Review by Mike Schull

Do you remember back in 1989 when Ian Astbury was a gothic cowboy witch? My first exposure to The Cult, as far as I can recall, was the “Fire Woman” video which was all over MTV that year. The band rocked balls, the dude playing drums started playing with G’n'R shortly thereafter, and hard rock was still healthy and chart-worthy.

Fast forward to Friday, the 16th of this month, at the Murat’s Egyptian Room. The Cult was in town on the Jagermeister Music Tour, notable if only for the hypocrisy of the headliner’s comments on stage throughout the night. After walking in most of the way through the opening opener (I believe it may have been “The Cliks,” but cannot guarantee this as fact), a band described to my friend Sam as “the new Depeche Mode” played. Dubbed “Action Action,” this band contained nearly every component guaranteed to make your friendly reviewer hate a band - emotastic vocals, three keyboards (situated in front of the three dudes playing guitars and a bass), a silly name, and songs that misinformed, 17-year-old white kids with bad haircuts and acne might describe as “danceable.” That’s all I’m gonna say about Action Action, other than “they played” and “thankfully the set was short.”

So anyway, the inner 10-year-old Mike was so stoked to finally see The Cult. In recent years I’ve dug out “Love,” “Electric,” and “Sonic Temple” and realized they were actually quite good albums in that Zep-meets-AC/DC way. Given the opportunity to see them for free, it couldn’t have gotten better.Well, lemme tell ya . . . it coulda been better. Way, way better. Pretension oozed like the feces in the “two girls, one cup” video. Vocal melodies for the biggest hits were reinvented - was it to make me feel like a jerk for singing along? Or to feel duped for still believing in hard rock?

“Has anyone here read Herman Hesse…Siddhartha? … Does anyone here still read books?” These are a couple of sentences a good frontman resists the urge to say, no matter how much he and his band wish they were somewhere else, like, say, back in the year 1989 in a pool in California, stocked with groupies and hi-fi system with some Doors albums. In fact, Mr. Astbury (whose fashion now looks more like “gas station attendant with fox pelt in pocket”), some members of the audience not only read books, they are librarians. Dick.

Even as he noted they had a “new album we really believe in,” they phoned in a few tracks and plowed through the classics. I was excited by the fact they played “Wild Flower” and “Electric Ocean,” and would have loved for Ian to at least pretend he cared about the songs and the fans that showed up to see them play. Sure, the Egyptian Room was about 25% full, and sure, the buxom young girls of the ’80s may now be slightly older and less, uh, buxom? But in the words of the MC5 heckling Cream, “Kick out the jams or get the fuck off the stage!”

The most puzzling part of the evening was the interlude between the set ending and the encore, where a montage of photos culled from various revolutions of the past flashed on a screen as a Cult song played in the background. So, like, The Cult was playing even when they weren’t playing. And Astbury’s whole spiel of, “Put down the remote, turn off the TV, pick up a book and start a revolution,” was supposed to seem poignant instead of trite and insulting? I dunno, man. It truly ended for me when dude took all the more liberties with his pacing of the melody in closer “Love Removal Machine.” Yes, Billy Duffy and his big Gretsch White Falcon still rule, but I’m afraid the revolution spearheaded by Jagermeister’s corporate bank roll and Ian Astbury’s snide pretensions is in no danger of being televised, broadcast, podcast, or otherwise Internetted. Hard rock isn’t dead - there are still some good bands soldiering on and carrying the flag - but The Cult should stop phoning it in and hang it up instead.

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