Tag: OMD

OMD in Cape Town – a great night out

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Did I miss the Zeitgeist on this one? It’s Sunday lunchtime, and the concert was Thursday night.
But I’ve been busy and tired and chilled, so this is late.
I get it.
Sorry, not sorry.

But still a concert and an evening absolutely worth documenting. Starting with a decent free parking spot a whole 100m from the gig: I’m really not sure where else you can do this. And sure, we were there only about an hour after the doors opened, but why not make use of the VIP bar, seated area, sunshine and early entertainment from SA’s own Werner Bekker?

Burger and chips and a visit to the merch store sorted, we grabbed some space on the grass and waited for éVoid, infamous for their 1984 hits Taximan and Shadows. And they played, and the crowd – seemingly exclusively 50 and 60-something year olds from Parow and Edgemead, and encouraged by a Bok Radio DJ – lapped it up. It was such a feelgood moment watching people transported back 40 years, back to whatever club in which they were dancing to that SA New Wave “Ethnotronica”. And they really were back there. Acting like they were teenagers, for as long as their knees would let them.

But wait… there’s more… OMD.
Andy McCluskey not looking any older than 12 years ago. Paul Humphries with only a passing resemblance to Jerry St. Clair from Phoenix Nights. They were just happy to be there, you could feel it from the first moment.

What followed was just under two hours of nostalgia, energy, audience engagement, incredible stage presence and just really good vibes. Starting with some new stuff, as expected, before Messages and Souvenir dragged us back to our youth.

A brave Kraftwerk-esque performance of Veruschka was a particular highlight for me, after which McCluskey thanked the audience for indulging them with “a slow, new one”.

The interplay between the crowd and McCluskey was just perfect: each feeding on the other’s energy and enthusiasm and just pure enjoyment of the moment.

A powerful, loud, brash – but still tight – version of Enola Gay rounded off the set before a stonking encore of Look At You Now, Pandora’s Box and Electricity sent everybody home happy, although I do suspect that everyone involved could happily have gone on for at least another hour.

All in all, just such a great evening. Band and audience both recognising their roles and duties on the night, and then performing them perfectly. One I will remember for a long time.

Videos courtesy of my daughter, who also had a great evening

OMD tonight

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Weather is good.
Tickets are by the door, ready to go.
We’re looking forward to a fun night and some great music.

Support by local boys eVoid, who had 2 hits way back when in 1984, and – according to all the sources I can find – haven’t had much success since. But live music is always good to hear, and I’ll be looking forward to them finishing their set with (I’m guessing at this point) Taximan and Shadows.

Going to stick my neck out and make another prediction, which is that Andy McCluskey will introduce their fifth song of the evening – Kleptocracy – with a suitably Scouse anti-authoritarian comparison of the UK and SA governments. Power to the people, aluta continua, innit?

At least half the line-up are big Liverpool FC fans, which might not make for the happiest of evenings (for them, at least). Let’s hope that they don’t have one eye on the football.
Although alternatively, I suppose if things go really well in Bergamo, it might be all night party time.

Either way: I’m more than ready for some old skool (and a bit of new skool) electronica.

Anthropocene

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Busy day today, after what could have been a boozy evening yesterday. I say that, because I’m writing this post in advance for exactly those reasons. So tomorrow hasn’t happened yet, and neither has yesterday evening (which is also tonight for me), but the braai is lit and we’re ready to go.

Sorry: that mixture of tenses hurt me too.

So I’d better squeeze this in quickly. We’re off to see OMD in Cape Town next month – their third SA visit (1994, 2012 and April 2024), and I have made a bit of a Spotify playlist (see below) of the setlist that I expect. Of course, they’ll be wheeling out all their big hits, but this tour is actually about the “new” album Bauhaus Staircase, and I thought I’d better get up to speed with it.

It’s actually rather good.

It seems from the tour so far that they’ll be coming out to the very Muse-y Evolution of Species before launching into this: Anthropocene, as their first “proper” tune of the evening.

Deliciously bouncy and happy and beepy and yet yes, also absolutely forewarning us all of the Earth’s imminent demise at the hands of humans. (Very Muse-y again – remember Unsustainable?)

Lovely. What a cheery way to start an evening.

Anyway, if you want to come along, tickets here.
And if you’re not coming along (or maybe even if you are), that playlist here.

Day 46 – Concerts and production

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Given that there’s no sport and no socialising at the moment, I have found myself trawling the internet for stuff to watch.
They are generally quick trawls. You don’t have to look very far.

One of the things I have been enjoying is some of the concerts that have been made available for our lockdown entertainment. And one of the things that amuses me about them is just how polished a “proper” concert video is when compared to what’s being offered at the moment.

NOT THAT I AM COMPLAINING, you understand…

I’m very grateful to have these things to watch.

Here’s an example: my man-of-the-moment Baxter Dury playing an intimate gig in a French penthouse, BTV:

versus this from his bedroom for the Royal Albert Hall Home a couple of weeks ago:

Don’t be fooled by the impressive title page. Click through and it’s wonderfully laid-back, fun, sweary and deliciously informal and almost amateurish: backed by his son on guitar when the recorded backing track didn’t work and with a half dead fern in the background.

Love it!

One more example, and this one is somewhere in the middle. It’s an OMD gig and yes, the footage was also recorded BTV – last year, in fact – but never readied for performance. So you occasionally get hands in front of the camera, it gets bumped by energetic concert-goers and there are sometimes chunks missing between the songs. Who cares? It still looked and sounded great on the big 4K TV in the corner of my living room.

We watched this premiere on Saturday evening after winning the Captivity Pub Quiz Part II by a whole half a point. Really good evening, and some good memories of seeing them really live back in 2012.

Will we ever do concerts again? I wonder.

In the meantime: more online gigs, please.

The Punishment of Luxury

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First full day on my hols. I’m hardly likely to be writing you an essay, am I? (Spoiler: I wrote a small one for tomorrow’s post.)

So let’s have some music.

The keyboard work on OMD’s new single is the 2017 embodiment of Kraftwerk. That’s obviously no bad thing.

The lyrics and video poke fun at our disposable, trivial, superficial and narcissistic modern lives. They’re not inaccurate.

Thus, it makes for both excellent and somewhat disturbing listening.