Gary Numan - The El Rey Theater - Los Angeles, CA 11/10
Words/Photos by Jeffrey Easton
When I was a kid I was one of the few that I knew that was fairly open minded to different forms of music. Whether it was listening to my KISS records or hearing something different like Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” (which was the first time I ever heard a proto Electronica song) I was always searching for something cool and different to listen to. The radio was always on and we had a few cool stations where I lived and that is when it happened. The DJ spun Cars by Gary Numan and I was blown away. Something so dark and sinister sounding to me and it was purely driven by electronics. Instant fan is THE the word to use and of course he had records after the Pleasure Principle which were just as great but it was hard to get the DJs to spin those so it seems he faded from the view of Americans. Flash forward about 3 decades and he is as relevant as ever, having evolved into the darker industrial sound that he helped create in the first place and here we are. Having finally come into his own so that he could accept his past to go along with his present and future he has taken to doing “classic album” tours. So we have the 2010 Pleasure Principle tour to highlight the record that propelled him into his stardom and what a great record it was. In Europe you had great producers and performers (Brian Eno is one)doing evolutionary things with music but seemingly not to the level that the Pleasure Principle was. Now we have the full record translated into a modern setting and gear and it is stunning to say the very least. The show opened up with the darkly moving “Random” from the reissue PP CD, thus making it an official part of the record but it was with “Airlane” that the Pleasure Principle was alive again in Los Angeles. He mixed the order up with “Cars” coming last behind “Engineers” and “M.E” and “Complex” being mixed as well for a different feel I would guess. Each song came across as close as possible but of course with different equipment and a different outlook as well. The crowd were into the show and you could see the older fans closing their eyes and possibly remembering back to when they first gave the album love on their turntable. Gary and his band were stunning and not just in the delivery of the Pleasure Principle, but their amazing musicianship throughout the entire band. After “Cars” was completed the band left the stage for reconstruction and the multiples of keyboards were ushered off, which still left two keyboardists, and the modern Gary Numan returned. He performed stuff from Jagged and Pure, his last two records and it was a different show. Dark, angry, heavy, just a few words to describe his newer stuff and the feel I was getting. “Pure”,” Haunted”, “Halo”, “Prayer For The Unborn”, it all was given the same resilience that the earlier material was given but more attitude emerged here. He did dip back into the past with “Are Friends Electric” which the crowd lit up for and gave Gary a stunning call and response throughout the song. I have to say after witnessing Gary Numan for the first time I was too transported back to when I was that kid discovering new music, being able to be there standing on the verge of a new genre to catapult me into another decade. It was a musical religious experience for me because not only did I get to hear the landmark Pleasure Principle record, I got to hear where his innovative music has taken him and where so many artists needed his music to take them on their journeys as well. If you have yet to witness Gary live, you have not witnessed musical history before you yet.
GARY NUMAN OFFICAL SITE!
BUY PLEASURE PRINCIPLE REMASTERED!
When I was a kid I was one of the few that I knew that was fairly open minded to different forms of music. Whether it was listening to my KISS records or hearing something different like Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” (which was the first time I ever heard a proto Electronica song) I was always searching for something cool and different to listen to. The radio was always on and we had a few cool stations where I lived and that is when it happened. The DJ spun Cars by Gary Numan and I was blown away. Something so dark and sinister sounding to me and it was purely driven by electronics. Instant fan is THE the word to use and of course he had records after the Pleasure Principle which were just as great but it was hard to get the DJs to spin those so it seems he faded from the view of Americans. Flash forward about 3 decades and he is as relevant as ever, having evolved into the darker industrial sound that he helped create in the first place and here we are. Having finally come into his own so that he could accept his past to go along with his present and future he has taken to doing “classic album” tours. So we have the 2010 Pleasure Principle tour to highlight the record that propelled him into his stardom and what a great record it was. In Europe you had great producers and performers (Brian Eno is one)doing evolutionary things with music but seemingly not to the level that the Pleasure Principle was. Now we have the full record translated into a modern setting and gear and it is stunning to say the very least. The show opened up with the darkly moving “Random” from the reissue PP CD, thus making it an official part of the record but it was with “Airlane” that the Pleasure Principle was alive again in Los Angeles. He mixed the order up with “Cars” coming last behind “Engineers” and “M.E” and “Complex” being mixed as well for a different feel I would guess. Each song came across as close as possible but of course with different equipment and a different outlook as well. The crowd were into the show and you could see the older fans closing their eyes and possibly remembering back to when they first gave the album love on their turntable. Gary and his band were stunning and not just in the delivery of the Pleasure Principle, but their amazing musicianship throughout the entire band. After “Cars” was completed the band left the stage for reconstruction and the multiples of keyboards were ushered off, which still left two keyboardists, and the modern Gary Numan returned. He performed stuff from Jagged and Pure, his last two records and it was a different show. Dark, angry, heavy, just a few words to describe his newer stuff and the feel I was getting. “Pure”,” Haunted”, “Halo”, “Prayer For The Unborn”, it all was given the same resilience that the earlier material was given but more attitude emerged here. He did dip back into the past with “Are Friends Electric” which the crowd lit up for and gave Gary a stunning call and response throughout the song. I have to say after witnessing Gary Numan for the first time I was too transported back to when I was that kid discovering new music, being able to be there standing on the verge of a new genre to catapult me into another decade. It was a musical religious experience for me because not only did I get to hear the landmark Pleasure Principle record, I got to hear where his innovative music has taken him and where so many artists needed his music to take them on their journeys as well. If you have yet to witness Gary live, you have not witnessed musical history before you yet.
GARY NUMAN OFFICAL SITE!
BUY PLEASURE PRINCIPLE REMASTERED!
