Peter Murphy
Peter Murphy live@Bologna - ex Ruvido 08/07/2005

THE REVIEW

It is a beautiful summer evening, cool and breezy, when you and your black-dressed friend *c* join the line that, long and quite immobile, unrolls up to the entrance of the former Ruvido. You puff on a cigarette, *c* talks to you about Bauhaus, the epic dark-new wave-post punk, the penultimate album by Peter Murphy which she liked a lot while the last one cannot be found. The guys with smudged eyeliner behind you say "eh, because he (Peter) is an icon, dioppò", you only know he sang in Bauhaus, a band you're not very familiar with but appreciate, and even though you don’t know the new songs nor have an idea of what the set list might be, you like concerts and you're curious to see the aforementioned Icon live.
Occasionally someone stares at you and says “nice sweatshirt” and you think you didn’t expect to find so many Interpol fans there in the crowd. Or they're all blatantly mocking you, which is a possibility not to be dismissed.

Finally, you enter. The venue spans two floors, decorated in a way that somewhat resembles the crazy lady's house in "Deep Red", a bit like the cover of "Damnation" by Opeth, and a bit like the saloon from "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly". Lovely stalls sell badges, mesh shirts, faux leather stuff, corsets, whips, CDs.
Lia Fail, the supporting band, are playing to the general disinterest. The singer-keyboardist is good, with a clear and vibrant voice, the drummer has a nice face, a detail not really relevant from a musical perspective, otherwise the ensemble is lacking and the songs are more or less all the same. A guy near you dressed entirely in latex (later a little bondage show is planned in the VIP area, you've heard) fumes, "when the hell will these plagues end?", three corseted&stockinged girls turn and give him a nasty look, a fight might even break out but fortunately Lia Fail thank the audience and leave; the stage is rearranged, the lights dim again and finally the Event begins.

The music starts, amid the applause and cheers of the ecstatic audience, and you see a lanky guy with a sort of cowboy hat on his head, dressed in a transparent blouse through which, well, you can see a corset (at this point, you decide, wearing corsets must be the must of the evening), and he hops back and forth with vaudeville-like moves, winks at the audience and acts a bit like a character. When he starts singing you discover that the microphone is very low and you can hardly hear anything, plus the lanky guy has the quirk, for some unknown reason, of constantly moving it away from his mouth so even if some sound technician or whoever remembers, bless them, to turn up the volume you’d probably still not hear a thing.
You notice (but maybe it's the gin lemon) that in the songs the Bauhaus roots are undeniable although Murphy seems to have abandoned the deeper dark tones, at least in the sounds because you don’t understand the lyrics, reaching slightly lighter atmospheres; drummer, bassist, and guitarist are in sync and masters of their instruments, the pieces follow one another without breaks and are delivered with the same vigor, no signs of fatigue. You think the band is not bad at all and you quite like the aforementioned sounds; at this point, you would be eager to know how it all blends with the voice of the Bouncing Icon, but your wish remains unfulfilled for most of the performance.
You admire the Icon playing with a rod of (you think) plastic taken from who knows where, languidly wandering around the guitarist, bouncing, performing melodramatic gestures but you continue to hear him intermittently. The only times you hear something entirely are when he says “grahzieee” between songs, then during the unexpected duet with the singer from Lia Fail, then again in the encore when Murphy grabs the guitar and indulges in ballads, showing you that he indeed has a voice and it's still beautiful.

You move to the rhythm of some obscure gothic ditty in the post-concert relaxation atmosphere, then you and *c* get tired and head back to the car. Silent, in your gaze, hovers a “…well…”.