I too have, to date, kept my silence but malphadour2500 you have pretty much summed up what I experienced. Is it fair to benchmark against Bauhaus, I don’t know? However, I do know that according to many, the Bauhaus gig was ‘the perfect hour’, whereas the Sisters ~ sadly, eminently forgettable.
To be fair, I thought the Leeds gig, marginally better than the Manchester gig and both of those better than the Paris gig. I guess that’s subjectivity, so doesn’t really count.
When I went to reclaim my cloak, at the end of the Manchester gig, there was a couple complaining to the attendant about how poor it was, how they couldn’t hear a thing and where do they get their money back? I asked the attendant, who looked well pissed off, if that had been happening a lot that night, and indeed, in general. She replied more that night than any other she could recall.
I’m not knocking the ‘new’ sisters for the sake of it; I think they’re great guys and good at what they do. It’s just I don’t think they’re as good, or as relevant as the ‘old’ sisters. Maybe the ideal would’ve been the ‘new’ sisters at around 2000, when people still gave a damn. After all, it’s not their fault they inherited the s**t end of the wicket.
Would I go to see them again? I always do. Would I get as much out of them as in previous tours? Sadly, I really doubt it. There was a time but it’s long gone when the sisters high would live on and on and on… No more
[the] Sisters are a big band for big venues. We’re used to playing to 5-6000 and no less. If you can’t organise that, then who knows, maybe we’ll fly over you on the way to somewhere else