Telegram & Gazette (Massachusetts)
December 8, 2017 Friday


’80s music icon rocks Paradise, ’70s film star lauded at Coolidge Corner


HIGHLIGHT: Pop Culture Notebook: Gary Numan's triumphant return;
Adrienne Barbeau honored for her body of work. Pictures will be sent

When Numan burst onto the music scene in the late ’70s, the UK artist
looked like the replicant love child of David Bowie and one of the
interchangeable guys in Kraftwerk. Today, Numan looks like Robert
Smith’s slimmer, better looking brother.

Meshing the new wave of his past (four tracks from “The Pleasure
Principle” and two track from “Replicas,” as well as one from 1980’s
“Telekon”) with the nightmare of the future (six tracks from “Savage,”
three tracks from “Splinter: Songs From a Broken Mind”), Numan played
a hellish and hypnotic, 90-minute show that included a 15-song main
set and two encores.

Dressed like a warrior of the wasteland with an industrial-strength
band that played like they were auditioning for Nine Inch Nails but
looked like extras from “The Road Warrior,” Numan erupted on stage
with the fierce, unflinching opener, “Ghost Nation” (from his latest)
and never let up.

A manic bundle of energy onstage, Numan contorted his frame and
flailed his limbs (and, at times, even looked like he was about to
shed his skin), as his body got bombared by the barrage of unrelenting
beats.

Singing with his face usually buried behind clasped,
microphone-squeezing hands, Numan — with spiky jet-black hair, pasty
completion and evenly applied black massacre — lashed out and lamented
humanity’s ungodly demise due to our collective sheer arrogance and
vast shortsightedness.

Sandwiched in-between a prickly pair from “Savage” (“Bed of Thorns”
and “Pray for the Pain You Serve”), the alt-rock classic “Down in the
Park” was sheer perfection.

Numan was so electric that he didn’t realize the sound system carrying
his vocals blew out during “Love Hurt Bleed” that he continued to sing
with the same manic energy, despite his words momentarily falling on
deaf ears.

The one-two punch of his latest single, “My Name Is Ruin” followed by
his breakthrough U.S. single, “Cars” was one of the evening’s
undisputed highlights in an evening filled with undisputed highlights.

The massive barrage of pulse-pounding beats were wonderfully accented
by frenetic bursts of old-school strobe lights and changing colors
that transformed the stage into the nightmarish world of the not too
distant future where the sun has been snuffed out, oceans have dried
up and once safe havens have been turned into barren deserts.

Worth the price of admission on its own, the first encore featured
“M.E.” off “The Pleasure Principle” and “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” from
“Replicas,” while the second encore served up a killer “I Die: You
Die.”

After the show, Numan told me that his “Savage” tour might have the
legs to continue into 2018 in bigger venues, which, believes me, it
certainly does.

I suggested to Numan that he should call his old friend Trent Reznor
about a Nine Inch Nails/Gary Numan double-bill not unlike Reznor did
with David Bowie in the ‘90s, which featured the two artists in the
middle of their respective main sets, trading off verses. That would
be so cool.

Adrienne Barbeau honored with ‘After Midnite’ award

Adrienne Barbeau was not only honored with the Coolidge Corner
Theatre’s second “Coolidge After Midnite” Award Saturday night in
Boston for her stellar body of B-movie work, she watched a screening
of her debut feature film “The Fog,” did a 40-minute Q&A and even
graciously posed for photographs and signed autographs for fans (both
for free) until nearly 4 a.m.

Barbeau, who played late-night radio DJ-turned-heroine Stevie Wayne in
“The Fog,” was asked about her track record for playing strong, female
characters in her films.

“I had an Armenian grandmother and an Armenian mother and a bunch of
Armenian aunts and that has something to do with it. My family
survived the genocide. My grandmother came over and I guess we’re all
strong women,” Barbeau said. “I would be hard pressed to play a real
victim. It doesn’t sit well with me.”

Barbeau recalled the first time she read the script for “The Fog.”

“It was the height of the women’s movement, the equal rights
amendment. We just got Roe vs. Wade and I was coming off a series
(“Maude”) that was really very socially significant. And this was my
first feature and I read it and it wasn’t “The China Syndrome” … It
was a ghost story,” Barbeau sighed. “I’m not a fan of the horror
genre. I don’t like to be scared. I don’t like to go see them. I love
to do them but you’re not going to find me in the audience. I’ve never
even seen ‘Psycho.’”

Despite her disdain for horror, Barbeau agreed to “The Fog,” as well
as “The Swamp Thing” and George A. Romero’s “Creepshow.”

Originally, Barbeau said she didn’t want to do “Creepshow,” but her
then husband, John Carpenter (who directed Barbeau in both “The Fog”
and “Escape from New York”) and good friend Tom Atkins (who was also
in “The Fog”) convinced her not to pass up on an opportunity to work
with Romero, the legendary director of “Night of the Living Dead.”

“Creepshow” turned out to be one of her favorite projects to date.

“I had a great time making it,” she said. “I love George more than
anything in the world. I love Pittsburgh (where it was shot),” Barbeau
said. “I stayed away from the set when E.G. Marshall was doing his
stuff. I’ve worked with snakes and tarantulas and bees and you name
it, but I’m not going to work with cockroaches.”

But, there was one project she turned down, which, she acknowledged,
would have made her autograph lines definitely longer at horror
conventions, and that was Rob Zombie’s “The Devil’s Rejects.”

“I read, maybe, like the first 20 or 30 pages and I called the agency
and said, ‘I can’t do this. This is just so vile,’” Barbeau recalled.
“About a year later, I was at a horror convention and there was Bill
Moseley signing autographs and he had a line around the block. I said,
‘Bill, what did you do?’ The one I turned down, “The Devil’s Rejects.”
I still wouldn’t have done it. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”

Gary Numan performing Tuesday at the Paradise Rock Club, Boston.

Adrienne Barbeau talking about her career as a horror movie icon
Saturday at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline. [T&G Staff
Photos/Craig S. Semon]