Here is a podcast broadcast a few years back by the UK's Channel 4 news channel. Over forty minutes Gary talks candidly about music, metal health and the environmental crisis... Gary Numan 'Eco-Warrior'. Whoever would have guessed. This would be a good use of 45 minutes of your time.
Disc image: https://we.tl/t-KwGyqZ7jlo
Artwork: https://we.tl/t-lXXPdVfie2
Yesterday I took a trip in a time machine with the dial set to 1980. I had been told by Gunta that I would enjoy the Blitz Club exhibition currently on at the Design Museum in London (she had visited a few weeks back), so Mo and I set off early doors yesterday morning to take a look.
Being perhaps five years too young for punk, my musical awakening, if you could call it that, coincided with the height of the ‘Blitz Kids’ era and the club that gave them their name. Even then at the tender age I was I felt that there was something a bit preposterous about it all, a feeling that was pretty well captured by ‘Not The Nine O’Clock News’ (itself now a classic televisual mirror of that time) with their ‘Nice Video, Shame About The Song’ take off of the whole New Romantic Scene (a parody that actually features in the exhibition). On the other hand there was/is something magical about it all. A comic tragedy perhaps for those that came out of the nihilism of punk thinking fuck it, times are bad let’s forget about it (at least on a Tuesday night) and make the best of it. It just so happened that dressing like Rob Roy or as a Weimar actress was the way in which they chose to do it!
Design was a winner here. True, the outlandish outfits were never intended to last, and for sure anyone trying to gain entry to the club wearing last week’s garments would never pass muster and worse still would earn the would be clubber the scorn of couture arbiter, Steve Strange. But the focus on flamboyant style set the stage for a group of designers and frequenters of the club to work with others of the Blitz clientele who went on to be the faces of the New Romantic scene.
Never a dedicated follower of fashion myself, Rusty Eagan’s contribution to the scene is what counts more for me. Rich Kid and a founder member of Visage he was also the resident Blitz DJ serving up some very letfield post punk electronica from the likes of The Normal, early Human League, post Ultravox John Foxx and Magazine.
The exhibition is very well put together, not least with an immersive Blitz experience thrown in. I learned a couple of thinks too, such as just how small the Blitz Club was (capacity 100-200... depending on the scale of the millinery on show in any given week perhaps!) and the fact that on days other than Tuesdays, the venue operated as a WWII themed wine bar. This second fact explained the abundance of 1940’s propaganda posters adorning the walls of the club mock-up.
Pay the exhibition a visit… you don’t even have to dress up these days!
In the evening we saw Gary Numan in Cambridge marking the 45th anniversary of his 1980 album ‘Telekon’. Numan, famously, or infamously in his view, failed to gain entry to the Blitz Club. This snub unsurprisingly rankled with Numan since ‘Fade To Grey’, the song that brought Steve Strange to international fame, was penned by Billy Currie and Chris Payne, with contributions from Ced Sharpley (all part of Numan’s band at the time) whilst on the road with the ‘Touring Principle’ in ‘79/’80. Gary still mentions it today!
And so the day came to an end and returned us to the present day, 2025, with many of the same issues but without the great music (or clothes…. if dandyism is your thing)!
A chronological listing of recordings in my collection has now been added to the site. It is located at the top of the right hand sidebar and a link is also provided here.
In the week following the release of 'Travelogue', The Human League were on the road. I believe that this is a full set recording of the night. Eight of the fifteen tracks played on the night were lifted from 'Travelogue' or the 'Holiday '80' E.P. So they were evidently pleased with how the album had turned out. This is an audience recording, the performance is clear, but a bit distant.
FLAC: https://we.tl/t-x4wObpVN03
Artwork: https://we.tl/t-y8TvQr1Ykg
Numan won the race to the title of electronic music pioneer, breaking through into popular consciousness with that game changing appearance on 'The Old Grey Whistle Test' in May 1979. The Human League on the other hand released 'Being Boiled' as their first single in June 1978, the same month in which Tubeway Army were trading punk rock power chords down in Acton at the White Hart (the gig that prompted Numan's first retirement from the live stage). In fact, Martyn Ware and Ian Marsh had been engaged in avant garde electronic tinkering since '77 with the pre-League band The Future. Take a listen to 'The Golden Hour of the Future' to get a taste of the noises coming out of Sheffield at a time when London, Manchester and Birmingham raged with punk rock.
'Travelogue' was the Human League's second studio album, released in the UK on 16th May 1980. Recorded perhaps with more of an eye on commercial success than its predecessor 'Reproduction', it did not contain the hit that they were hoping for. The associated 'Holiday '80' EP should have done that. 'Marianne' was a strong enough original composition. But for some reason, they appeared on Top of the Pops 'performing Gary Glitter's 'Rock 'n' Roll'.
In the Autumn came an acrimonious split with Phil Oakey and Phillip Adrian Wright going in one direction and taking the name with them whilst founders Marsh and Ware started over with Heaven 17. In early 1981 Martin Rushant entered the Human League's story and brought them huge success. Heaven 17 had to wait a little longer before success came knocking for their British Electric Foundation and their own 'The Luxury Gap' album of 1983 that ultimately went platinum.
However, it is those first two Human League that for me properly represent the pioneering aspect of British Electronic music, a time when nerdy would be musicians followed the example of Kraftwerk and set about building their own equipment that was both unpredictable and unreliable in equal measure, but that on a gooid day produce something truely different.
There is no denying that the knives were out for Numan very early on. In fact this review of Numan's first post Tubeway Army gig, the opening night of the 'Touring Principle' at Glasgow Apollo on 20th September 1979, says very little that would encourage a potential punter to see the show elsewhere on the tour. All the usual stock criticisms are present and correct, fully formed even at this career stage, from the wooden stage persona of the lead singer, to the accustations of Bowie plagarism. Gibson didn't go a bundle on the music either.
New Musical Express (29th September 1979)
