Siouxsie & the Banshees/Suicide

It's about halfway through Suicide's set at Roseland a couple weeks ago, and they've lost most of the audience a while back. During a break between songs, cries of "You suck!" and "Just stop!" echo dully from the foot of the stage. Suicide frontman Alan Vega's heard all this and worse before, and takes it in stride.

"That's what my kid always says, 'Stop, stop, just stop!'" he yells tauntingly back at the heckler. "I only stop playing if you give me money. Did I ever tell you about the time I got paid $3000 to not play? That's a true story. You gonna pay me?"

Someone waves a dollar at him from the crowd.

"What's that, a dollar? What the fuck am I gonna do with that? That won't even get me on the train. I'm not stopping unless you've got 2999 more where that came from."

Too bad audience-participation antagonism proved the highlight of Suicide's show. Saddled with equipment problems (evidently a bad keyboard connection), unflattering sound over Roseland's p.a. system (I guess the sound engineer only shows up for headliners) and a significantly petulant, black-clad crowd that by and large might not want to recognize Suicide as anything more than a footnote to the 1970s New York punk scene, Vega and keyboardist Martin Rev were doomed to bomb. The pair looked like they hadn't traded up their art-punk hipster gear for new fashion since 1980, and fumbled through murky and ill-conceived live versions of their songs, in some cases while Roseland's between-band fill music still pumped through the p.a. Vega's comment that he's "everybody's death machine" elicited titters from the legitimately jaded 21st-century crowd.

Yeah, Suicide was a disappointment, even for those of us who like their recorded material. The only song I could pick out from the mess they called their set was "Ghost Rider," and it sounded like shit. I found myself apologizing to friends for recommending them; though from what I understand about the band's heyday, this is par for the course. Evidently about one in 20 Suicide gigs was amazing, the rest were plagued with the same sound problems, equipment failures and incoherence. Cognoscenti have quipped that Suicide's albums were evidently some kind of in-studio miracle. They used to start riots, supposedly because they were too avant-garde for the crowd. I suspect it's just as likely they really did suck live.

Then again, maybe sucking live was the point, and Suicide's whole trip was, and still is, pissing off the audience, in which they succeeded artfully. A great parallel to Siouxsie & the Banshees' originally forming as a bunch of obnoxious young Sex Pistols followers circa 1976. The first Banshees show was an excruciating 20 minutes of feedback and bad musicianship that probably left the audience feeling, well, a lot like most of us at Roseland did after Suicide got done.

Luckily the Banshees haven't opted to go 30 years without any musical progress. They tore the stage up for 90-odd minutes with mad skills. The real strength was the complete vector from punk rockers to goth-pop cult heroes. Hoping for live performances of decidedly twitchy early material like "Love in a Void" or "The Lord's Prayer" would be a bit much, but abrasive renditions of "Metal Postcard" and "Voodoo Dolly" got equal time with crowd-pleasers like "Kiss Them for Me" and "Cities in Dust."

"Thanks for coming out with no MTV, no album, no record label and no corporate bullshit," Siouxsie purred at the crowd during a break between songs. The Banshees disbanded in '96, partially in protest of the Sex Pistols reunion, punk nostalgia turning profitable and the shitty state of the music industry; so maybe their integrity is open to question. On the other hand, doing a mostly DIY tour for the hell of it and without an album to promote is about as much artistic integrity as any reunion's gonna offer. Where other old punks are slowing down, Siouxsie's been full of piss and vinegar since getting dumped by her label in the late 90s; the new Creatures material and her live shows have been better for the aggression.

The band?Steve Severin on bass, Budgie on drums and Knox Chandler on guitar (what, you were expecting Robert Smith?)?was dead on. Throbbing rhythms alternated with acoustic guitar or sharp, squealing distortion, all visually accompanied by a ubiquitous, smoky, gothic/psychedelic light show. This Pink Floyd shit was a bit much. They would have come across just as well with less trick lighting.

Ms. Sioux herself didn't deliver her most flawless vocal performance; I caught a few warbles and thought I'd heard her better overall at the '98-'99 Creatures gigs. On the other hand, her amazing stage presence filled in for shortcomings. She screamed, crooned, writhed and posed in and out of a pinstriped business suit (I think that was the million-dollar Victoria's Secret rhinestone wonderbra underneath), cementing her status as the kind of Bowie-like (or Tina Turner-like) rock icon who can pull off the trick of aging a couple of decades without losing any charisma or sex appeal.

Besides, most people aren't going to a reunion like this to split hairs over the performance; they go because they're drooling fans. The Banshees lived up to their massive cult appeal (and if you don't think Siouxsie's been influential, take a look at every post-Banshees female-fronted goth band ever or New York's latest underground darlings, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) while more or less keeping their credibility intact. Another neat trick on their part, especially after that last album.