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Grimsby Telegraph
December 2003
Eve Parish
TOGETHER IN GRIMSBY TO FULFIL ELECTRIC DREAMS
They're only Human, but Grimsby loved them.
The Human League landed at Grimsby Auditorium on
Saturday night and conquered a sell-out crowd with their unique sound.
It may be more than 20 years
since the
Sheffield band was born out of experiments with electronic
music, futuristic make-up and scary hair, but their voices were as fresh as
when they spent five weeks at Number one with Don't You Want Me.
Support act John Foxx, formerly of Ultravox and
others, warmed up with music to please the electro-purists - just himself, a
band-mate and a couple of keyboards and synthesisers producing sounds which
captured the hypnotic wierdness of early Eighties disco music, including his
hit Underpass.
The Humans walked out to cheers and whistles to open
the show with Hard Times and Here Comes the Mirror Man.
They were undaunted by
technical problems, which cut their synthesisers in the show's early
minutes, and few in the crowd noticed.Pillars
of moving light gave the stage the feel of an Eighties nightclub, and lit up
Philip Oakey's long metallic coat and the bling-bling jewellery worn by
Susan Sulley and Joanne Catherall. "We've never been in Grimsby before -
it's only taken us 26 years," called Philip to the crowd.
He added that it was great to be on tour in a place
where he could watch the same regional television programmes as at home.
The band's futuristic and experimental style has
generated more well-known tunes than most people think, spanning decades.
As well as Love Action,
Lebanon and Empire State Human the band got the crowd going
with Heart Like A Wheel, Tell Me When and One Man in My Heart, all hits from
the Nineties.
They finished with their biggest hit, Don't You Want
Me, a tale of yuppie love, which still resonates with today's young
professionals on the make.
Cheers and foot-stamping brought the band back for an
encore, and they said farewell with Together in Electric Dreams.
Judging from the shouts of "I
love you Phil," coming from the floor, fans who used to have Oakey's poster
on their bedroom wall were thrilled to finally see their teenage fantasy in
Grimsby.
And with mainstream pop stars like Kylie Minogue
currently taking inspiration from Eighties electro-beats, plenty of people
who would still have been in nappies when the Human League were at number
one, turned out to see the original pioneers of that sound.
Tell Me
When...can we see them again? |
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