93. Bauhaus: Third Uncle

If you're putting together a list like this, there are a lot of songs that are easy. You get practically no credit for including Paranoid Android, Smells Like Teen Spirit, New Year's Day in a list like this. You do start to get points for things like Stuck Between Stations (Hold Steady), Don Henley (Boys of Summer), Headache (Frank Black) and many others that I would have in my top 500 but wouldn't necessarily expect others to include.

But seeing this song -- and Liz Phair's The Divorce Song and Tom Waits' Jockey Full of Bourbon and Ministry's Stigmata -- made me back up and, despite my occasional mocking, wonder if PF500 might actually know what it was talking about. The easy play for PF500 would have been to include Bauhaus' Bela Lugosi's Dead, Liz Phair's Fuck and Run and a million other Waits' tunes. No one would have complained, but they found the right ones for the list.

The book's take is spot on, noting that "Bauhaus's status as the godfathers of goth always gets them a bum rap: it's as if memories of bad haircuts and fake vampires are just too titillating for anyone to remember all the incredible things this band actually did." And then "their cover of Brian Eno's 'Third Uncle' ... takes a spare, art-rock oddity and sets it on fire, kicking off at breakneck speed and then letting every member claw for the ceiling .... It's Murphy's double tracked vocal that does the trick: it starts off in a monotone chant, but by the halfway point it's frenzied and yelping, as the bug-eyed Murphy in the background shouts punctuation to the commanding one up front."

Absolutely! I couldn't have said it better myself.

Bauhaus put PLAY VERY LOUD on the back of one of their CD's and I always remember that and turn it up when I hear them, to their advantage. Everyone knows that loud music sounds better.

RATING: a 92 for # 93

Third Uncle - Bauhaus

(I just noticed it's Abebe. Nitsuh: I'm sorry for everything I said before!)