Posted on March 1, 2010 - by Mark Zonda

Back to ABC

“The glorious night that has placed one of the Eighties’ most perfectly constructed albums back near the top of the pop pantheon.” ~The Independent.

Most of you are still ignoring that there are actually obscure pages on the history of rock nobody even dare to have a look at (just a look, just a look). Guess you get to busy when everyday (everyday, everyday) you write the book, still going back right between AC-DC and A-AH there’s a subtle sheet of paper that goes under ABC. Easy ad a Michael Jackson song. Even too underrated to have even a song considerd even by the estimator of ’80s cheap super market collection, with maybe the exception of the smashit “The Look Of Love”, still hammered by commercials, ABC were definetly (a)part of the English New Wave Scene, having the same misfortune of those bands having the wrong timing in trying to get famous during Beatlemania or The Great Breat-Pop Wars.

With underated still remarkable and overproducted songs like the delicate “Be Near Me”, with a Wakemanian piano and a bass as good as in Level 42 standards, and the Dan Harrowian “How To Be A Millionaire”, trying to keep up with Duran and New Order, the most surprising fact about the band was the way they formed, having the journalist Martin (mc?) Fry emerging as a frontman after having interview Vice Versa for Modern Drugs (what a name! I’ve should have thought something like that instead of ShitWalking!). Shifting from New Romantic to Bright Pop, being the first waver to combine synths to a real orchestra, their first funky single “Tears are not enough” went stright to N°20 in the Brit Chartsm, yet defining a sound.

What about now, funk soul brotha? Like any gentleman from Albion, once faced death they are… “REGENERATING”, with the help of Anne Dudley and the BBC Concert Orchestra. That happened last april at the Royal Albert Hall.  The night they murdered love.

Do they deserve a second look? Of coursey they didley do. Modern music is rubbish.

ABC – S.O.S.

Let it ring on...

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