Quote Of The Day

"Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake - Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)"

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

The Human League...


Paul's surprise Christmas treat for me last night was a trip The Forum in Kentish Town to go and see Sheffield's finest - The Human League. And they were awesome.

I really like the venue as the sight lines are good and even though we stood near the back we could still see perfectly well, get to the bar and had space to dance.

When the Phil (Oakey), Sue (Sulley) and Jo (Catherall) appeared on stage the audience went wild. The light show was excellent, the sound quality top notch and set list perfect. Phil's voice was very strong - its lost none of its rich warm baritone end, and he also cranks up to those high notes in "Human" perfectly well.

The set including, but wasn't limited to:
- Tell Me When
- Heart Like A Wheel
- Love Is All That Matters
- Mirror Man
- (Keep Feeling) Fascination
- The Sound Of The Crowd
- The Lebanon
- Sin City
- Rock And Roll Is Dead
- All I Ever Wanted
- Marianne (one for the fans, the first B-side of the Holiday 80 / Being Boiled 7")
- Human
- Love Action (I Believe In Love)
- Empire State Human (my favourite League song - 'fetch more water, fetch more sand, biggest person in the land'. Did Oakey really come out to perform a synth duel with a Moog Liberation strapped round his neck?)
- Louise
- Open Your Heart (sounded fantastic live)
- Don't You Want Me?

Encores
- Being Boiled (surely the only song with the word 'sericulture' in it. Silk worms and Nazis in the back projections... Okaaaaay...)
- Together In Electric Dreams (strictly speaking Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder but we were all dancing too much like loons to quibble)

We went to the pub afterwards which was crammed full of people chatting about the gig. We fell in with some motley crew and were soon swapping stories about League gigs, Marc gigs, 'Frapp gigs... There's a certain type, isn't there?

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:40 pm

    "- Marianne (one for the fans, the first B-side of the Holiday 80 / Being Boiled 7")"

    And obviously the London Reader's Wifes are fans as that song appears on their new compilation celebrating 10 years.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fantastic. The 9th anniversary one rarely leaves my CD player.

    ReplyDelete

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