September 19th 1984 – DeMontfort Hall
Two gigs in a week, that was pretty special. I hadn’t really come down from the wonderful Echo and the Bunnymen concert and now we are back at the Demontfort Hall again.
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark were one of my top 5 bands at this early point in my musical journey. I’d put them alongside Ultravox, The Alarm, U2 and Japan. A good selection of New Romantics and two rock bands. I’d see all of them live except for Japan.
OMD were moving to experimental keyboard music before later becoming a mainstream pop band, which was fine, for now….
As a live band, they were an amazing spectacle, Andy’s dancing and Malcolm Holmes heavy drumming. Less so Paul Humphreys or Martin Cooper on keyboards.
I wasn’t a great fan of Junk Culture, Tesla Girls and Talking Loud and Clear were good tracks, but the catchy but annoying Locomotion and White Trash were less good and the rest of the album was a bit weak I felt….nice cover though.
This was a good gig, but with a lot of the newer tracks played (well, it was the Junk Culture Tour) I find it a little bit bland this time round. Even the faves of Messages, Joan of Arc (Maid Orleans) and Souvenir were split up and Enola Gay played late on…..nothing flowed for me, so I left a little bit disappointed.
Musically, I was starting to move to more rocky tunes, just picking up on Iron Maiden, Def Leppard and also Paul Weller had left the Jam and formed The Style Council which I was enjoying. Time to broaden my musical tastes now.
There was a pretty strange video for Talking Loud and Clear around this time too! Experimental and twee!
Set List
- Junk Culture
- Messages
- White Trash
- Hard Day
- Telegraph
- Julia’s Song
- Tesla Girls
- Talking Loud and Clear
- Souvenir
- She’s Leaving
- Joan of Arc (Maid of Orleans)
- Radio Waves
- Enola Gay
- Dazzle Ships
- Encore: Pretending to See the Future, Electricity
- Encore 2: I’m Waiting for the Man (The Velvet Underground cover), Almost
Leave a Reply