Authors: Ryan Michael Painter
Retro Futura Tour @ Red Butte 07.23 with Howard Jones,...
For this appearance, Jones had his usual array of keyboards and a backing band consisting of a keyboardist, two drummers and a guitarist. … read more
OK, So This is Pop Perfection: Poptone @ The Depot...
The night is filled with Tones on Tail tracks, five of which I’ve never had the opportunity to hear live. Maybe I’m more hungry for the songs that I haven’t seen live in 15 years, but I think a large part of what makes tonight work better than the 2002 tour show the presence of Haskins and Dompe. This is Poptone storming the stage. … read more
Damned and Loving It
Those who know their music history would tell you that, 40 years ago, The Damned were the first punk band to release a single, press an album and then break up and get back together. The rest is a little complicated. … read more
Cold Cave: Pomp and Discontent @ Urban Lounge 01.13 with...
Friday the 13th: an ominous and seemingly perfect date to watch Wesley Eisold and friends rattle the cage of discontent with a sound that takes the electro-punk aesthetic of Suicide and merges it with the songsmith of New Order—a discordant pop that references the past, but feels comfortably progressive. Everything that is old resurrected for future use. … read more
Midge Ure, the Once and Future New Romantic
My introduction to Ure was somewhat untraditional in the sense that I knew him as a solo artist before I learned of his work as a member of Visage and Ultravox. … read more
Morrissey: Rumors of My Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated @...
I’ve left many Morrissey concerts in something of a daze. It’s that strange sensation where you’ve been treated to something special, but had it snatched away from you before you were ready to see it go. … read more
Cyndi Lauper: Fearless, Reckless Friend @ The Depot 09.20 with Charlie...
With her multi-colored and ratted-out hair and bizarre fashion sense that bridged aspects of punk and new wave with something entirely her own, Lauper was the most outrageous person I had ever seen, and the world admired and celebrated her for her uniqueness. … read more
Garbage: Star-Crossed and Dreaming @ The Complex 09.16 with Cigarettes...
There’s always been an extra edge to Garbage live, an element of chaos that doesn’t typically come through on the records, and tonight, there’s a particularly aggressive undercurrent as Shirley Manson stalks the stage. … read more
Culture Club: It’s Love in Stereo @ Red Butte Garden...
Once upon a time, I saw Boy George at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Toward the end of the concert, a pair of his Culture Club collaborators joined George onstage. It was the first sign in years that a Culture Club reunion was not only possible, but entirely probable. … read more
Somewhere Out in the Dark: The Psychedelic Furs with The...
I love The Furs, but they hadn’t released new material since the 2004 single “Alive (For Once In My Lifetime)” and had set lists that were dominated by the same material—so, going into Saturday night’s show at The Complex, it was the opening act, The Church, that I was really looking forward to seeing. … read more
Nostalgia, It’s Not What You Think It Was: A Flashback...
For the better part of a decade, Salt Lake City was home to a thriving underground goth scene. It was goth before goth was pigeonholed into being something defined by Hot Topic or mainstream media. … read more
Paul Humphreys + Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark: The Future,...
“We were always budgeting for failure early on until we started having hit after hit after hit in Europe, and we thought, ‘Well, maybe we’re here to stay for a little bit.’ I never imagined 40 years.” … read more
