POP MUSIC REVIEW : Gavin Friday: Fatal Passion

The Virgin Prunes, Ireland’s notorious gender-bending art-shock band, dissolved just before their scheduled L.A. debut in 1986. But the group--which has reportedly resumed playing--still has an estimable reputation among local gloom-rock fans, many of whom packed Club Lingerie on Tuesday to see former Prunes singer Gavin Friday. Instead of an electric Prune, they got a different kind of (Oscar) Wilde thing as Friday and his collaborator, a keyboardist called the Man Seezer, led a five-piece ensemble through the importance of being an earnest cabaret act.

A chubby-faced iconoclast with pit demon eyes, Friday alternated between a croaking whisper and a flamingo-like wail, effectively framing dramatic songs of fatal passion and questioned faith.

Edith Piaf, German Expressionism, Marianne Faithfull and Jacques Brel were all processed in the process, and a version of Brel’s “Next” proved an effectively hellish marriage of anarchic behavior and controlled art song.

For second-year art students, the whole George Grosz-like ambiance might seem innovative, but this is not Paris in the ‘20s nor Berlin in the ‘30s, and the demonstrative artifice of Friday’s prophetic decadence often overshadowed any genuine emotional impact.