Ministry to perform With Sympathy and Twitch songs at Cruel World festival

Discussion
1

Killer line up for this festival too. If anyone is nearby, should be a great show.

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2

Wow! So, this is something more than just playing “Revenge” as the occasional encore. Double checking the calendar to make sure it’s not April 1st. :upside_down_face:

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3

I just saw this and was coming to post about it. I think reworking those old songs will sound dope.

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4

Gotta say I didn’t see that comin…

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5

Al’s made peace with his past?

Wonder if working on the cleopatra stuff and seeing how it’s received by us has anything to do with it

6

He explains a lot here:

7

That’s amazing
It explains so much
Als attitude to the album certainly seems totally understandable to me

He must have felt like he’d accidentally joined a cult

From my perspective as someone who has spent way too much money on Post Punk compilations over the years ,
Lots of bands had gone soft by 83/84
Even Gang of Four!

But in Al’s favour, he pulled it back from the brink and we got all the wax trax and sire stuff thank god
Most of those bands went pop permanently or broke up.
And yes it’s true Thompson Twats originally started as a credible post punk band

Haircut 100 all those guys started out as massive fans of the Clash and the Damned who got watered down

Jon moss from culture club was in the Clash and the Damned
The industry just grinds everything smooth

That cherry red compilation to the outside of everything is really interesting because
there’s loads of people on there who would soon become famous as cheesy 80’s pop

This whole period at the end of post punk is something me and my friend obsessively talk about, my mate always says 83 was the year it all went to shit
PiL doing this is not a love song and live in japan, yuk. Even raincoats doing Sly stone covers instead of being wierd and arty

As for the English accent I never heard it until that line in effigy “me mum and me dad”

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8

I think you pretty much nailed it.

The live recordings from the early years, while still post punk/new wave, have a little bit more bite to them than what ended up on the album.

Al’s recent comment really hit me “They didn’t want to use the songs that they signed me for”.

At the point of the Arista signing, they had easily written over a couple dozen songs, and only 3-4 landed on the album, and couple of those tracks were essentially cut in half on the run time. And of course, Same Old Madness was recorded for the LP, but dropped for some reason.

Al doesn’t like talking about it, but the fans over the years came up with idea that the label forced the group to make synth pop, which wasn’t the case. Over the years I’ve heard Al praise Soft Cell, Ultravox, Devo, ABC, Roxy Music and others. He doesn’t have anything against the genre.

If anyone has seen the movie Wayne’s World, there’s a scene where the big TV studio buys the rights to Wayne’s show and they show up to work and there’s a replica of Wayne’s basement in the middle of the soundstage. “It looks like Wayne’s basement, but it’s not”. Then you have the glossy yes men and fake positivity in the space and it just feels like the soul was sucked out it. I’m sure this exactly how Al feels towards the album.

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9

There’s a book called ‘Like Punk Never Happened’ that touches on this.

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10

Have you read this?
It was a good overview of that period.

https://www.amazon.com/Tape-Delay-Confessions-Eighties-Underground/dp/0946719020

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11

I wish this was cheaper or reprinted because I would like to read it.

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I got a copy from thrift books.com for $40 a couple years ago and copies pop up on eBay from time to time…I’ve seen them go anywhere from $40 to $350…it’s a good read but it’s not $350 of a good read…

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13

This is essentially how I felt at the time and how I tend to see it now. I would have been very content to make a further go of things on Wax Trax and home base in Chicago. Outside forces, including but not limited to Arista, had a lot to do with the switch. Payoffs and advances were part of the deal. New management came in and old management was ushered out with a goodie bag filled with a trifles and promises. It a story as old as time itself.

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14

The interview is entertaining and more in-depth than anything I’ve heard or seen.

The only problem with the interview is Al’s recollection of the timeline. He claims the band was performing “Everyday is Halloween”, “The Nature of Love”, and “Anything For You” before the Arista contract which doesn’t match with all of the known live performances in 1982 which largely featured tracks that eventually wound up on “With Sympathy.” It sounds like Arista tried to exert more influence on the second album, rejected the more industrial sounding demos, and that’s when things collapsed.
Then at some point Al went “scorched earth” on everything associated with Arista including the first album, which is too bad because the other band members have all said (I think) that they lobbied for a harder, edgier sound when WS was recorded.

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15

Any guesses as to what the May 11 setlist might look like?

  1. We Believe
  2. Revenge
  3. I’ll Do Anything For You
  4. Just Like You
  5. All Day
  6. Isle of Man
  7. Over The Shoulder
  8. No Devotion
  9. Work For Love
  10. Everyday Is Halloween
  11. Ricky’s Hand
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16

It’s a safe bet that they’ll play the songs that they’ve mentioned as being revisited, as well as any that they’ve played since the Wax Trax documentary. Here’s my guess-

  1. Effigy
  2. Revenge
  3. Work For Love
  4. Here We Go
  5. She’s Got A Cause
  6. Same Old Madness
  7. I’ll Do Anything For You
  8. No Devotion
  9. Every Day Is Halloween
  10. All Day
  11. Over the Shoulder
  12. We Believe
  13. Ricky’s Hand
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17

Same Old Madness live would be fantastic.

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