrop of the Battleship Interpid, complete with warplanes.

The sold-out performance was attended by both yuppies-in-training (who seemed comfortable) and clubbies (who didn't, though this show was an education in imaginative ways to wear black in the summer heat). Despite great effort on the part of the smoke machine (most of which ended floating up the West Side Highway) and lighting technicians, the Cure's moody music would have sounded better someplace cavernous, dived-out and dark.

Also incongruous was the opening band, 10,000 Maniacs. Their countrified, REM-styled music seemed an odd match for the Cure, and for their own name, which conjures visions of a horde of punks or metalheads.

There's a sense of purity about this band that's rare in this world of the prepackaged and stereotyped. Their brand of folk rock is matter-of-fact and simple, their stage style doesn't call attention to personalities; they just play. 10,000 Maniacs doesn't even seem connected to the strident, callous 1980s. Even lead singer Natalie Merchant's all black dress seemed more evocative of the Amish than the morbid trendiness usually associated with the drag.

Merchant is the band's best asset; she sings with genuine feeling and gutsiness, in a country soprano voice reminiscent of Patsy Cline. Even with an unappreciative crowd ppand not much time to play, 10,000 Maniacs provided an entertaining, if low-key set and have a promising future (though not necessarily in the Top 40).

The between-set music was another odd choice; an artsy, pretentious, modern/classical piano piece whose low energy ambiance had the crowd drifting into a collective coma while nursing their Millers.

The Cure began their set with earlier material, featuring that surreal, mean sound that the Cult has done such good things with lately.

Though the band took a decided turn towards a more cheerful pop sound after their 1982 LP, Pornography, they seem to still like the record, performing a number of cuts from it. Pornography epitomized the Cure's gloomy, suffering artist period, and is in some ways their best album. The LPs brutal, hard-edged, depressed sound is reminiscent both of Joy Division and Siouxie & the Banshees (with whom Smith played guitar for a considerable period) -- possibly music to commit suicide to -- but an excellent example of the genre.

Apparently, producing such a dark album got to the band; the Cure sort of broke up soon after. After re-forming, Smith shocked the band's considerable cult following by releasing the pop single, "Let's Go To Bed." The material that followed on 1985's The Head On The Door was in a much lighter vein.

Which is where the erratic quality of the Pier show comes in.  The Cure switched back and forth between material from Pornography and their later releases. This, the tinkly, Japanese-flavored "Kyoto Song" was followed by the mournful, synthesized "Charlotte Sometimes," then "In Between Days" ("this is our folk song," Smith quipped), with its floating dance rhythms, and the funky, upbeat "The Walk."

Then, just as the audience was all happy and dancing in their seats, they launched into "One Hundred Years" from Pornography, at twice the volume, with screechy, metal-edged guitars--a compelling but definitely non-danceable number that., again. proved the Cure will always pull the rug out from under you just when you think you've got them all figured out. The dirtiest word in the universe for Robert Smith must be "predictable."

In the end the confusion didn't matter. The crowd loved every minute of the Cure's set, even taking their lives in their hands by dancing on the ends of the bleachers above a 15-foot drop. The band was enthusiastically called back for multiple encores, including the anthem-like "Boys Don't Cry" and "Let's Go To Bed." The latter is probably the Cure's most accessible song, but has an air of depressed resignation even amidst all the cheerfulness and synth-pop trappings. The past is not so easy to get rid of after all.

Robert Smith is a very talented singer/songwriter who, judging by the crowd's reaction and the Cure's recent foray into the Top 100, may be heading for the Big Time despite all his efforts to avoid it. Smith might just become the proverbial overnight sensation - only 10 years in the making.  One suspects he won't like it one bit.

Review originally published in The East Coast Rocker on July 23, 1986.