Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Venue: Dom Sportova / Zagreb / Croatia
Concert date: 30.09.2009
Attendance: 3500
Ticket price: €38
Yesterday it was a mass pilgrimage to Zagreb. The reason? Buying season tickets for the “reborn” Medveščak’s games, or maybe catching the legendary The Cult, who on this year’s tour, dubbed the Love Live Tour, by some strange coincidence play the whole of the multi-million-selling, now cult album Love from A to Z! Since we at RockLine are incorrigible FC Čukarički fans anyway, the first option sadly was off the table, so all that was left was a quick hop to Dom sportova for what, going by the name, promised an unforgettable concert spectacle, one that, hand on heart, ended up not living up to all the (over)high expectations.
Walking into the hall, we were first greeted by local rockers Hard Time, who already warmed up the crowd as The Cult’s support act at Drava Rock Fest in Koprivnica back in 2007. Hard Time are worth checking out. It’s a classic hard rock approach that doesn’t skimp on the juicy stuff. The roughly half-hour opener, which the guys understandably used to shoot a video clip, served up a bouquet of songs the locals clearly knew well plus a few newbies lined up for the upcoming album, though the delivery sadly suffered badly from the sound, obviously preset for the stars of the night. Whatever, the crowd wasn’t too bothered by such “trifles”. Hard Time nailed their main job, heating things up before the big finale, and of course that’s also thanks to the outstanding guitarist Ivan Mihaljević.
THE CULT
The Zagreb show confirmed what we’d already heard: Ian Astbury remains firmly in the grip of that Morrison aura, which has been poking at the old boy’s imagination and creative vein practically his entire musical career. Ian’s open admiration for The Doors’ frontman is common knowledge, and you can feel it in that unmistakable vocal delivery that first shot The Cult into the orbit of popularity with the album Love. The ultimate dream come true came when Ian creatively fused with the two other still musically active members of the American rock legends, Robby Krieger and Ray Manzarek, with whom he conceived The Doors of the 21st Century project in 2002. Last night’s get-together in the small hall of Dom sportova was in many ways an optimal upgrade of the choreographic feats of the long-dead The Doors frontman that we’d seen before. Directed, of course, by the one and only Ian Astbury, who stepped out before the willing crowd with a “suitably” thickened profile, armed with exuberant facial hair. For a moment it seemed as if the ghost of Jim Morrison himself was standing in front of us, having happily lost his way somewhere on the road through Zagreb while chasing alcohol fumes.
The Cult went with a tried-and-tested recipe at Dom sportova, one that has been showing up more and more often this year on the concert menus of rock titans. The promised serving of the cream of the band’s creative zenith is naturally opium for the most loyal The Cult worshippers, and it also has enough potential to win over those of us who follow The Cult more from the sidelines. A sinfully good setlist, which, as expected, clung to the 1985 album “Love” like a drunk to a fence, is a golden guarantee of the tour’s success, but from an artistic point of view it calls into question the motives for this kind of thing, which, by negating most of the band’s legacy, hints mainly at a desire for extra cash. The two main protagonists of the The Cult collective, Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy, gave this claim a casual nod of approval yesterday. Throughout the night they stubbornly avoided any onstage communication with each other, their lines of contact staying ajar at best, which perhaps suggests their relationship is pretty frayed. Which is a shame! The visible cooling-off had no noticeable effect on how the whole show went, but the two gentlemen (Duffy above all) bitterly reminded us that the days of the blossoming, fruitful partnership that gave birth to some of the best moments in the story of rock & roll are sadly long behind us!
Still, The Cult shook Dom sportova to its very foundations, shamelessly played around with the bones of “the great hero” Dr. Franja, and conjured up a unique orgy of primal rock & roll, all thanks mainly to a poisonous repertoire whose peaks triggered more than a few ecstatic reactions from the crowd. First “Nirvana”, then the familiar sequence directed by “The Big Neon Glitter”, “Love”, “Brother Wolf, Sister Moon”, marching briskly toward the first high point of the night, the cult “Rain”, accompanied by tuneful all-hands singing, all of it from a one-beat musical machine that rides on a minimalist combination of three chords and extremely catchy simple motifs. The crowd’s response was relentlessly sincere, no doubt also because of their unshakable faith in their heroes, which stands just a stone’s throw from full-on idealization. I believe most people thus barely registered the at times rather holey state of Ian’s vocals, which often needed help from a not exactly thrilling backing vocal setup. Surprisingly, Ian did better exactly where you’d have expected the worst migraine-level blows from what we’d heard beforehand, for instance on “Black Angel”, the proving ground for drilling Morrison-esque expressive elements. Duffy, on the other hand, approached things cautiously at first, and the guitarist’s flashes of brilliance were rare. At least in the first half of the show, Billy did his job along the “line of least effort”, regularly switching between wah effect and conventional distortion territory, so confidently, but with no standout moments or any excessive emotional sparks. Unlike the visibly moved crowd (generally armed with assorted The Cult paraphernalia), which, with the band’s serial serving of triumphs, gradually turned Dom sportova into an incubator of eruptive energy currents.
Like I said, not even a random passerby could wish for a better setlist. It’s just a shame that Ian and company didn’t allow themselves to dig deeper for classics like “Edie (Ciao Baby)”. From the album Sonic Temple we missed Sweet Soul Sister, for instance, but with Dirty Little Rock Star they did deliver one of the few surprises of the night, which understandably flew by a bit too fast. Actually, way too fast, because after the closing Love Removal Machine, The Cult turned their backs on us with office-worker coolness and without a shred of guilt, leaving us trapped in volleys of whistles from dissatisfied individuals, robbed of the long-awaited encore. This undoubtedly unexpected maneuver is also the main culprit for the bitter aftertaste that kept turning mercilessly in our mouths on the way back to the homeland.
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist
1. Nirvana 2. Big Neon Glitter 3. Love 4. Brother Wolf, Sister Moon 5. Rain 6. The Phoenix 7. The Hollow Man 8. Revolution 9. She Sells Sanctuary 10. Black Angel 11. Electric Ocean 12. Wild Flower 13. Sun King 14. Rise 15. Dirty Little Rock Star 16. Fire Woman 17. Love Removal Machine
Photo gallery
