Matt here. I first met Peter at a house party in LA. Someone handed me a guitar and I played Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Hurt’ and he sang. I was too gobsmacked to face him, because holy sh t, and eventually I turned around and we turned a living room into a stadium. We killed it.
For background, I grew up going to NYC goth clubs like the Ritz and Limelight where I must have seen Peter’s Cuts You Up video a dozen times after bands like Gene Loves Jezebel and The Mission UK left the stage. Like any young goth, the Bauhaus open to the Tony Scott movie The Hunger was printed on my soul. So to actually play with Peter was kind of a fantasy homecoming. I liked him immediately, from the first hello. Peter Murphy is more like an element than a person, and that jam evolved into a collaboration where he, his band and I rehearsed in The Black Currents’ jamspace, which was across from a strip club in the absolute bowels of Downtown LA. We were getting a set together for a house concert which went down pretty well. A picture from that show is up top in the banner for this page.
Cut to a few months later and Peter called me with a request. He was putting together an all-Bauhaus show at the Conservatory in Santa Ana, and he would love me to come down and play some ‘chaos guitar’ for him. This was the first time he would play the Bauhaus catalog and this was an incredible offer. So… that is what I did. I brought the Gretsch and dimed the Fender Twins. I was so loud they took me out of the stage monitors. But it worked. The Falcon fed back melodiously and I got to sit in on Stigmata Martyr. In the world of bucket list moments for a professional musician, this checked all the boxes: music I loved, an artist I respected, and an audience hungry for the experience. It was a pinnacle moment for me.
It is very important to call out and celebrate the guys in the band, who were super generous and supportive about having someone join them for this big moment.
Thank you so much fellas. Absolute gratitude for you. Total pros. Thank you.
For background, I grew up going to NYC goth clubs like the Ritz and Limelight where I must have seen Peter’s Cuts You Up video a dozen times after bands like Gene Loves Jezebel and The Mission UK left the stage. Like any young goth, the Bauhaus open to the Tony Scott movie The Hunger was printed on my soul. So to actually play with Peter was kind of a fantasy homecoming. I liked him immediately, from the first hello. Peter Murphy is more like an element than a person, and that jam evolved into a collaboration where he, his band and I rehearsed in The Black Currents’ jamspace, which was across from a strip club in the absolute bowels of Downtown LA. We were getting a set together for a house concert which went down pretty well. A picture from that show is up top in the banner for this page.
Cut to a few months later and Peter called me with a request. He was putting together an all-Bauhaus show at the Conservatory in Santa Ana, and he would love me to come down and play some ‘chaos guitar’ for him. This was the first time he would play the Bauhaus catalog and this was an incredible offer. So… that is what I did. I brought the Gretsch and dimed the Fender Twins. I was so loud they took me out of the stage monitors. But it worked. The Falcon fed back melodiously and I got to sit in on Stigmata Martyr. In the world of bucket list moments for a professional musician, this checked all the boxes: music I loved, an artist I respected, and an audience hungry for the experience. It was a pinnacle moment for me.
It is very important to call out and celebrate the guys in the band, who were super generous and supportive about having someone join them for this big moment.
Thank you so much fellas. Absolute gratitude for you. Total pros. Thank you.
Peter became a semi-regular aspect of our lives for a while, a friend, texting me poetry without punctuation, cracking us up with phrases like, ‘back when I was gorgeous’ and showing interest in a series I was putting together around his adventures for the studio where I worked. He came to see The Black Currents play. (Imagine seeing that face in the audience.) We discovered we had common ancestors in Ireland and kicked around the idea of visiting Limerick and dipping our toes in the auld soil together.
A major high point was going with Peter to the LA Palladium to see The Cult and get properly introduced to Ian and Billy. I had worked with The Cult before but this was an opportunity too mind-blowing to pass up. You can’t really understand how strange it is to be famous until you go walking around with someone who has demigod status with a certain audience and witness how mobbed they can get. We were in the balcony and once word got out that Peter Murphy was in attendance the swarming began. Peter understandably ducked out when it got too much, telling me to say hi to Ian for him. My wife and I did make our way backstage, where we hung out with The Cult’s tour manager, who sported a huge Bauhaus tattoo on his back. I met Ian, but without Peter there, my hello obviously didn’t have the same effect.
I am so grateful for this part of The Black Currents’ story. Meeting and playing with a living legend like Peter Murphy made being Matt Flügger that much cooler. What an incredible teacher he was for me. Eventually the road called and Peter answered. Maybe we will finally reunite at his home in Istanbul for tea. Like I said, Peter is not a person, he is an element, and he abides a different system, which makes anything possible.
A major high point was going with Peter to the LA Palladium to see The Cult and get properly introduced to Ian and Billy. I had worked with The Cult before but this was an opportunity too mind-blowing to pass up. You can’t really understand how strange it is to be famous until you go walking around with someone who has demigod status with a certain audience and witness how mobbed they can get. We were in the balcony and once word got out that Peter Murphy was in attendance the swarming began. Peter understandably ducked out when it got too much, telling me to say hi to Ian for him. My wife and I did make our way backstage, where we hung out with The Cult’s tour manager, who sported a huge Bauhaus tattoo on his back. I met Ian, but without Peter there, my hello obviously didn’t have the same effect.
I am so grateful for this part of The Black Currents’ story. Meeting and playing with a living legend like Peter Murphy made being Matt Flügger that much cooler. What an incredible teacher he was for me. Eventually the road called and Peter answered. Maybe we will finally reunite at his home in Istanbul for tea. Like I said, Peter is not a person, he is an element, and he abides a different system, which makes anything possible.
After about 300 open mikes playing under the alias Matt Wolfe, Matt Flügger hit the big time, landing a feature slot at the Sidewalk Cafe in New York, which was the stage that gave us Ani DiFranco, Jeff Buckley, the Moldy Peaches and maybe early Karen O, but no one is sure. Then it was back to Canada, playing in bars with pick up bands and sharing the stage with icons like Suzie McNeil and Sean Cotton. Below are two clips from a headlining slot at the Gladstone in Toronto, which had the greatest acoustics ever. This show lead to a feature on Avril Benoit’s CBC Radio show Here and Now, which is still unbelievable to all involved. Like…how did that happen?
