Alan Vega
Live at Rockpalast 1982 CD + DVD
(Play Loud! Productions)
The vocal half of infamous 1970s NYC exotic Suicide team, the late Alan was truly a unique specimen: A sequins-opulent, street-corner necromancer whose outlaw persona featured alternating yowls and hisses, abruptly punctuated by grand mal epileptic haloos and shrieks that rang into dimensions uncharted.
Some audience members were driven into boulevards by his hyperventilated expostulations, and Suicide partner Martin Rev's synth/rhythm box bubblings. But others found strange merit, in times otherwise made great by Manitoba, Thunders, Bators, and the Ramones bunch.
The beyond-all-reasonable-margins Vega/Rev duo threw synthesized startlingness, Bubblegum ditties, and crackling airs that had survived Brillo-Pad roughing ups into some oddball blender, festooning the product with one-foot-dangling-over-the-palisade poetry. Even now, few could probably listen to "Frankie Teardrop" in its entirety. (And yes, that's a challenge.)
Of course, Alan's between-lyric grunts and whoops had not birthed themselves; Rockabilly progenitors both famed and obscure had imprinted his manic gesticulations. That heritage inspired Alan's subsequent endeavors to weave the Rebel genre into efforts tottering on modern music's precipice. His later reinvention of Gene's "Be Bop A Lula," based around the Peter Gunn theme (and heard, here), evidenced as much.
In the post-Suicide era, Alan's gymnastic larnyx remained his trademark. And that was full-on good. Instrumentation displayed on Live at Rockpalast 1982 is a bit more involved than Martin's one-man voltaged razzmatazz. The more orthodox guitar/bass/drums unit at Alan's elbow had motored his Collision Drive LP a year previous. (It saw release on both the Celluloid and Vogue labels.)
Songs captured here are more than mere aural compositions; they are experiential. Vega's spotlit presentations were happenings, and his shambolic wavings signaled offbeat shamanic ritualism. As best as can be restrained within vinyl grooves, tracks portray a possessed performer in the happy grip of a cool mesmerism which only the committed know.
All that having been said...
Sound quality isn't always optimal. Distortion of a sort not planned makes its appearance. But it isn't nearly sufficient to sabotage listening gladness, and besides, such is sometimes to be anticipated with in-concert recordings. (It does lend an I-am-there worth, though you'll have to imagine jostling fans all around.) Included with this CD is a DVD containing 2002 documentary "Alan Vega: Collision Drive."
Unique specimen Vega may have split gig time between hip-bopping evocations and victorious battles with unseen antagonists from curious realms. We'll never know...
