the furs show already happened
Thursday, August 21, 2003; Page C09
Psychedelic Furs
Back in the dark ages of the mid-1980s, plenty of punks dismissed the Psychedelic Furs as just another synthesizer-addled band of pretentious new-wave sissies. It didn't help that the Furs -- whose first two albums are, in hindsight, inspired pastiches of David Bowie, Roxy Music and punk -- became known for MTV treacle like "Love My Way," "Heaven" and the song that inspired a Molly Ringwald flick, "Pretty in Pink." But even pop treacle tends to sound better over time, and when Richard Butler and company brought the catalogue of songs that make up their dubious legacy to the 9:30 club on Tuesday, I know of at least one aging punk who had, if not a great time, at least a good one.
The band played all of the tunes you're likely to run across on a "Super Smashes of the '80s" compilation, but they also included earlier songs -- the marvelously dissonant "Dumb Waiters" and the protest-rocker "President Gas," which Butler, an amiable fellow whose glasses tended to slide down his nose, punctuated with frequent stiff-armed salutes.
The band experienced sound problems, especially during the encore "Sister Europe," but the audience didn't seem to mind, enthusiastically pressing toward the stage to grab Butler's hand and singing along with infectiously vapid (and virtually interchangeable) tunes like "Heartbeat" and "Heartbreak Beat." If Tuesday's show wasn't likely to change anybody's impression of the Psychedelic Furs as a talented band undone by its commercial ambitions, it also drove home the horrifying truth that, no matter how '80s-phobic you think you are, you will move to "Heartbreak Beat."
