Tag: OMD

OMD tonight

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Weather is good.
Tickets are by the door, ready to go.
We’re looking forward to a fun night and some great music.

Support by local boys eVoid, who had 2 hits way back when in 1984, and – according to all the sources I can find – haven’t had much success since. But live music is always good to hear, and I’ll be looking forward to them finishing their set with (I’m guessing at this point) Taximan and Shadows.

Going to stick my neck out and make another prediction, which is that Andy McCluskey will introduce their fifth song of the evening – Kleptocracy – with a suitably Scouse anti-authoritarian comparison of the UK and SA governments. Power to the people, aluta continua, innit?

At least half the line-up are big Liverpool FC fans, which might not make for the happiest of evenings (for them, at least). Let’s hope that they don’t have one eye on the football.
Although alternatively, I suppose if things go really well in Bergamo, it might be all night party time.

Either way: I’m more than ready for some old skool (and a bit of new skool) electronica.

Anthropocene

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Busy day today, after what could have been a boozy evening yesterday. I say that, because I’m writing this post in advance for exactly those reasons. So tomorrow hasn’t happened yet, and neither has yesterday evening (which is also tonight for me), but the braai is lit and we’re ready to go.

Sorry: that mixture of tenses hurt me too.

So I’d better squeeze this in quickly. We’re off to see OMD in Cape Town next month – their third SA visit (1994, 2012 and April 2024), and I have made a bit of a Spotify playlist (see below) of the setlist that I expect. Of course, they’ll be wheeling out all their big hits, but this tour is actually about the “new” album Bauhaus Staircase, and I thought I’d better get up to speed with it.

It’s actually rather good.

It seems from the tour so far that they’ll be coming out to the very Muse-y Evolution of Species before launching into this: Anthropocene, as their first “proper” tune of the evening.

Deliciously bouncy and happy and beepy and yet yes, also absolutely forewarning us all of the Earth’s imminent demise at the hands of humans. (Very Muse-y again – remember Unsustainable?)

Lovely. What a cheery way to start an evening.

Anyway, if you want to come along, tickets here.
And if you’re not coming along (or maybe even if you are), that playlist here.

Day 46 – Concerts and production

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Given that there’s no sport and no socialising at the moment, I have found myself trawling the internet for stuff to watch.
They are generally quick trawls. You don’t have to look very far.

One of the things I have been enjoying is some of the concerts that have been made available for our lockdown entertainment. And one of the things that amuses me about them is just how polished a “proper” concert video is when compared to what’s being offered at the moment.

NOT THAT I AM COMPLAINING, you understand…

I’m very grateful to have these things to watch.

Here’s an example: my man-of-the-moment Baxter Dury playing an intimate gig in a French penthouse, BTV:

versus this from his bedroom for the Royal Albert Hall Home a couple of weeks ago:

Don’t be fooled by the impressive title page. Click through and it’s wonderfully laid-back, fun, sweary and deliciously informal and almost amateurish: backed by his son on guitar when the recorded backing track didn’t work and with a half dead fern in the background.

Love it!

One more example, and this one is somewhere in the middle. It’s an OMD gig and yes, the footage was also recorded BTV – last year, in fact – but never readied for performance. So you occasionally get hands in front of the camera, it gets bumped by energetic concert-goers and there are sometimes chunks missing between the songs. Who cares? It still looked and sounded great on the big 4K TV in the corner of my living room.

We watched this premiere on Saturday evening after winning the Captivity Pub Quiz Part II by a whole half a point. Really good evening, and some good memories of seeing them really live back in 2012.

Will we ever do concerts again? I wonder.

In the meantime: more online gigs, please.

The Punishment of Luxury

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First full day on my hols. I’m hardly likely to be writing you an essay, am I? (Spoiler: I wrote a small one for tomorrow’s post.)

So let’s have some music.

The keyboard work on OMD’s new single is the 2017 embodiment of Kraftwerk. That’s obviously no bad thing.

The lyrics and video poke fun at our disposable, trivial, superficial and narcissistic modern lives. They’re not inaccurate.

Thus, it makes for both excellent and somewhat disturbing listening.

OMD – they’ve still got it.

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Propped up by Corenza C and Red Bull, I made it out to Grand West last night for the first OMD concert in SA since 1994.

This isn’t likely to be the most impartial review you’ve ever read. It was never going to be, because I could listen to 80’s synthpop forever and a day and still enjoy every single second of it. And when it comes to 80’s synthpop, OMD were.. are… it.

No pretence from Andy McClusky that his dancing style is bizarre at best, nor that he’s getting on a bit.
On the the crowd’s reluctance to get involved:

Don’t be scared. I’m 53 and I’m still dancing like an idiot.

And then after a particularly energetic effort to Maid of Orleans:

It wasn’t dignified 25 years ago and it’s not got any better.
But at least I can still do it!

And he could. An admittedly generally sycophantic crowd were transported back to earlier times as they knocked out hit after hit, Paul Humphreys repeating those electronic riffs which kept us entertained on cassette all those years ago.

Considering this was “soulless” electronic music, there was passion and, strangely, almost a spiritual element to the performance.

Oh – and the new stuff isn’t bad either. This was a very pleasant surprise.

OMD wrote Electricity when they were 16 – a fact that a quick glance at the lyrics will confirm. But as we’ve mentioned before with these 80s bands, those lyrics worked back then. And, as Kraftwerk showed, the singing was rather incidental to the electronic beats and the keyboard themes.

Thankfully, OMD have moved on lyrically since then. But their recent stuff still holds true to their musical roots – and for me, that’s just great.