1983 – Atonal Festival II

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At Atonal Festival II

03rd December 1983 – Berlin Atonal Festival II – Pankehallen, Berlin, Germany

Set List

  1. Sicktone
  2. Baptism of Fire
  3. Rape
  4. Poisons
  5. Truth

Concert Background

Feeling: Messy

Other acts: Psychic TV, Zev, Neubauten, etc.

With Zos Kia. Balance and Peter also played with Psychic TV for their set. Zos Kia / Coil borrowed Psychic TV’s equipment for their performance.

Sicktone

John Gosling: “We’ve been witnessing your many and varied forms of control, today. They’re very effective. They’re very pretty.”

Are you bothered?

Stop! Stop!

Leave me alone
Leave me alone
Leave me alone

Get it out, get it out, get it out
Get it out, get it out
No

Get it out of here
Get. It. Out.
I want tits out

Baptism of Fire

It’s a secret
You’re a secret

Thank you
Thank you for my tunnel vision
Thank you for the sadness that I see
Thank you, God, thank you for the shit of my muse

It doesn’t matter, ’cause the zebra’s on fire
In the fire

Zebra…

Rape

Fear holds me here
Watching, waiting, watching

Your eye… Wolf-eye, I…
I teach you
I hate you
You’re waiting to be my sweetheart
…holds me here waiting…
Power danger violence fear
The power, danger, violence, fear, fear
Pain, and the pain
Hurts when you fuck me…
Hot hard prick rammed down my throat
He only does it for my red-hot womb
I’d give anything to leave now… Intimate

Power danger violence fear [repeated]

Fear, fear, fear, fear, fear…
He only does it… He only does it …
To leave me here, leave me here alone
Lonely, touched (touched)…
Till the flesh is cold red…
Power, the power…
Power danger violence fear

I do not fuck around, I never fucked in my life…
Leave me here, leave me here, leave me, leave me
Oh wolf, wolf-eyes
I teach you,
I hate you
I kill you
I…

Min ends the song by screaming.

Poisons

Kitchen;
No. No. No. No
No. No. No. No
No. No. No. No
No. No. No. No. No!

…So we know this
We’ve all gone mad
We’ve all gone mad
We’ve all gone mad by now

Touched, touched, touched
Touched by Christ’s little hand

Have to rearrange reality
To come back here
To these monoliths

Truth

John Gosling: “We leave you with some truth.” He smirks to the audience.

This song contains hollers from Balance and a lengthy monologue sampled from an interview with notorious hippie cult leader Charles Manson, released in John Moran’s The Manson Family Opera.

And I believe it was truth…

The truth has not been in your courtroom,
Never has been in your courtroom.
All you have is confusion in your courtroom.
Why do I have to stand and take the blame for your sins again?
I’ve spent my life in jail, paying for you, so that you could ride your bicycle, have
your birthday parties, have what you call a life.
You know, I never had a life. I don’t even know what life is, you know: I go to the
desert, I’m not even allowed to live in your desert. I’m no good for anything except
to be used, as your scapegoat.

I’m used. Every day of my life, I’ve been used. When I haven’t been used, and I have
been on the — on the street – I’ve been chased, robbed, harassed, pushed, kicked,
my ribs have been broken.
You know, the same man that gives you a traffic ticket is the same guy that knocks
my brains out.
He figures just because he’s the man (those scum) … nobody’s gonna say anything.

My daddy’s not a congressman, a doctor, or a lawyer.

..Under the door… Sneaking … Sneaking everywhere. Everything is sneaky up
around Sneakyville…
Has to be sneaky, and it’s even a shame to sneak… to make… Such an evil, nasty
thing.
You gotta sneak to get to the truth; the truth is condemned… The truth has been in
your reservation, building your railroads, emptying your garbage. The truth is in
your brains and your jails, and the young lads starting your courts or your congress
where the old sit judgement on the young. They don’t know about the young…

Look at the madness that goes on. You can’t prove anything that happened yesterday. Now is the only thing that’s real. You can try to prove that Columbus sailed on
that ocean, but it’s not the same ocean: it’s a different ocean. It’s a different world.

Every day, every reality is a new reality.
Every new reality is a – is a new horizon – a brand-new experience oblivion.

A friend of mine… He’s afraid of what he might have to do in order to save his
reality, as I saved mine.

You can’t prove anything: there’s nothing to prove. Every man judges himself. He
knows what he is. You know what he was. I know what I am. We all know who we
are. Nobody can stand in judgement – like you’re standing in judgement. of a
human body… But it doesn’t amount to anything.

What they’re doing is, they’re only persecuting themselves. They’re persecuting
what they can’t stand to look at in themselves: the truth! They can’t stand to
look at the truth in themselves so they persecute themselves.

They’re persecuting themselves every time they go on the freeway.

They hate themselves. Look at the signs. Stop, go, turn here, turn there, you can’t
do this, you can’t do that, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t, this is illegal, that’s illegal,
everything’s illegal.

The police used to watch over the people; now they’re watching the people. The
president doesn’t represent the people; he could be on the roadside picking up his
children but he isn’t. He’s in the White House sending them off to war.
And you’re saying I have to pay for this again, and again and again;
I’ve gotta pay for your sins. How many times have I gotta pay for your sins?

I’m getting tired.
I’m getting tired.

Touring Background

This was Coil’s fourth and last public performance until the December 1999 eLpH show. Balance and Peter stopped collaborating with Zos Kia and left Psychic TV shortly after this festival, making Coil their priority. They decided to primarily focus on studio albums and film soundtracks, kickstarting the next decade and a half by releasing seminal EP How to Destroy Angels and LP Scatology in 1984.

1984-1999 is well-documented elsewhere, such as on Brainwashed, so we at LCA would feel it redundant to recap everything here. The next page on this site picks back up with the 1999 eLpH show.

Line-up

John Balance – stick bass, drums
John Gosling – violin, bass, vocals
Min – drums, vocal
Peter Christopherson – sound mixing

Advertisements and Related Promo Material

Ticket Stubs

Please contact info@live-coil-archive.com with images of any ticket stubs.

Venue

Atonal Festival site, Pankehallen, Berlin, DE.

Gallery

Video – SBD #1a & EDIT #1

Known Recordings

Tapes owners/taper:

SBD #1 & EDIT #1 – Atonal Festival (?)

Source Quality Complete Length Lowest Gen Comments
SBD #1a 8/10 Yes 25 min M1, FLAC Officially released on Zos Kia/Coil's 1984 album Transparent. Prone to peaking, clean sound but hissy.
SBD #1b 8+/10 Yes 25 min M1, FLAC Remaster from the 2016 reissue of Transparent. Less hiss but more muffled, compressed sound, and the tracks have different indexing.
EDIT #1 8/10 No 9 min M0 (?), Youtube 2-camera angles (professional). Originally released on one or two extremely obscure VHS’s, but only just surfaced on August 16, 2016, albeit in incomplete form (ending of “Rape,” “Poisons,” and most of “Truth” only).

Concert Recording Downloads

SBD #1a – Officially released on Zos Kia/Coil’s album “Transparent.” Discogs link only for this official release.
SBD #1b – Remaster from the 2016 reissue of “Transparent”. Bandcamp link.
EDIT #12-camera angles (professional). On YouTube.

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