Live Review: The Cult, Milton Keynes Bowl, 29th May, 1993

Ian Astbury (Photo: Paul Smith)

Is it just bad luck that the last two times I've seen The Cult outdoors it's rained. Is someone on a higher plain trying to tell us something? The nucleus of Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy have surrounded themselves once again with a changed line-up of musicians, but this can't hide the fact that the pair are still struggling to reaffirm themselves as the great British band they were. Playing such festivals is a double-edged sword. On the one hand the spot serves as a reminder of their presence, on the other, until the new material is available the show will always be a testament to their past and playing the greatest hits package has never been the way forward. Lil Devil, Fire Woman, She Sells Sanctuary and Love Removal Machine however are unmissable gems. The overall impression given by this performance is that the band are going through a transition. On their day The Cult are a match for anyone. This cold, wet Saturday afternoon wasn't that day.

Joe Mackett
Riff Raff
September 1993

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!