Gary Numan St John-at-Hackney London 16th October 2023

 

Following on from the previous post here is the first of the London dates and an excellent effort it is too, great sound. Thanks to Chatts for the share!

FLAC: https://we.tl/t-vJ2ispBQ4k

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-ktXtD5MRWU

01. Intro/When The World Comes Apart
02. You Are In My Vision
03. Stories
04. For The Rest Of My Life
05. The Life Machine
06. Metal
07. I Am Screaming
08. The Machman
09. Lost
10. Merc
11. Ghost Nation
12. Everyday I Die
13. Down In The Park
14. Crime Of Passion
15. Bleed
16. And It All Began With You
17. Jo The Waiter
18. Cars
19. Are 'Friends' Electric?

Gary Numan St John-at-Hackney London 16th October 2023 - An Opinion

 

Gary Numan

St John at Hackney London

16th October 2023.

It's early evening, Monday, and I am making my way to Church. No, I have not seen the light, rather I am here for one of those increasingly popular music gigs (with a difference) in a functioning, consecrated Church. Perhaps it was the Union Chapel in Islington that started this trend but it seems to be gaining traction as a thing to do for those intimate 'songs and stories' kind of gig. I am guessing that it is a lucrative option for the Church as well. I would imaging that more money goes over the bar in two hours than makes it into the collection plate over a month of Sundays! That must be true judging by the price punters were being charged for drinks on the night.... £6.20 for a 330ml can of 4% beer for the curious.

Even stranger than the setting was the fact that the man we had gathered to see on this pleasant October evening was none other than Gary Numan, a man who for the last 30 years has filled his albums with songs robustly denying the existence of God and yet here he was brazenly knocking out his tunes acoustically in several of the many houses that seemingly belong to God with no repercussions whatsoever. At the very least I would expect one of the band to be struck down by a thunderbolt from the miffed man upstairs... but nothing, he and they made it through this eight date mini-tour completely untouched by the wrath of God!

With no support, the time prior to the band's stage entrance was taken up with a preview of the film of last year's return to Wembley Arena. I did find it a little odd to see fan's going through their routines to a two-dimensional screen Numan! Each to their own I suppose.

The band appeared on stage to little fanfare which kind of set the tone for tonight's performance, very informal and very relaxed. In all of the many times that I have seen Numan he had more interaction with the audience tonight than in all of the other shows put together and that was right and proper as he took the time to explain the songs and the circumstances under which they were written.

What I really appreciated about the set, and this was something that Gary was at great pains to explain, was that the band did not opt for the obvious ballady songs that clearly lend themselves to a pain free acoustic treatment. The trick is to rework some of the big, booming electronic floor shakers and make them work in an entirely different setting. That said, the acoustic style is already well suited to some of the very old Tubeway Army material as that was pretty much semi-acoustic in the first place. Thus we were treated to 'The Life Machine', 'Crime of Passion (two songs I never reckoned on hearing him ever play) and of course 'Jo The Waiter'. Throw into the mix 'Everyday I Die' and this is as close as I'm gonna get to seeing 1978 Tubeway Army!

That is the beauty of such acoustic gigs, they give the artist absolute freedom to do something different, something for an appreciative audience that is far from the norm. I guess (and Gary's often repeated references to how much he enjoyed this first acoustic tour as well as the opportunity to take the audience each night on a bit of a journey) it must be refreshing to play some of the songs you have been playing every night for 45 or more years well..... differently!

I will not give my opinions too much on the songs, but there was nothing in there that blatantly did not work once reworked. And just to say it was great to hear 'Stories'! The recording will follow so you can come to your own conclusions.

Judging by Gary's toothy grinning throughout the set I can only assume that for him this format and these dates have been an overwhelming triumph for him. And, for us the punters that can only be good news, giving him as it does a new engaging string to his musical bow. Well done that man!

Tubeway Days Nell's West Kensington London 21st October 2023

 

In my 43 year gigging career, I have in the main avoided tribute bands, although I acknowledge that such bands are a relatively recent phenomena. That said I did go and see a Jam tribute band at the Marquee in the early 1990's. They were called The Jamm and they harked from Boston, all the more surprising then that when they spoke from the stage it was a London accent that the audience heard, what's more they referred to each other as Paul, Bruce and Rick! Now my rationale for going to see such a band was that unfortunately I never got to see the bone fide Jam live, so at that time it was the closest that I could ever get to that experience (Weller in the early 1990's was assiduously avoiding anything even vaguely associated with his former band and From The Jam were some years down the road). So why then go and see a Gary Numan tribute band when Numan is still actively gigging. In fact I along with many in the small stage area of Nell's were at Gary's acoustic gig across London just five days before. The reason is that for reasons that I fully understand Gary Numan does not want to recreate the artistry of his earliest days. Even when he did the album tours of Telekon, Replicas and The Pleasure Principle in 2006, 2008 and 2009 respectively (and then repeated in a trio of gigs in London) it was different. No musician really wants to be seen to try to create something from their past in forensic detail. A tribute band has no such artistic dilemmas, they are free to play with the past as it is not their own.

So, on this night, Tubeway Days set out to recreate a date from the 'Touring Principle' with a faithful adherence to the set, the look and most importantly the sound of Numan's stage show as it was back in that first tour in 1979. In contract with the aforementioned Jamm, aside from clothes (ties, shirts and boots etc.) the band do not try to pass themselves off as Gary's then band. Only Chris Fielding, a.k.a. Gary Numan, has adopted the total look and I guess as the focal point of the band, that's OK... he makes no play to be Gary Numan on stage despite the look and the stage movements if you get what I mean.

The set looked great, given how scaled down from the original that it had to be and the sound that the band created could have been lifted directly from 'Living Ornaments '79' which was indeed the intention. Sadly I missed the OMD tribute act that would have completed the time travelling illusion.

With the original set completed the audience were treated to a handful of additional songs that were contemporary with Tubeway Army's 1978/1979 discography. They ended with a favourite of mine,  'Listen To The Sirens' which bowled me over!

So, as a huge fan of Tubeway Army I have heard more Tubeway Army (first incarnation) played live in one week than in 40 years: 

The Life Machine

Every Day I Die

Crime Of Passion

Jo The Waiter

Something's In The House

Bombers

The Dream Police

My Shadow In Vain

Are You Real?

Listen To The Sirens

Wow!  

Gary Numan Leas Cliff Hall Folkestone 8th November 1994

 

Nowhere was Numan's return to form more apparent than from the stage. Taking the career spanning set that had recently created a buzz within the fan base on tour with an album to promote into the bargain, a rebirth was in the making.

Listen to this recording from Folkestone and it is clear that something has clicked. There is an energy there that was completely lacking from Numan shows 18 months before.

FLAC: https://we.tl/t-tMHfb7SyqK

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-TVxLxXA1D1

Sacrifice Review by Steve Malins (Mojo 1994)

 

GARY NUMAN

Sacrifice

(Numa CD1011)

Sacrifice is a one-man show, written and played by pop's most famous whipping boy, who has rediscovered some of the chill of his early work by returning to the raw DIY feel of Tubeway Army.

For much of the album, the electronics ghost through massive percussion loops, creating a stark, Gothic mood for Numan's downbeat story telling.

His softly spoken recollection of a recurring nightmare on 'Deadliner' recall the frozen electro-pop he revelled in more than a decade ago. However, 'Walk In My Soul' reveals that the dysfunctional extremes of old have matured into some warm-blooded romantisism, and a track like 'Magic' comes across as positively life-affirming. 6.

So at last a positive review, that perhaps is a little at odds with the 6 out of 10 rated given to the album. Steve Malins of course wrote 'Praying To The Aliens' in collaboration with Numan.

Missing In Action (UK Music Press 1994)

This piece that appeared in a UK monthly music publication, I cannot remember which now kind of sums up the situation as it existed in 1994. A man at the bottom yet looking up.

Gary Numan The Marquee London 28th October 1993

 

Living in Kilburn in 1993 I was a regular visitor to the West End of London. By this point, the famed Marquee Club had relocated from Wardour Street to Charing Cross Road. It was a habit of mine when passing the venue to nip in to check out who was coming up to play. The music press would only carry information a week in advance. On this occasion in Mid October I was surprised to see flyers for Numan in the foyer that were advertising a gig at the end of the month.

I picked up some flyers (wish I could locate them today!) but honestly didn’t give it much further thought. By ’93, such was my disillusion with Gary’s musical direction of the past couple of years that not even the prospect of seeing him in such an intimate setting in a legendary London venue was sufficient to get me through the door. In my defence , it later transpired that Gary had a similar opinion of his musical output in 1993 as I did!

Needless to say, having made this decision not to go, two weeks later I was kicking myself as news filtered back to me in the days after the gig that this really had been something different and a gig I should have made the effort to attend.

 

Gary it would appear had become reconciled with his own back catalogue. Material was played that night that had not seen the light of day for fifteen years and in some cases never* (* I could be wrong on this statement but can’t be arsed to check, but you get the point). With hindsight, this was a watershed gig. Whether fully knowing or not (and here I understand that Gemma had some persuasive input here) this new found relationship with old Tubeway Army material took him back to fundamentals, the essence of Gary Numan as an artist you could say. Going forward he would stop trying to pre-empt what the new record buying public wanted to hear, Prince covers, Brit-funk or whatever. Instead, he would take that original sound back to the fan-base. 

With the ‘Radial Pair’ soundtrack and ‘Human’ already taking him back to experimental musical scoring his career was about to get an unexpected second wind!

If a revamp of the live set was the first step on the road to musical recovery and credibility, the release of ‘Sacrifice’ the following year was the crucial second step. Still, even then I bypassed this release. It was only when a friend of mine, Angela, sent me a cassette recording of the album that I got to hear it. She knew that whilst my interest in Numan had waned over a number of years ‘Sacrifice’ had enough of the elements that made me a fan in the first place to possibly draw me back in. She was right. It was evident from a first listen that the Numan camp had thought long and hard about how to drag our man’s faltering career out of the doldrums.

It wasn’t just the moody soundtrack quality of the material either. The visuals were back on track as well. The album artwork gave more than a superficial nod to more prosperous times. Black was back in vogue (always a positive for me) and the album cover with the high contrast imagery brought the ‘Telekon’ era strongly to mind.

As vital as ‘Sacrifice’ undoubtedly was careers rarely pivot on one album alone. 1995 also saw something of a musical seachange in terms of new music. Enter ‘Brit Pop’, a loosely associated scene that once again celebrated guitar bands. Not as seismic as punk but certainly something in the right direction and very welcome for all that. Many of the musicians in the ‘Brit Pop’ vanguard were of an age that meant that they would have grown up listening to acts like Numan. Consequently, they respected elements of punk and new wave that they incorporated into their own music. Bands like Elastica and Blur commanded many column inches every week in the then still powerful music press in the UK. To their credit they were very forthcoming about where they drew their own musical ideas from and the name Gary Numan was often mentioned. His name was appearing in the press for the first time in years, and remember first time around the music press were rarely supportive of him and his music. This press attention did him no harm at all. Neither did a compilation album called ‘Random’ that features many of the new bands covering Numan songs.

The momentum was sustained, helped by the emergence of summer festivals that brought Gary Numan to the ears of a new younger audience who would not otherwise our ‘80’s wonder kid. 

Thanks to the original Dime Uploader (Harvey1).

FLAC: https://we.tl/t-exWF1dxvRL

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-CY4la6c8Dh

01. Intro
02. Machine And Soul
03. Outland
04. Me! I Disconnect From You
05. We Are So Fragile
06. Respect
07. Shame
08. Films
09. Down In The Park
10. My World Storm
11. The Machman

01. Noise Noise
02. Cars
03. It Must Have Been Years
04. That's Too Bad
05. Remind Me To Smile
06. I'm An Agent
07. Are 'Friends' Electric ?
08. Jo The Waiter
09. I Don't Believe
10. Bombers
11. We Are Glass