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(UK local newspaper) week ending 19th – 21st July 2002 S.L. Entertainment Siouxsie And The Banshees Scratching The Itch The return of PunkGoth pioneers Siouxsie and the Banshees after a seven-year hiatus marks a welcome return to the live stage of one of the punk generations most underrated and often overlooked artists Siouxsie Sioux. Siouxsie and her Banshees have always been a uniquely
innovative collective transcending the easy tagging often bestowed upon
them as purely ‘Punk’ or ‘Goth’. As the forthcoming Best of album clearly
proves, the Banshees covered many musical directions during their twenty
year career, from a humble impromptu performance of the ‘The Lord’s
Prayer’ at the now legendary 100 Club Punk Festival in 1976, until they
called it a day in 1996. With songs such as the
classic ‘Hong Kong Garden’, their first single and top ten hit in 1978,
‘Dear Prudence’ (originally by the Beatles) the groups highest chart
position in 1983, the anthemic ‘Israel’ proving to be just as relevant
today with the current situation in the country as it was over twenty
years earlier, through to hits on both sides of the Atlantic ‘Cities in
Dust’ in 1986 and 1991’s ‘Kiss Them for Me’, not forgetting the quirky,
yet chart friendly ‘Peek-A-Boo’ one of 1988’s finest releases! Also
included is a previously unreleased track ‘Dizzy’, a “favourite” of
Sioux’s and no doubt features for that reason alone. A rarity amongst
remastered gems appealing to both fans and those possibly checking out the
group for the first time. To merely label Siouxsie and
the Banshees as anything other than a band who were always one step ahead
of the game is frankly an insult to
them. Their return too owes
NOTHING to the seemingly never-ending Punk 77 retrospectives cashing in on
the nostalgia of the punk movement and the Queens’ Jubilee; they have a
far more important agenda than
that. The ‘Seven Year Itch’ tour,
as they have called it kick started in the USA in April, on the back of a
long overdue biography of the group due for publication later this year
and the bands desire to have the record company release (what Siouxsie
refers to as her “hits”) their many
B-sides! Amazingly for a group of
Siouxsie and The Banshees stature and endurance, they have never had any
of their flipside material compiled or released previously, when in this
CD repackaging age, most record companies are desperately searching for
material or reasons to re-issue yet another collection by far less
important artists. Coupled with this, an offer
for the Banshees to play again at the Coachella festival in LA proved too
tempting to resist with no record company pressure around the
necks. Siouxsie despises the
corporate music industry and all it stands for, and has been spitting
blood and venom ever since her record company Polydor and the industry
showed no interest in her and (Banshee drummer extraordinaire) Budgie’s
long standing side project, The Creatures, after the demise of the
Banshees, despite them writing a fresh (and later critically acclaimed)
album. Eventually released in 1999 on their own label, Sioux
Records. All the right
ingredients are there for the Banshees, they have NOT reformed for money
or because they have to, but because they WANT to and on the evidence of
their live shows so far, have every reason to continue, most importantly
they seem to be enjoying it again. As Siouxsie points out, be it in the
guise of The Creatures or The Banshees, they have a large fan base, may of
whom had never seen the Banshees play before because they were too young,
despite them touring last in
1995. Last week at the Shepherds
Bush Empire in London, the Banshees ended their short UK tour with two
spellbinding shows, the last of which was filmed for a probable future
video / DVD release. Celebrity guests included Don Letts – former owner of
the Roxy Club in Punks heyday / Slits manager and later of B.A.D. fame,
and designer Pam Hogg. An army of fans, old and new gathered to pay homage
to their heroes, returning as they started, as a four-piece band.
Founder members Sioux and
bassist Steven Severin having patched up some of the differences that lead
to the break up, joined as ever by Sioux’s husband Budgie – who proves
once again, he is without doubt one of the greatest drummers of all time,
with his intricate yet powerfully relentless playing and Knox Chandler,
continuing where he left off as the last in a long line of Banshees
guitarists. Siouxsie Sioux has always
‘worn the trousers’ but now she wears the suit too, as she and the
Banshees get down to (the real music) business, playing a superbly
atmospheric and intoxicating set giving older material sure as ‘Pure’,
‘Jigsaw Feeling’, ‘Metal Postcard’ and ‘Icon’ a new lease of life
alongside a selection of well performed singles such as ‘Happy House’,
‘Cites in Dust’ and ‘Spellbound’ as well as the hauntingly evocative live
classics ‘Nightshift’ and ‘Voodoo
Dolly’. They do not perform their
biggest hit ‘Dear Prudence’ instead, the George Harrison penned ‘Blue Jay
Way’ is the Beatles song given the Banshees treatment in memory of him,
before closing the show with a raucously effective ‘Monitor’ and a
fantastically fun finale as support band eX-Girl – an entertaining female
Japanese trio, return to the stage (dressed as fluorescent frogs!) to help
out with ‘Peek-A-Boo’. Siouxsie and the Banshees are back (at their best). The Best of Siouxsie And The Banshees (Universal) is due for release on October 1st |
