Bauhaus Press The Eject And Give Me The Tape

Recorded in London (tracks 1 to 5), Liverpool (6-11), and Paris (12-17), Press the Eject and Give Me the Tape captures Bauhaus in their hungry young prime. They had just released their second album, Mask, and were gearing up to release their third, The Sky’s Gone Out. They already had a cult following in Europe, where the idea of goth rock was just starting to blossom. These shows might have been forgotten if they hadn’t been preserved with such superlative sound quality. While Peter Murphy got a lot of attention for playing the band’s evil heartthrob, these performances confirm guitarist Daniel Ash as the group’s defining component. "Stigmata Martyr” and “In the Flat Field” are hot, restless rock songs, with Ash’s guitar writhing and morphing like some primordial monster in a process of transformation. A cover of The Velvet Underground’s “Waiting for the Man” highlights the influence Lou Reed had on the band, which is also reflected in the their lusty rhythms and Murphy’s leering croon. Their masterpiece was “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” presented here in an excellent and epically harrowing rendition.