Bauhaus Rock The Haus For First Time In 15 Years

07/10/1998 6:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen

(7/10/98) - Granddaddies of Goth Bauhaus played their first show in 15 years last night at the Hollywood Athletic Club in Los Angeles, as a dress rehearsal/ sneak preview for their eagerly anticipated three-night concert stint at the Hollywood Palladium this weekend.

Pulse rates and expectations were high as the black-clad, black-lipsticked crowd--many of whom had won tickets as part of KROQ-FM's "one pair of tickets per minute" giveaway that day--waited for Peter Murphy, Daniel Ash, David J and Kevin Haskins to take to the stage. When the band finally did emerge from a dense dry-ice fog around 10:30pm, Murphy was resplendent in a white peasant shirt, black satin waistcoat and blue brocade trousers, his famous knife-edge cheekbones as prominent as ever; Ash looked quite the rocker with his jet-black rooster coiff, form-fitting PVC T-shirt and equally snug paisley stretch pants; and Haskins and J were the low-key sidemen in basic head-to-toe black.

The concert seemed to be a near-religious experience for the hundreds of fans--many of whom never had the chance to see Bauhaus live before the seminal group disbanded in 1983--sardined into the intimate venue. The audience was a vast sea of outstretched hands straining toward to Murphy (who, when he later ventured into the front row, was lovingly pawed, petted and groped by male and female concertgoers alike), and practically every person in attendance reverently sang in unison to every lyric as if reciting sacred mantras. The songs in the hour-plus set--including "In The Flat Field," "She's In Parties," "The Sanity Assassin," "A God In An Alcove," "Kick In The Eye," "Hollow Hills," "Silent Hedges " and the epic finale, Bauhaus's signature song "Bela Lugosi's Dead"--may have been classics of doom 'n' gloom, but the Athletic Club was filled with nothing but ear-to-ear smiles last night.

Bauhaus play their first official, full-length concerts at the Palladium tonight, Saturday and Sunday. These L.A. dates were initially the only ones planned, but response to these one-off reunion shows was so intense--tickets sold out completely within minutes--that Bauhaus have now scheduled the following concerts across North America:

8/13 & 14 - Seattle, Moore Theatre
8/15 - Vancouver, B.C., Queen Elizabeth Theatre
8/17 & 18 - San Francisco, Warfield
8/20 - San Diego, Golden Hall
8/21 - Las Vegas, Hard Rock Joint
8/24 - Denver, Mammoth Events Center
8/26 -Minneapolis, State Theatre
8/27 & 28 - Chicago, Riviera Theatre
8/29 - Cleveland, Nautica Stage
8/31 - Detroit, State Theatre
9/2 - Toronto, ONT, Warehouse
9/3 - D.C., 9:30 Club
9/10 & 11 - New York, Hammerstein Ballroom

-- Lyndsey Parker, Los Angeles