Morrissey peered into the darkness of the huge crowd gathered for his closing set at Cruel World Festival in Pasadena on Saturday and muttered facetiously, ‘My God, you’re still here?”
There are, of course, different ways to take this. The notoriously sardonic singer might have wanted everyone to go home so he could shed the torture of his tuxedo and slip into his pajamas, too. Or maybe this was his way of gloomily suggesting the crowd make some noise.
But turn that around and look at it from the fans’ point of view. Two years after Cruel World Festival was first announced, and then twice delayed, of course, they were there to the bitter end of the former Smiths singer’s set.
Earlier on a day hot enough to melt the eyeliner off a goth, acts from Blondie and Bauhaus to Devo, the Psychedelic Furs and Public Image Ltd. thrilled fans of ’80s New Wave and dark moody music on the greens of the Brookside Golf Course at the Rose Bowl.
At times it felt like a costume contest between Team Goth – dyed black hair, lace, and tattoos – and Team Vintage Band Shirts. Respect to the dude who found his Radio Birdman T-shirt in the closet, but you knew they weren’t playing, right?
As headliner, Morrissey didn’t disappoint. He showed up – always a good first step for our Steven. The festival agreed to his no-meat-at-the-food-tent terms. And in his hour-long set to wrap up the day, he sounded terrific.
Highlights included such solo hits as “First of the Gang to Die,” “Everyday Is Like Sunday,” and “Suedehead,” and a scattering of Smiths’ tunes including “Never Had No One,” “Half A Person,” and “Sweet and Tender Hooligan,” which closed out his set.
Here’s what else caught our eyes and ears on Saturday.
Be still my New Wave heart!: We’ve all got bands that made us swoon when we were young, and for me, those included Blondie and the Psychedelic Furs.
Singer Debbie Harry and drummer Clem Burke were the only original members on stage Saturday – guitarist Chris Stein had to temporarily step out for a health condition – but they’ve always been the heart of the band: Harry as the alluringly aloof face of the band, Burke as its propulsive motor. (As a bonus, we got original Sex Pistols’ bassist Glen Matlock in the band now, too.)
Blondie’s hour on stage included most of its best-loved songs, from “The Tide Is High” and “Call Me,” to “Rapture” and “Heart Of Glass.” At 76, Harry’s voice has lost a little range – whose wouldn’t? – but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone at Cruel World who wasn’t as thrilled to see her as she repeatedly said she was to be playing live again.
The Psychedelic Furs found fans with songs that tapped the romantic longing and wistful nostalgia everyone feels at one time or another. Singer Richard Butler and his bassist brother Tim Butler are the last originals, but the current lineup, which includes drummer Zach Alford, who’s played with everyone from the B-52s to Bowie, sounded great.
Casual listeners might only know “Pretty In Pink,” a song they wrote before the ’80s teen movie of the same name used it for its title track. Fans cheered that one, of course, but maybe even more so for songs such as “Love My Way,” “The Ghost In You,” “President Gas,” and “Heartbreak Beat.”
Simply fun: You could spot the Devo fans in the crowd a mile away, their red, flower-pot-like energy dome hats a dead giveaway. But when the band took the stage late in the afternoon, we all were Devo.
The oddballs from Akron sometimes get dismissed as a novelty: the aforementioned hats and yellow hazmat suits they favor are probably why. But that’s a mistake, for as anyone who’s seen them knows, Devo can rock with the best of them, they just chose to do it differently. And songs such as “Peek-A-Boo” and “Girl U Want,” to name just two of their Saturday set, show why.
We’ll get to the gloomy guys in a minute, here and there on Cruel World’s three stages were other acts that embodied the sheer fun of New Wave rock and roll. Singer Dave Wakeling and the English Beat had the crowd singing along to hits such as “Save It For Later” and “Tenderness,” the latter by Wakeling’s other group General Public.
Missing Persons and its singer Dale Bozzio delighted fans with hits such as “Words,” “Walking In LA,” and “Destination Unknown.” And while I was waiting for Psychedelic Furs, in the distance you could hear Berlin playing songs such as “No More Words” and “Take My Breath Away.”
A more subtle delight arrived with the Australian rock band the Church, who on songs such as their signature tune “Under The Milky Way” and “Reptile” captivated the late-afternoon audience.
Jagged edges: Public Image Ltd. played in the peak heat of the afternoon, which couldn’t have made it comfortable for singer John Lydon, the former Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten, in his oversized blue, pink and yellow pastel plaid suit.
Lydon sounded a little rough on the opening number “Public Image,” but by the next song, “This Is Not a Love Song,” he was warmed up and fine yowling fettle. His band was as terrific as ever, their rumble and screech laying the foundation for Lydon’s vocals on songs such as “Death Disco,” and the set closer “Rise,” remains one of his greatest tunes.
Bauhaus fans were almost as easy to spot as Devo diehards. The Bauhaus crowd knows only one color and that color is black. The influential band that contributed greatly to the rise of the goth music scene reunited after 13 years in 2019 with a trio of shows at the Hollywood Palladium, and at Cruel World, they sounded every bit as menacingly great as they did three years ago.
With the live cameras set to black-and-white, harsh white lights and smoke machines cranked to 10, Bauhaus churned through songs such as “She’s In Parties” and “Kick In The Eye” earlier in their set. Singer Peter Murphy often retreated to the shadows while guitarist Daniel Ash pulled harsh shards of sound from his guitar.
“Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” the band’s signature song, let Murphy and Ash continue in that manner, which bassist David J and drummer Kevin Haskins kept the night rumbling on.
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