The BBC Electric Proms is famous for spawning unusual musical pairings. Here Motown legend Smokey Robinson and Doves singer Jimi Goodwin talk about what they've got planned for this year.
DIG out your gold lamé suit as eighties throwbacks ABC are bringing their classic album, The Lexicon Of Love, to town with the help of a 50-piece orchestra.
The Hartnoll brothers called it a day in 2004 after 15 years of playing live gigs with miners’ lamps on their heads. This year, Phil and Paul have returned to work, so expect them to bring the opening day to a close with a satisfying bang.
The boyfriend, me and the mother spent the weekend down in Ashby visiting my sister and her family. We had a date on the Friday evening with Calke Abbey where my sister had got us all tickets to the Back to the 80s concert that's been doing the rounds over the past few months. It was actually in Hull in East Park for its first date but I never heard about it. I was a little apprhensive, although technically...
I think about the 1980s and see milestones and adventures. I see graduations from high school and two colleges. Marriage and a Mets championship. A real world job and an apartment. My life probably changed more in that decade than it will in any other. So the soundtrack for that transition from teen to adult will always be special. Some people might hear Human League and Flock of Seagulls and the Cars...
ABC star MARTIN FRY is considering turning the 80s pop act's hits into a new stage musical - because he thinks the tunes would be perfect for "a bittersweet love...
ABC star MARTIN FRY and GO WEST's RICHARD DRUMMIE are teaming up to trek through Namibia next year (10) in an effort to raise awareness and cash for African...
VARIOUS BITS AND PIECES: Remember the band "Red Box" (Lean On Me, Heart Of The Sun, For America)? Well they're back and have a new album titled "Plenty" that is due out this year. Simon Toulson-Clarke and the band have been playing a few small pub gigs in the U.K. and have a brand new website up and running. Their first album "The Circle & The Square" was reissued...
What’s it like to have loved And to lose her touch? What’s it like to have loved And to lose that much? ABC — June 1982 The greatest song ever written about a break-up. That’s quite a claim for me to make, especially for a song from 1982, a year which most music lovers might tactfully forget. Yet ABC’s debut album [...]
On Sunday 2 September 1990 Melvyn Bragg finally confirmed he’d permanently lost the plot by devoting a South Bank Show Special to George Michael in celebration of the release the next day of Yog’s second solo album Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1. Nearly two decades on, that album is remarkable mainly for its mediocrity. The singles [...]
Yes, we get the gold lamé suit, but only at the end of a glorious night that has placed one of the Eighties' most perfectly constructed albums back near the top of the pop pantheon.
'It was underneath a wig shop in Brick Lane," says Martin Fry, reminiscing about the insalubrious location of Sarm East studios where, in 1982, ABC recorded the luxuriant Lexicon of Love, one of the greatest pop albums ever.
Either Google isn't working or no-one has reviewed ABC's concert on Wednesday night, so I'm going to rise to the challenge, split some infinitives and mangle some grammar. Martin Fry has joined the 'play your classic album in its entirety' bandwagon, and why not? 'The Lexicon of Love' was, and remains, a towering achievement. ABC's hugely ambitious first album brought strings, emotion, glamour and...