Peter Murphy & David J
The local underground goth scene was embracing British minor chord maestros Bauhaus from their earliest U.S. tours. After playing San Diego several times, the band’s bassist David J liked our city well enough to relocate here, where he occasionally DJs and once even sat in with a local Bauhaus tribute band. Now that Bauhaus appears to be on yet another extended break, singer Peter Murphy occasionally comes to town with a solo set, but his January 24 appearance at Observatory North Park will feature a partial Bauhaus reunion with the participation of David J. Described as Celebrating 40 Years of Bauhaus, the duo will perform their former band’s entire 1980 album In the Flat Field, plus an “extended encore of Bauhaus classics.”
It’s hard to overestimate the impact that debut studio album had and still has, in both the monochromatic sound structure and as a DIY self-produced archive of exactly what the band was all about musically at that moment in time. Back then, it was more about drama than depression, though no doubt the dark topics and bleak nihilism explored in the lyrics were taken to far more depressive extremes on subsequent albums, not to mention by later bands who tended to equate goth with death. The Observatory show is the fifth U.S. date of a tour being billed as The Ruby Celebration. Though unspecified in advance press, the trek is likely intended to promote the upcoming release of The Bela Session, remastering Bauhaus’ original 1979 studio recordings that led to their breakthrough single “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.” In addition, there’s the impending colored vinyl re-release of their complete catalog via Beggars Arkive.
