Had Coachella been held in the early 1980s, its lineup likely would have included many of the artists performing at this weekend’s Cruel World music festival in Pasadena. Produced by Coachella promoter Goldenvoice, Cruel World time-travels back to that moment when synthesizers were supplanting guitars and rebel teens born into Baby Boomer hegemony and nostalgia were hungrily seeking new sounds and ideas. Below, the songs we never tire of — and that we’d better hear — by five acts appearing at Cruel World. Bauhaus, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”There would be no goth movement without “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” a frenetic, cavernous post-punk masterpiece that, at nearly 10 minutes, was a dance-floor staple in darkened clubs. “Red velvet lines the black box / Bela Lugosi’s dead / I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead.”Devo, “Gates of Steel”Few bands were as strikingly, deliberately disruptive as Devo, founded in Akron, Ohio, by two sets of brothers and led by Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale.

Source: Los Angeles Times May 14, 2022 07:42 UTC