Welcome x Bauhaus Big Truth Garment Dyed Graphic Tee Black

Welcome x Bauhaus Big Truth Garment Dyed Graphic Tee Black

• Welcome x Bauhaus
• 6 oz.
• 100% Cotton
• Plastisol Print
• Front & Back Graphic
• Black Garment Dyed

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"On Jan 26, 1979, BAUHAUS recorded BELA LUGOSI’S DEAD.

Released on Small Wonder Records, a Walthamstow record shop-based label that specialized in releasing records by punk rock and post-punk bands, the Northampton band’s debut single seemed an unlikely blueprint for other bands to emulate: a sepulchral bassline that descended and repeated for the duration, with a drum pattern and myriad echo effects lifted from dub reggae, sitting below abrasive guitar lines.

Yet in this single effort, Bauhaus inadvertently invented “Goth” with a song penned in homage to an icon of the silver screen who was forever defined by his most famous role.

Their individual elements- a simple bossa nova rimshot beat, a slowed-down glam rock guitar riff, and a ton of reverb—might not have been wholly original, but once put together to form a complete work they became groundbreaking.

This is not to mention the lyrics, which were critical in raising the song’s profile beyond post-punk experimentation, depicting the funeral of the Dracula star with bats swooping and virgin brides filing past his coffin. At its height is Murphy’s brilliantly absurd vocal, which treads the line carefully between sincerity and fakery and comes out on top as sincere and beguilingly theatrical.

The significance of this performance is arguably at the putative origins of gothic rock. In a 2002 interview, Peter Murphy said of the song: “ We recorded ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ in the time that it took to play it, no second takes, and when I sang that I was completely in touch with myself in a way that I’d never been before. It was the stuff of dreams, it was magical. And that happens all the time. The personality is always trying to catch up with the soul, if you like. The soul is always waiting there to get a word in edgewise with the chattering monkeymind that is our ego…”

By no means were Bauhaus the first band to be associated with this very codified musical genre, but the aesthetic influences that informed Bauhaus’s image and substance, and the musical palette of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”, posit the song at the epicentre of gothic rock and the genre’s sine qua non." - @postpunk_80