A few months ago, I got to see one of my heroes in concert again for the third time (the fourth if you include the time I saw him with Bauhaus). That man is, of course, none other than Mr. Cheekbones himself, Peter Murphy. Despite the fact that he’s losing his hair and looks like he might be harboring a tapeworm, The Gothfather is still alive and prancing, and while his set list was the worst I’ve seen (opening with Bauhaus’ Burning From The Inside is akin to starting a sex party with a chat about pre-cal), his voice and moves are still in shape.
About eight years ago, a video came out that collected all of Peter’s promo clips that had been made up to that point. There weren’t a lot of them, but lovers of the Thin White Murph, either as the front man for Goth’s most important group or as a more spiritually-informed solo artist, surely leaped on this like I would Gillian Anderson if she wound up in my shower. After all, you couldn’t just go to YouTube back then and satisfy all your music video needs.
And that, mein ferns, is partly that makes Wild Birds: The Videos an obsolete buy. Not only is it out-of-print (and therefore expensive and hard to find), it’s also, to the best of my knowledge, only available on that fading format known as VHS. I don’t see Beggar’s Banquet or whoever rushing to get this out on DVD, especially with Peter’s popularity apparently back on the wane. You can, however, swoop on over to Ebay and buy my copy.
Anyway, Peter hasn’t made a lot of videos, so you only get about one or two per album. There are two versions of Final Solution, a kind of minimalistic clip from his first album, and one that seems to have little purpose other than to show off Peter’s angular face and a bunch of shirtless guys dancing funny. For a guy that’s been quick to declare his heterosexuality in the past, one could be forgiven after watching this video for assuming otherwise.
Like Peter’s post-Bauhaus music, most of the promos are artsy affairs that bear little resemblance to the stark and spooky aesthetic of his former band. If you think Peter’s a pretty man to look at, you’ll be quite happy to find that he’s the centerpiece in all of them. Sometimes his head’s painted gold, sometimes he’s a blonde running around the forest in leather pants, and sometimes he just kicks it in a desert tent like some malnourished albino Bedouin, but Peter is always the focus of his videos. No attempts to tell stories or anything here, just video directors (including his wife, Beyhan Murphy, who directed Strange Kind Of Love, which has noticeably different music than the version on Deep) taking advantage of the man’s photogenic physique. As much as I love songs like All Night Long, Hit Song, and Scarlet Thing In You, I almost found myself wishing for some bogus storyline to follow instead of just looking at the man.
Speaking of bogus storylines, the video for The Judgment Is The Mirror, a clip he and bassist Mick Karn did for their ill-fated and short-lived Dali’s Car project, has one that confuses me. Murphy seems to be in the process of trying to save a laserdisc from evil Karn, but I never know what’s going on in these videos. I’m either too stupid or not British enough to get it, but I still prefer these hokey early 80’s videos to the stupid crap that comes out nowadays. Cheesy creativity will always win out over computer-assisted vanity in my private Idaho.
This is a video compilation that fans of Peter and Bauhaus would probably want if they’re in the collection business, but probably not necessary for anybody else. There’s no interview footage, no live clips, no Bauhaus stuff, or anything else- just the handful of promos. Three stars because it’s Peter and collectible, but I’m docking two because it was obviously something the record company just pushed out to make a buck beside the greatest hits CD that came out at the same time (hence the lack of anything that’d really thrill the diehard fans).
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