While Bauhaus reunion hype has pretty much worn off—following a 1998 reunion tour with all the original boys, Bauhaus also played to a heat-crunked audience at Coachella this year—the strength and tenacity of their songs have not. They've been declared the papas of Goth, but they've avoided the stigmas of the overly morose and oftentimes comical aspects of such brooding death-y music—instead, Bauhaus shows break the greatest-hits mold of other reunion acts by avoiding self-parody and playing like a band, not a memory. And they're doing a great job of keeping at least one foot out of the grave by recently collaborating with the newest Hot Topic counterculture-is-the-culture commodity: the Suicide Girls. That Black Heart Retrospective CD has the boys adding a Bauhaus tune to the mix, plus one from the more-poppy-more-money Bauhaus-sans-Peter-Murphy venture Love and Rockets. Now the disposable income of 16-year-old girls with illegal tattoos on the schmooze for illegal booze is pushing ticket sales and generating new love for the babies of glam. Overdose on Peter Murphy's hair peroxide as you sway to “Bela Lugosi's Dead” without even once looking at your watch—at this point it's all about letting the kids know you've still got it.
BAUHAUS AT THE GROVE OF ANAHEIM, 2200 E. KATELLA AVE., ANAHEIM, (714) 712-2700. FRI., 8 P.M. $38. ALL AGES.
