On This Day 19/12/1994 The Cult

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On this day, 19 December 1994, rock band The Cult played Cardiff’s Astoria on their Beauty is on the Streets tour.

The band had just released their sixlth studio album The Cult on Beggars Banquet Records and it is also the band's last album on Sire Records in the US. It is also commonly referred to as the "Black Sheep" record, due to the image of a Manx Loaghtan black sheep on the front cover.

The record also features one of the very rare times when Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy have shared songwriting credit with anyone: bassist Craig Adams is credited as co-author of "Universal You".

Vocalist Ian Astbury referred to the record as "very personal, and very revealing" songs about his life, with the subject matter ranging from sexual abuse at the age of 15, to the death of Nigel Preston (friend and former drummer for The Cult), to his directionless years spent in Glasgow in the late 1970s. But the record was barely noticed, only reaching US#69, and UK#21, and then quickly dropping out of sight.

Reportedly it reached number one on the charts in Portugal, but quickly dropped out of sight as well. The single "Coming Down (Drug Tongue)" (UK#51) was released with the band going on tour in support of the new album. Only one more single, "Star" (UK#65), was officially released. That song began life in 1986 as "Tom Petty" before being dropped by the band during rehearsals. In 1993 the song was resurrected once again as "Starchild", and was finally completed for the record in 1994 as, just simply, "Star".

On This Day 23/03/1987 The Cult

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On this day, 23 March 1987, rock band The Cult played Cardiff’s St David’s Hall on their Electric tour.

Formed in Bradford in 1983. Before settling on their current name in January 1984, the band performed under the name Death Cult, which was an evolution of the name of lead vocalist Ian Astbury's previous band Southern Death Cult.

They gained a dedicated following in the United Kingdom in the mid-1980s as a post-punk and gothic rock band, with singles such as "She Sells Sanctuary", before breaking into the mainstream in the United States in the late 1980s establishing themselves as a hard rock band with singles such as "Love Removal Machine".

Since its initial formation in 1983, the band have had various line-ups; the longest-serving members are Astbury and guitarist Billy Duffy, who are also the band's two main songwriters.

The band's third studio album, Electric (1987), launched them to new heights of success, also peaking at No. 4 in the UK and charting highly in other territories, and spawned the hit singles "Love Removal Machine", "Lil' Devil" and "Wild Flower".

On that album, the Cult supplemented their post-punk sound with hard rock; the polish on this new sound was facilitated by producer Rick Rubin. After moving to Los Angeles, where the band has been based for the remainder of their career,