80 S Punk

Psychedelic Furs show honors '80s music era

NIAGARA FALLS — The alternative music that emerged from the early ’80s commingling of punk, glam and prog-rock left an indelible mark on all that came after it. It made it to the mainstream; it went way underground. It influenced everyone who picked up a guitar or simply fell in love with a song they heard on the radio. It made everything weird, because it made it OK—and profitable — to be weird.

Of the British alternative bands, the Cure made the biggest and longest-running commercial mark, but it was certainly bands like Echo and the Bunnymen, Bauhaus and the Psychedelic Furs behind the most lasting musical statements. One of the finest of that early punk-prog-glam hybrid era was given a full airing outside the Hard Rock Cafe on Old Falls Street on Saturday.

A packed house — if we can indeed call a few blocks of a street a house — welcomed the revered Furs as they celebrated the 30th anniversary of their “Talk Talk Talk” album by playing the whole damn thing. It was crushing, from start to finish. That the band graced us with plenty more deep cuts from its storied career after completing the “Talk . . .” cycle was gravy atop an already succulent feast.

“Talk . . .” is an album of significant merit, for it broached the mainstream with its turbulent and torrid blend of Bowie-esque strangeness and its grandiose, anthemic guitar stylings. (Surely, U2’s the Edge, a peer of the Furs, was listening.) When the band, led by vocalist and always delightful dandy-in-the-underworld Richard Butler and his bassist brother Tim, took the stage with an aggressively angular “Dumb Waiters,” the place erupted with hoots and hollers from an assembly that either never got or ignored the memo that one is not supposed to continue rocking once they’ve hit 40.

When the group broke into its biggest hit, the song that gave filmmaker John Hughes the title for his massively successful “Pretty In Pink,” everyone partied like it was 1984, including Richard Butler, who spent the evening presiding over the events as the grande dame of alt-rock he surely is since Bowie’s apparent retirement.

The angry “I Wanna Sleep With You” followed, led with a sort of foppish grace into “No Tears,” and then collapsed with intention into “Mr. Jones,” a Dylan-esque collage of images driven by a ferocious groove from bassist Tim Butler and drummer Paul Garisto. Guitarist Rich Good ably tore through the signature echo-laden arpeggios and angular chordal voicings that define the Furs’ sound, while longtime saxophonist Marsh Williams brought a significant amount of Roxy Music harmonic edge to the party.

80s Fresno Punk Scene History Introduction | Fresno Famous

Fresno Punk Bands 1979-1986.

80s Fresno Punk Scene History Introduction. The beginning of a story told from someone who was there from the first days in the late 70s to the 90s as it began to decline. Struggling musicians and avante garde artists and the photographers, writers, promoters and fans of the bands that thrilled us and inspired us make to make sacrifices for the good of the whole of the movement. 80s punk rock was hella fun and very meaningful. 

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