Are 'Friends' Electric?

Started: 2025-09-29 20:40:25

Submitted: 2025-09-29 23:04:00

Visibility: World-readable

Gary Numan at Catalyst

Downtown Santa Cruz's biggest venue for live music is Catalyst, which features a broad assortment of music on their two stages. I usually have their upcoming events page open in a tab on my browser. But seeing a list of artists I probably haven't heard of, with a confusing mismatch of posters and pictures, doesn't mean I can accurately guess what shows I'll like. My tastes prefer guitar rock and synth-pop and everything within one degree of separation, especially if it's danceable. (It's not like I can actually dance to music; I missed that part of my social development. But I'll bob awkwardly to the music, while part of my subconscious is instinctively and compulsively picking out the beat and counting: one-two-three-four; one-and-two-and-three-and-four-and; one-e-and-a, two-e-and-a, three-e-and-a, four-e-and-a.) My first question is just, "do I like the vibe of this music?" which I can usually answer by listening to the top songs on Apple Music.

I didn't recognize the name Gary Numan when I saw it on Catalyst's events page, and the copy wasn't especially helpful, but I looked him up and immediately recognized his top song, Cars (which was a break-out synth-pop song the year before I was born; and the trippy music video looks like it was made with the finest video technology of the era) and then found my way to the video of a live performance of his first band's hit song Are 'Friends' Electric?. The live version of the song updated the production into a grittier industrial version of the song. The appearance of the singer, and his costume, and the lights and stage presentation made me think this was the dark-wave band that Murderbot's Dr. Gurathin would create on the Corporation Rim.

That was all I needed to buy a ticket and mark my calendar for the show.

The show was at Catalyst's main stage, a long cavernous space with capacity for 800 people. It had been a hot day, and the air outside had cooled down, but it was still hot with the body heat of hundreds of people packed together to watch the show.

Gary Numan at Catalyst

The band on stage was Gary Numan singing at the center of the stage, occasionally dropping back to play a few bars on a synth or picking up a guitar. He was flanked by a guitar and bass player, both bald men in skirts who danced around the stage while playing. At the back of the stage were a synth player and a drummer. The band reinterpreted the songs an industrial/dark-wave song, joining the soaring electro-pop synths with chugging metal guitars. (At what point, I wonder of artists whose careers span decades, does playing their own songs become them covering their own songs? Or have they mutated into their own tribute band?) The music was loud and the mix favored the instruments over the vocals. (My concert earplugs helped with the volume but also attenuated more of the vocals and the high end of the music. I might need to refresh them.) The crowd was into the music, but they seemed to have my approximate level of familiarity with the music; they didn't know every song and they usually couldn't sing along but we were happy to vibe to the music as it washed over us, shoulder-to-shoulder with 800 strangers having the same experience in the same place at the same time.

Gary Numan on stage at Catalyst

Knowing all of Gary Numan's songs from a 45-year music career and 20 studio releases was not actually practical. I crammed his music in advance of the show but I barely had time to listen to the top songs on Apple Music and the "essentials" playlist. I didn't recognize most of the songs (though looking up the setlist afterwards helped fill in the gaps) but I recognized several songs from the artist's hits from past decades, including "M.E." and "Cars"

The other thing I wonder, watching a 67-year-old singer dancing across the stage, singing songs he wrote and recorded before I was born, is how weird it must be to be expected to reproduce on stage every night the same music one wrote at the beginning of one's career in one's twenties. I am glad that my career lets me leave behind the things I was doing at that age (with, I suppose, the exception of my own home-grown blogging platform that you're reading this on right now, which dates from precisely that time in my own life, and I still use and occasionally update, but it's a hobby project and doesn't form the core of my professional identity).

Gary Numan sings "Are 'Friends' Electric?"

After playing a full set, the band returned to the stage for an encore and finished the show with "Are 'Friends' Electric?" It was a great show and a good opportunity to see a working artist finding new ways to play the hits.