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David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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  • Ratdog

    Nouvelle Vague has a great cover of this.

  • http://roblord.org/ roblord

    From the incomparable Shadow of Light video. My VHS copy is somewhere in the attic. :) http://www.amazon.com/Bauhaus-Shadow-Light-Archive/dp/B000BRP0UW 

    Thanks David. :) 

    • David Pescovitz

      Ha! Mine is in storage. I remember paying like $50 for that back in the day. Crazy. 

  • Thomas Valley

    I put “Haunted Bela” up on Soundcloud recently, as it seems the original has been lost to the sands of time.  I heard it first here, on BB.

    http://soundcloud.com/thomas-valley/haunted-bela

  • Lísias Paiva

    please, check this bela lugosi’s version at coachella. it’s amazing! 
    http://youtu.be/Q5v2bP1okBs

    • David Pescovitz

      That’s fantastic! I love how Peter Murphy hangs upside-down for the duration! 

  • huskerdont

    David J looking cool as usual.

  • TWX

    I think that the version that I have on CD is from this performance.

    I always had trouble figuring out what speed to set my record player to when playing the 12″ single, starting out with so much percussion and so little else at the beginning.

    This is on my playlist for this weekend’s Halloween party, along with Tones on Tail’s live cover of Heartbreak Hotel and a few other tunes from both projects.

    • Beanolini

      I always had trouble figuring out what speed to set my record player to when playing the 12″ single

      So what speed did you settle on in the end? I like it better at 33, even though I know it should be 45.

      • TWX

         The record player didn’t last long enough to really let me finalize.  It was always amusing at 78 though…

        I was sad when it broke.  Damn you Yorx and your all-in-one tuner/cassette/LP/8-track bookshelf system!  *shakes tiny fist*

  • franko

    someone, anyone, please either confirm or debunk this story that i’ve long heard was true: during the end of their career as a band, peter murphy was so sick of this song that at one concert, they started playing this song and when it came time for him to sing, he picked up to the microphone and said, “BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH!”, put the mic down, and walked offstage.

    • David Pescovitz

      He seemed very pleased to perform it when I last saw them in 1998.

      • franko

        well, i first heard this story in… must’ve been 1990. so i’m guessing it had to have happened in the mid 1980s?

  • Mitchell Glaser

    Oh man those were the days. There was such cool stuff going on during the 80′s. Compare this song to today’s death metal shriekers.

    • wysinwyg

      I like Bauhaus a lot but comparing individual, groundbreaking, unique bands to whole genres is not a fair comparison (largely due to the 90% rule).  If you insist then you should probably compare Bauhaus to modern goth/industrial Bauhaus wannabes and compare “today’s death metal shriekers” to death metal bands from the 80′s. Apples to apples.

      • Mitchell Glaser

        I love your use of the term “modern”. But of course I cop to the over-generalization. I was just kind of amazed at how I could understand every (clever!) word in the Bauhaus video, where you have all this growling stuff going on now (by people dressed as Klingons or something) where I can’t understand a single syllable. I know, I know, I’m an old man, please don’t hit me.

        • http://twitter.com/chriscoreline chris coreline

          hang on, Goth inspired Death Metal?
          crikey.
          the bat-bothering cat-fanciers were more influential then i previously thought.

        • wysinwyg

          You’re in good company.  Most people don’t like shouty music.  The trick is to acknowledge that the vocals are being used as a percussion instrument instead of being used to carry the melody.

          Not much of a death metal fan myself but I like a lot of other shouty music.

          Yeah, “modern” may have been a weird choice but there was no deeper meaning in it. If you have a problem with it mentally replace it with “current”.

  • http://www.gyrofrog.com/ Gyrofrog
  • http://www.facebook.com/joly.macfie Joly MacFie

    I remember watching Bauhaus, maybe a little earlier than this, at the Hammersmith Palais and marveling at how comparatively quiet they were on stage. It added great clarity to their sound.