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Ghost Rider: Soft Cell and Jim Foetus cover Suicide, 1983

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Soft Cell (Marc Almond and David Ball) share the stage with Clint Ruin/Foetus/J.G. Thirlwell and squealing saxophonist Gary Barnacle for this excellent cover version of Suicide’s “Ghost Rider.”

Obviously Suicide would have been a huge influence on both Soft Cell and Thirwell, and they really tear it up here in this intense homage taped for the BBC in 1983. Listen loud.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.18.2012
06:52 pm
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Lydia Lunch and Wiseblood at the Cat Club, NYC

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I keep stumbling upon videos on YouTube of things, events, shows where I was actually present, like the Warhol book signing or various parties. It’s odd to have a memory of something, and then one day being able to see that event replay before your eyes. Here’s another: this is what I believe was the onstage debut of Wiseblood, a project of Clint Ruin a/k/a JG Thirlwell, Foetus, etc; and Roli Mosimann (ex-Swans) at the Cat Club in New York City on July 6th 1986.  I think they only did two songs, the stage covered with dry ice smoke and a chair Thirlwell tossed around. It was one of the single most thrilling, spectacular and violent moments of live rock and roll I ever witnessed. When you watch the clip turn it up WAY LOUD.
 
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It had been a super hot Fourth of July weekend that year and a friend of mine wanted to totally freak out his friends who had come into town from Pittsburgh and he trusted that I would know where to take them. So I took them to this show. I wasn’t even 21 at the time, but they never carded you back then in New York. It wasn’t just Wiseblood, although they closed the show, it was also the premiere of Fingered, the notorious underground film made by Lydia Lunch and Richard Kern. Fingered absolutely blew their minds, and then Lydia herself, who the audience had just seen anally violated with a loaded gun on film(!) came out and did one of her patented Lydia Lunch confrontational theater of cruelty raps and this, I think, scared the living shit out of them. I must have seen Lydia perform fifteen times in the late 80s and 90s and to get the full enjoyment—yer money’s worth, let’s say—you have to be in the front row, receiving the full malevolent force of her nihilistic sermon. We were right up front, I made sure of it! These poor guys from Pittsburgh probably thought they were going to die that night.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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02.04.2010
12:04 am
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