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You’d be forgiven for remembering Gary Numan as a one hit wonder. The song “Cars” was a huge hit off the album “The Pleasure Principle” in 1979 and for many in the US that was probably the last they ever heard of Gary. The Pleasure Principle was part of the new wave music revolution at the time but looking back now you can hear elements of an industrial pop sound and as time went by Gary Numan embraced that sound more. Today that’s primarily what he’s known for and perhaps unsurprisingly, given that there was the final Skinny Puppy show the week before, there were quite a few Skinny Puppy t-shirts in the crowd.
It was a great show but my only real comment is that it was difficult to take the band to seriously given all the posturing and “dance” moves. The theatrics were absurdly over the top and incredibly distracting. It was also interesting that although the music was very danceable no one stood for most of the show. It wasn’t until they played the hit, Cars, about 2/3 through the show that anyone stood up. At that point a group moved up to the front the venue into the pit area and stayed there the rest of the show.
Opening for Gary was “A Place to Bury Strangers”. We had no idea who that was and still didn’t know until after the show. They weren’t anywhere on the bill that we could find and it wasn’t clear there would even be an opening act. They were loud, loud, loud and I guess that makes sense in retrospect. Reading through their Wikipedia page after the fact they’ve been called by music critics “the loudest band in NYC”. This is why we wear earplugs. I listened to a couple of their studio recorded songs post-show and they in no way would prepare you for the audio carnage of the live show.
[…] Theater, which is a seated venue, but whereas the audience for the most part stayed seated for Gary Numan, no one on the main floor sat at all for the Remain in Light show, either for Cool Cool Cool or the […]