Searching for Satori

Sitting on an outcropping overlooking a sea of black, a single light flickers and grows brighter over a cacophony of sound. Satori has been found. A thinning individual enters the light and the sea erupts, teeming with energy. Your perch forgotten, you dive head first into the sea itself and are willingly swallowed by the abyss. This is Bauhaus.

Last night I caught the Bauhaus show at the Warfield in San Francisco. Granted, it's 2005 and this is the second (third?) comeback tour, but those thoughts were all but forgotten as the show began. For all intents and purposes, it was 1983 all over again. With minimal lighting or special effects, the band let the music speak for itself. Peter Murphy, after all this time, still can deliver. Daniel Ash's piercing licks wrapped around David J's "all too funkified for the dark" bass lines crept up from the crypt and sent shivers down my spine. The moment I heard the first note of Hollow Hills, I wanted to prolong that moment of time until the flesh fell from my bones. With one song still reverberating in your ears, they attacked the next song before you even got a chance to register what just happened. No Tones on Tail, no Love and Rockets, just Bauhaus clean, uncut and mainlined directly into your viens.

All in all, an excellent night out, and a perfect way to spend a month dedicated to ghouls, ghosts and goblins. The best part is, within this entire post I never once used the term Goth....... Oh Damn!