Friday, September 25. 2009
by Jeff Barringer - Staff Writer
It didn't feel quite like a Raul's reunion in the audience at the Psychedelic Furs show at Stubb's last night, more like a VH1 80's retrospective as brothers Richard Butler and Tim Butler brought the seminal 70's punk cum new wave band to Austin.
The Fur's have a long history influencing the Austin alternative music scene, in fact going all the way back to their show at Raul's in 1980, Austin's legendary well-spring punk club down on the U.T. campus. Many Austin bands sprang from that gig, and as one of the first foreign punk acts to play an Austin club, the Fur's's helped to establish Austin's punk/alternative music scene on an international level.
This iteration of the Fur's has changed somewhat, with the Butler's being the only remaining original members, but with Rich Good on guitar, Mars Williams on saxophone, Amanda Kramer on keys, and Paul Garisto drums providing able accompaniment the songs sounded album perfect. And what songs there were too, a litany of FM radio favorites of the 80's and 90's. If I had only one complaint about thesong mix it would be that aside from "Sister Europe" they didn't play anything else off their first album. Those songs were so much darker than their later work, less radio friendly, and more experimental for the time. Certainly tame by todays standards, in the FM world of the 70's & 80's where The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac ruled the airwaves, those songs were groundbreaking.
But I digress. Looking at the set list I don't see anything I didn't enjoy hearing, and I would be hard pressed to pick songs to cut to find room for others. Great show, great set, I could watch the Psychedelic Furs again and again.
Click here to check out the rest of the pics.
photos by Jeff Barringer - Staff Photographer
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