Felt Forum, New York, New York
I saw them in July of '87 at the Felt Forum in New York City.
Fuckin' incredible showcase of whatever-the-hell they were doing. What I
remember the most is Ian prancing out on stage at the beginning of the show
to the music of Die Valkyrie while sporting the American Flag, trademark
sunglasses, leather, and to top it all off, a "Wolf Child" belt buckle that
wins out over all of the buckles I have in my collection. Then, with a
devilish smirk on his apparently drunk face, he yelped out a southern tinged,
"Let's get it fuckin' on!" Out of nowhere, Bad Fun begins and the rest was
a steamroller of soul that pulled me out of my shit world which was dominated
by suicidal gothic rock (e.g. old Cure, Joy Division). Ah, the look on
everybody's face, predominately Cult fans into the Love-gothic thing, who were
astonished at the debauchery on stage. There was lots of confusion and several
gothic people shook their heads and headed for the exits. I loved it.
The music was straight and stripped and their "interpretations" of older songs
were quite sloppy, but unforgettable. The Phoenix was undoubtingly one
of the best songs of the night due to Billy's extended solo brought on
because Ian was stuck face down on top of the Marshall's while shoving the
mike Jimi Hendrix-style into the stack. The roadie's eventually got him
down and I was treated to hearing the entire Electric album except for
Aphrodisiac Jacket. Ian's southern drawl when introducing each song was a
surprise and so was the amount of Budweiser he was consuming and handing out
to the crowd. The icing on the cake was the encore when Ian came out
from the back of the stage with steer horns latched on to his belt buckle
with his arms outstretched to the sky, drunk as a skunk but his voice sounding
golden, but beginning to wear and sound raspy like it did during the last
few shows I saw him.
But anyway, I can go on and on about this show but I won't because I feel I
may go on tangents that you may or may not care about. I think you get the
idea that in my opinion is was the best show I've ever seen. It was the
timing, the unexpectedness, the aura, the sound....I'll never forget it.
Technically speaking, it probably wasn't that tight, but that wasn't the
point. It was straight and raw and quite a performance.
Setlist:
Bad Fun
...