BA Halle, Vienna, Austria
In November 1991 a friend of mine and I decided to go to see the band as
we highly appreciated their then current album Ceremony. They
played at the BA-Halle, a tent holding 1700 people. The concert was a
sell-out.
Ceremony was the show's opener, featuring a lenghty synthesizer
intro courtesy of Mr. John Sinclair. Astbury's arrival onstage was
greeted with loud cheers from the stalls. He wore a black leather hat,
dark trousers, a leather jacket and snakeskin boots. Billy Duffy was
dressed in a rather unspectacular way, sporting a brown waistcoat and
dark trousers. Ceremony segued into Lil' Devil which was
followed by New York City. After the latter Ian addressed the
audience for the first time. He thanked the people for coming and stated
that "itīs our first time in Austria", although the band had already
played a festival gig in 1986. Sun King came next and changed
into Rain after a lenghty guitar solo. After this crowd pleaser
the differently arranged American Horse developed into an orcan
of guitar feedback - certainly one of the concert's climaxes. The Cult
brought it all to a halt with Edie (Ciao Baby) which was
performed only by Astbury, Duffy and bassist Kinley Wolfe on second
guitar. If and Full Tilt got a rather lukewarm response,
whereas White, performed in a 10-minute-version provoked loud
cheers due to magnificent solo spots on drums and bass by Michael Lee
and Kinley Wolfe respectively. The official leg of the set was concluded
with some "oldies but goldies": Peace Dog, Wildflower,
She Sells Sanctuary and Fire Woman. After some 80 minutes
of pure hard rock the quintett left an enthusiastic audience that
fervently shouted for more. And more they got. Wild Hearted Son
and Earth Mofo were played as encore numbers, and still noone
seemed to be satisfied. So the band returned once again to perform a
thrilling version of Love Removal Machine prior to which Ian held
a lenghty speach in which he verbally attacked the press and the record
company executives, while Billy fixed a broken guitar string.
95 minutes of Pure Cult turned me into a devoted follower. The only
thing that stroke me in the negative way was the inclusion of rather
poppy synth melodies in some of the songs. Thank God they replaced
Sinclair by a rhythm guitarrist on their next tour.
Julien Pech - h9552582@zechine.wu-wien.ac.at
Setlist:
Ceremony
Lil' Devil
New York City
Sun King
Rain
American Horse
Edie (Ciao Baby)
...
Encore 1:
Wild Hearted Son
Earth Mofo
Encore 2:
Love Removal Machine