Anyone from the band ultravox gay

Humanizing The Vacuum

My Ultravox is the dour, loud five-piece that fused Bowie’s Lean White Duke blankness and the aggression of punk. The John Foxx era lasted three albums, not big sellers, but their manipulate persisted through Modern Pop. Thanks to that dourness, they flirted with and occasionally bedded camp: “My Sex” could play like a period SCTV sketch on What’s False With the Kids.

Skedaddling for the sake of solo immortality, Foxx left his mates without a frontman. Former Abundant Kids guitarist Midge Ure briefly took up Foxx’s material, like a substitute teacher, for 1980’s Vienna, best acknowledged for its title track; its free is one of the you-had-to-be-there moments in English pop culture. “This means nothing to me!” Ure bellowed over a glassy keyboard before yielding the floor to Billy Currie’s violin.

I possess little use for Ultravox after Vienna. Ure’s adenoidal hysterics rendered the okay songwriting unlistenable. “Dancing with Tears in My Eyes” could’ve been sung by Jack Wagner. When they let their sharp instrumental skills do the talking, Ultravox was capable of a rugged elegance. Ure&

Midge Ure - Interview

"The feeling has gone, only you and I It means nothing to me This means nothing to me Oh, Vienna" We all know those famous lyrics and we all know it was Midge Ure and Ultravox....but there is so much more to Midge Ure than one legendary song. Okay, he wrote the second biggest selling single in UK history and, yes. he co-organised the biggest concert the world has ever seen, and will ever see....but how many knew of his moment playing guitar in Narrow Lizzy? Who knew that he bought a residence in the Caribbean, that was destroyed by termites, then a hurricane and and by a volcano? I could have spent 24 hours talking to Midge and we would still have had plenty to discuss. Pennyblackmusic caught up with him just as lockdown started to ease, and began by asking him about his forthcoming Voice and Visions tour. PB: It must experience a lifetime since the world went silent a year ago, but I see that you hold recently announced a substantial new tour. Is it the Voice and Visions tour? MIDGE URE: Yes, it’s a follow up to the tour


INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Trouser Press JUNE/JULY 1977 - by Paul Rambali

BRAIN WAVES FROM ENO

Too smart for rock 'n' roll, too weird for anything else

"At the one extreme I am a singer/songwriter (as on Here Come The Warm Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain) and at the other a sonic experimenter (as on Modest Music and Evening Star). All of my perform, however. has a continual characteristic: an interest in using all the facilities of contemporary electronics without lapsing into the quirky gimmickry that normally characterizes this pursuit. Much of the work attempts a happier liaison between electronic and 'natural instruments' than is usually achieved; complementing, rather than replacing, the old with the new."

Thus Eno describes himself in typically even tones on the sleeve notes of Music For Films, a curious collection of released and unreleased material, twenty-seven tracks in all. "That's a sampler album I put together. I just printed five hundred of them. It's because I started getting asked to do film music and the idea was that I would lust own an album that was a glossary of all the things I could do. Surprisingly it's gathered a few fans."

Eno's d

BILLY CURRIE 1981

Real Name: William Lee Currie, geb. am 01. April, Huddersfield, UK

First record bought: Tchaikovsky, Violin Konzert in D 

Bands: Company, Ritual Theatre Group, Tubeway Army

Lieblingsfarbe: Weinrot

Lieblingsfilm: Psycho

Synthesizers:

ARP ODYSSEY, Yamaha CS20/40, Yamaha SS30, Yamaha CP70 Piano, Yamaha CS80, Yamaha GS1, Yamaha DX7, ELKA String Machine, Technics PX1 digital piano, OSCar Monosynth, Prohpet T8, P.P.G. Wave 2.2, Oberheim OB-X, CME, Novation

BILLY CURRIE 2010

An Interview with ULTRAVOX’s Billy Currie

The True Transmission

Billy Currie is a classically trained, multi-talented instrumentalist/composer. With a serious musical background, he was once offered a place at London’s prestigious Royal Academy of Music back in 1969. He opted not to go; the prospect of regimented training and academics being promptly traded for a more creative and experimental outlook. He didn’t go far wrong and since then, he’s worked with TUBEWAY ARMY and subsequently toured with GARY NUMAN’s band in 1979. He was also a member of VISAGE – a studio-based project fronted by New Romantic legend Steve Strange, and co-wrote the smash hit chant

Handbag

In 1975, glam trio Handbag recorded an album for Jet Records, home to the Electric Delicate Orchestra and Ozzy Osbourne. Yet the LP, Whore’s Handbag, would remain in the can for almost five decades, thought lost forever until the band’s leader released them to streaming sites this week, as Handbag The Jet Sessions 1975.

Handbag were the first openly gay rock team to be signed to a major record label in Britain. They were also the first out-gay band ever to perform in a British prison, entertaining the inmates at H.M.P. Wandsworth on two occasions. Yet the designate would mean minuscule to anyone today. ‘Handbag came together with my coming out,’ recalls bassist, singer and songwriter Paul South. ‘I wanted to be a musician and in those days you needed to be somewhere fond of London. I also wanted to be open about my homosexuality.’ The 19-year-old Southwell left his family home in Accrington and headed for the radiant lights. It was 1971.

At that hour London’s gay scene consisted of a selection of seedy pubs, after-hours basement drinking dens and regular discos organised by the Queer Liberation Front, which had formed the previous October. But none of the bands playing GLF

anyone from the band ultravox gay