SF Weekly (5.5.99)

Night & Day

Heather Wisner

Thursday

May 6

Goth Talk In the beginning, before goth's name was by besmirched by trench-coated ghouls, there was Bauhaus and Siouxsie & the Banshees, and it was good. From Bauhaus' seminally spooky "Bela Lugosi's Dead" to Siouxsie's mournful cry in the psychedelia-etched "Israel" and "Cities in Dust," each band's imprint on primitive punk was both eerie and immutable, but there were periodic hints that the good times couldn't last forever (recurring rumors that Bauhaus frontman Peter Murphy had OD'd, even during the band's reunion tour last year; Siouxsie playing Lollapalooza, in full makeup, in the daytime), and members of both groups eventually pursued other outlets. Bauhaus' Daniel Ash tinkered with dreamy, druggy pop and seductive club mixes, first in Tones on Tail, then with former Bauhaus bandmate David J in Love and Rockets, who teamed up with KMFDM and deep house duo Deep Dish for remixes of their Resurrection Hex tracks last fall. Some samples in this heavily electronic pastiche echo the old days: Adam Ant's "Kings of the Wild Frontier" and Bauhaus' "Stigmata Martyr."

After the Banshees disbanded in 1995, Siouxsie and husband Budgie hit the road with the Velvet Underground's John Cale, evoking the sinister loveliness of the early albums with concessions to aging rockerdom: pop licks, sitars, VU covers.

The Creatures play at 9 p.m. Saturday at the Maritime Hall, 450 Harrison (at First Street), S.F. Admission is $20-22; call 974-0634.

Contributed by Jerry Burch.