Spandau Ballet: Classic or Dud?

I just listened to their first album out of curiosity, it's not bad.

not really sure what the point of this band is without their lead singer but I imagine the majority of people who would go see them at an 80's review show at this point wouldn't know any better either

Hmm. My opinion these days is that Spandau Ballet were much better at stuff like 'True' and 'Only When You Leave' than the type of material that made up their first couple of albums. Although, having said that, 'To Cut a Long Story Short' is still probably their best track overall.

It's funny, obviously I think that there's a lot of music from that period that has aged pretty well, particularly in the pop realm - 'Freedom' by Wham! has aged well, and quite a lot of what the original Duran Duran line-up did. Yet much of Spandau Ballet's music has aged pretty fucking horrendously.

round and round it goes!

That statement sounds like he's been forced to stand down from the board of directors, etc .

Didnt they all sue each other some years back?

Yes, but they all came together and reuned, all that.

As I say, the statements seem to say he wasn't interested in September 06, so when the company year end comes around and they all get their dividend, if he's not interested in doing more in the coming year and the rest do, he'd need to be paid off in return for his resignation.

Is my guess, anyway.

the artist pretending it's art!

Wasn't it "the art is pretending it's art"?

who knows? Don't trust a band whose songwriter once wrote "She rides the soul train while he fights the law."

Or "stealing cake to eat the moon"

Or "loving makes the cream taste nice"

"She rides the soul train while he fights the law" would be good if it was supposed to be ridiculous, I'm guessing it wasn't though.

Spandau Ballet appear in a short interview just before the 7 minute mark of this quite wonderful 12 minute news report (1981) on "The New Romantics": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CApOAaxUuc - "Spandau Ballet refuse to promote themselves like a normal pop group. They only appear at concerts in unusual venues, and these are never advertised. Their followers just hear through the grapevine where they're appearing."

Well that formatted horribly...

Yet their music was, on the whole, gash. Seriously, their first record is basically 'To Cut a Long Story Short', 'The Freeze' and a load of crapola.

I'm sure I remember reading that even though Gary Kemp came out in support of Labour during the '80s, Tony Hadley was actually a raging Thatcherite.

Hadley is a supporter of the Conservative Party and an admirer of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.[32] Journalist Andrew Pierce, in a 2014 piece for the Daily Mail, described Hadley as "the Tories' biggest celebrity backer".[33] He has attended the party's annual conference and was once reported to be interested in standing as an MP.[34] The New Statesman has described Hadley as one of the few openly right-wing rock stars.[35]

Wow, what a cunt.

They were shit. All of it.

Hang on, "Openly Right-Wing"?

How does he do that?

"True", "Gold", and "Communication" all classic. The rest blah.

The most classic aspect of this band is the meaning of their name with compared against the sound and sentiment of their most popular songs.

The most classic aspect of this band is the meaning of their name with compared against the sound and sentiment of their most popular songs.

As a callow youth, I lived in Spandau just as the group were becoming popular in Germany. The residents of Spandau (which looked about as romantic and windswept as Harlow, with the random addition of Rudolf Hess) were understandably baffled by the name of the group, and appeared to blame me personally for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsD5MoQJK2I

Ha yeah, their name is easily the most edgiest thing about them! Could have been the perfect name for a heavy metal band.

It's more goth, I'd say..

They did wear kilts on stage early on. 'To Cut A Long Story Short' is their best track and it's weird that they didn't go more in that direction. 'Instinction' is fun in a "this is music for proto-yuppie wankers" way. 'True' would be a great record - every with the ridiculous lyrics, "seaside arms" WTF? - if it didn't reset itself two thirds of the way through. It's like the songwriters gave up and copypasted the first bit again to fill out the running time.

In summary: childe snoball would have liked SB as much as Duran Duran, had they not been so intent on their soul obsessions and been willing to make fools of themselves in the name of art (like DD often did and they themselves did early on).

Oh and Tony Hadley looks like David Cameron's stunt double.

'looks like' or 'is'?

At this rate Cameron will have to get a job as Hadley's stunt double.

Dunt stubble

Cunt double, more like.

Really let's all just admit that when it comes to the New Romantics there is Japan and the everything else waaaaaaay down below.

Japan weren't New Romantics.

Yeah, Japan and Ultravox predated that whole thing by a good few years.

Ultravox had some connection though through Visage, Japan had nothing to do with it.

xp I think it was concurrent. The Blitz scene was the next thing after punk for that crowd but it probably only got media attention a bit after that as most things do.

Ultravox had some connection though through Visage, Japan had nothing to do with it.

― weird echo of the falsies (Tom D.), Thursday, July 6, 2017 9:48 AM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If you look at it like that, then Magazine also had a connection through Visage.

Except that Visage post-dated them all.

& I thought the Ure fronted Ultravox were more directly linked in with the Blitz scene. I thought whoever it was was differentiating from the John Foxx fronted version.

Yes and no. Midge Ure and Billy Currie were part of the Visage project (which was essentially a supergroup of Rich Kids, Ultravox and Magazine members, plus Steve Strange and featuring Cedric Sharpley and Chris Payne from Gary Numan's backing band on one track - you can guess which one) but Ultravox MKII (the Midge-fronted incarnation) pretty much mostly carried on from where the John Foxx-led version had left off. The Vienna album was written collectively by the band from scratch in the same room, and the lyrics were mostly written by drummer Warren Cann. It was also produced by Conny Plank as was the previous album, Systems of Romance, and the subsequent album, Rage in Eden. By the time they switched to George Martin for Quartet, the whole New Romantic thing was pretty much over. 'Mind of a Toy' and 'Tar' on the first Visage album were actually developed from ideas that Billy Currie had from John Foxx's time in Ultravox, as was 'I Remember (Death in the Afternoon)' from Rage in Eden.

It was actually John Foxx that changed his sound the most when the first line-up of Ultravox split - while he retained his melodic sense and his unique and wonderful voice, rather than opt for full-blooded band arrangements a la Systems of Romance, he went starker, colder and more purely electronic on Metamatic, more in the mould of early Fad Gadget. He'd return to the band sound for his second album, The Garden, which is a record I really like, but feels lighter than Systems of Romance sonically.

Japan weren't New Romantics.

Re "seaside arms" - I was dismayed to discover that this was an allusion to Nabokov :( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/11130014/Spandau-Ballets-True-story-1980s-pop-stars-on-how-their-hits-were-written.html

I thought it was something to do with Brighton Scooter Rallies

this much is true!

I keep meaning to post this to the Balearic thread. Best thing they've ever done by a country mile.
https://open.spotify.com/track/3Kwc780bTf6Nj6cV1dQG1z

(No Youtube apparently, hence Spotify)

Spandau Ballet to unveil replacement for singer Tony Hadley

Not sure why they didn't ask me, as Ned will confirm.

Paul Hollywood and the Bake-Offs

Whatever the era, such sharply dressed chaps. pic.twitter.com/TKwJ692Zzl

— Spandau Ballet (@SpandauBallet) August 6, 2022