Back to back to back concerts not to mention Friday being a double header OMD at Union Transfer followed by Sex Dwarf the #1 Philadelphia 80's dance party......underlining the fact there's NO such thing as too much 80's music in one evening.......although when you're still dancing to Tears For Fears classic "Shout" at 3.20am it's one evening and the early part of the following morning!!!!!!
OMD will "forever(live and die)" hold a very special place in my black pagan heart having graduated high school in the summer of 1980 and been lucky enough to find a job w/in a few weeks I found myself in the position of being able to afford a ticket to see them at famed Hammersmith Odean in December on their "Organasation" tour I can still recall freezing my keester off taking the train up to Charring Cross on the Sunday b4 taking the tube to Hammersmith to get a standing room ticket for the back of the stalls for the following Wednesdays show,it was worth it trust me!
That show not only began a way of life for me as I now attend shows on a regular basis but also made OMD an integral part of the soundtrack of my life.
Since buying the 10'' vinyl of "Messages" earlier in the year OMD began to become regular visitors to my stereo,so much so that I think my Dad probably knew the first two albums off by heart!!!!
Now I don't think for one second I'll ever be famous enough to be invited by the BBC to appear on "Desert Island Discs" but IF I did then w/out a doubt one of the eight albums I'd take w/ me would be either of the first three OMD albums.....which one is debatable as all three are classics,hell I might select all three and frankly in this blogger/80s fan's humble opinion the new OMD album "English Electric" could in time rank right along side them.
After seeing OMD in 86 on the "Pacific Age" tour I had to wait another 25 years till 2011 and the "History Of Modern" tour so any chance to see them now feels like making up for lost time and while I still yearn for "classics" such as "Bunker Soldiers" "Red Frame White Light" ''Statues" and "Stanlow" I'll happily take whatever I'm offered as I can still picture the 17 years old me bouncing around my fathers living room{while he was out I hasten to add!!!} pretending to be Andy McCluskey playing bass or standing behind the sofa pretending to be Paul Humphreys playing keyboards ,the fact they went from "Metroland" to "Messages" at the top of their set just made me smile and dance that much more!
I never saw The Specials or for that matter any of the Ska bands back in the day,my enjoyment was limited to either my stereo or.......and here comes a tip of the pork pie hat to The Selecter "On My Radio"!!!!
Sadly most Ska concerts back in day either ended in skinheads causing a fight/riot or you spent most of the evening waiting for the inevitable trouble to kick off which sadly it did more often than not.
While I never owned either Specials albums back in 79 or 80 they were a band I liked and I would often cadge a free listen to either LP when I went to vist my best friend John who lived at the end of my street,I did however own several of their singles including The Specials AKA Live which included "Too Much Too Young" and "Guns Of Navarone" "Rat Race" and "Stereotypes".
After finally seeing The Beat(sorry as a Brit I have a hard time referring to them as The English Beat!)last year I found myself eager to add The Specials,The Selecter and maybe even Madness to the list so imagine my joy when earlier in the year it was announced The Specials were not only touring but coming to Philadelphia.....even if it was to The Tower.
While I like The Tower I just felt it was the wrong venue for them The Specials are a band you want to be able to "get your skank" on to or at the very least be able to dance/groove to so I'm glad the show got moved to the TLA {Theater Of Living Arts} and judging from the crowds reaction they were happy not to have pesky seats in the way of their skanking.....or temptation for any skinheads who still think chairs at concerts are for breaking and throwing!!!!!!
Four songs into their set I leaned over to my buddies Eric and John and said"four songs in and no fights....this is great!!!"
W/ no inpending sense of fear that the show would get disrupted by fighting skinheads my only concern was Terry Hall,he looked like he didn't want to be there but I think that's just his demeanor because when he did speak to the audiance he was hysterically funny!
A beach ball w/ The Specials two tone logo found its way on stage from the back of the audiance only to be swiftly removed by a stage hand b4 Terry retrieved it and sent it back into the crowd saying"this is turning dangerously into a MTV Beach Party.....and you know how much I hate fun in any form"!!!!
A while later he mentioned seeing his first Armish person earlier in the day"that's it,I'm quitting this band and I'm getting a horse and a straw hat" he joked
Terry's final wise crack of the evening came during the encore"all I knew about Philadelphia b4 today was that Tom Hanks and Denzeil Washington lived here and they had a big falling out and they weren't speaking to each other......they're still not speaking....oh shit"!!!!never let anyone tell you Terry Hall isn't a funny guy!
My only gripe of the evening was that "Pearl's Cafe" wasn't on the set list,it's not the greatest song The Specials ever sung but it would've been fun to hear them and the crowd sing"it's all a load of bollocks and bollocks to it all" proving not for the first time,or the last time that even after 26 years here you can "take the boy out of South East London but you can't take the South East London out of the boy!!!!"
To round off my 80's Weekend I saw A Flock Of Seagulls at The Trocadero on Sunday night,I'd never seen AFOS back in the day so this was a chance to add them to my ever expanding resume of 80's bands live.
I always felt AFOS devided opinions back in the day,some people liked them,some dismissed them as a "novelty act" and some couldn't get past the hair....A Flock Of Haircuts was a frequent put down associated w/ them way back when,me I always liked them and as for the hair Mike Score was never an 80's artist I wanted to look like but it's nice to see these days we're rocking the same hairstyle.......I went for the shaved look almost elevan years ago so I feel he may be copying me!!
There was some grumbling that this line up of A Flock Of Seagulls is only Mike Score from the original line and three hired musicians but frankly they more than held their own recreating those songs from 1982's "A Flock Of Seagulls" 83's "Listen" 84's '' A Story Of A Young Heart" and 86's "Dream Come True" albums and two songs off the 95 album"The Light At The End Of The World" by which time it was just Mike from the original foursome.
Following one of the early songs Mike turned to his bassist and joked "we're getting too old for this" but clearly there is still an audiance for this era of music,ok they weren't cramming them into The Troc w/ a shoe horn and a pound of Crisco but it wasn't a "one man and his dog " show either and it speaks volumes for peoples love of the 80's that a band who had their heyday roughly thirty years ago and only has one of it's original members in the line up can still draw an audiance and on a Sunday night no less.
I'll look back on this weekend w/ very fond memories,I still have several more 80's bands to see this year but I doubt there'll be another three shows in three nights not to mention Fridays double header of concert and dance party.
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