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In case anyone cares, OMD are doing a tour of phenomenally crap venues, including a massive show at a particularly bad venue in a horrible city, which are all seater.
Apparently it goes on sale tomorrow, but there is a pre sale on the OMD website.
The word on the street is they're doing a similar thing to the last tour, only with Dazzles Ship being the album of choice. Which is brilliant as far as I'm concerned. 
Uncle Liam wrote: In case anyone cares, OMD are doing a tour of phenomenally crap venues, including a massive show at a particularly bad venue in a horrible city, which are all seater.
Apparently it goes on sale tomorrow, but there is a pre sale on the OMD website.
The word on the street is they're doing a similar thing to the last tour, only with Dazzles Ship being the album of choice. Which is brilliant as far as I'm concerned.
FANTASTIC! Cheers Liam!!
"This is Helena...this is Helena"
MONTY wrote:
Uncle Liam wrote: In case anyone cares, OMD are doing a tour of phenomenally crap venues, including a massive show at a particularly bad venue in a horrible city, which are all seater.
Apparently it goes on sale tomorrow, but there is a pre sale on the OMD website.
The word on the street is they're doing a similar thing to the last tour, only with Dazzles Ship being the album of choice. Which is brilliant as far as I'm concerned.
FANTASTIC! Cheers Liam!!
"This is Helena...this is Helena"
I'm in.
What is it with all these 80s bands doing tours to perform specific albums in their entirety?...... I mean the Cure started it off with their 10-hour snooze-a-thon "trilogy" ordeal playing every single track in the exact album order to inexplicably Pavlovian audiences. And hot on the heels of them are many others such as the once fantastic OMD - okay, granted their best album was a toss-up between Organisation and A&M, but they only recently did A&M after reforming last year. And now to mark the 25th anniversary of Dazzle Ships they're touring again??
Perhaps it's not out of the question to assume that they will be doing 25th anniversary tours of ALL subsequent albums (Junk Culture, Crush, Pacific Age) before they split up again amidst loads of acrimony only for Andy McCluskey to do the Sugar Tax 25th Anniversary Tour lark all over again in 2016??
I know that the Bunnymen will be playing Ocean Rain live in its entirety again later in the year (and I will be there, just you see!), but a little part of me thinks even THAT is wrong because of dear Pete DeFreitas no longer with them, so it will never ever be the same.
So what gives with all this tour revivalism business? Oh, don't tell me, it's because the cost of living has soared and everybody has got bills to pay and oversized pets to feed, yeah????
Anyway.....perhaps it's worth it to see the Dazzleships stuff live if only to witness Mr McCluskey doing his scalded hen impressions when he starts flipping out with his vocal histrionics on the climaxes of tracks such as International, Telegraph and Pathetic Engineering.... that would give a certain Mr Brandon Flowers a run for his money......
DigitalWaters wrote: OMD were OK in a Level 42, UB40 kind of way.
Yeah - especially post-Dazzle Ships era when they slowly started to lose their "cred"!
By 'Eck! My Neck! wrote: What is it with all these 80s bands doing tours to perform specific albums in their entirety?...... I mean the Cure started it off with their 10-hour snooze-a-thon "trilogy" ordeal playing every single track in the exact album order to inexplicably Pavlovian audiences. And hot on the heels of them are many others such as the once fantastic OMD - okay, granted their best album was a toss-up between Organisation and A&M, but they only recently did A&M after reforming last year. And now to mark the 25th anniversary of Dazzle Ships they're touring again??
Perhaps it's not out of the question to assume that they will be doing 25th anniversary tours of ALL subsequent albums (Junk Culture, Crush, Pacific Age) before they split up again amidst loads of acrimony only for Andy McCluskey to do the Sugar Tax 25th Anniversary Tour lark all over again in 2016??
I know that the Bunnymen will be playing Ocean Rain live in its entirety again later in the year (and I will be there, just you see!), but a little part of me thinks even THAT is wrong because of dear Pete DeFreitas no longer with them, so it will never ever be the same.
So what gives with all this tour revivalism business? Oh, don't tell me, it's because the cost of living has soared and everybody has got bills to pay and oversized pets to feed, yeah????
Anyway.....perhaps it's worth it to see the Dazzleships stuff live if only to witness Mr McCluskey doing his scalded hen impressions when he starts flipping out with his vocal histrionics on the climaxes of tracks such as International, Telegraph and Pathetic Engineering.... that would give a certain Mr Brandon Flowers a run for his money......
Its perfectly simple why they're doing it, its because the A&M tour was so well recieved (it was only supposed to be four or five dates if I recall) that they adopted it for the "The Best Of" section of the tour, which was about thirty dates.
Gary Numan has done it with Telekon and Replicas. I only saw the Telekon show (I dont like Replicas too much so didnt bother) and did it the best I've seen of these album tours. But what Numan did was take his current sound and adopt it to the Telekon songs, which worked exceptionally, and got an excellent critical response.
I actually quite like it is as an idea. certain bands, netioning no names, have treated their audience insultingly, not just with bad performances, but crap, predictable, boring set lists. At least OMD (and Gary Numan, and The Human League, to an extent) are trying to give the audience their moneys worth...
I suppose its what a lot of the fans want as well. For some reason, a lot of people arent interested in hearing anything new, so can go to these gigs safe in the knowledge that the strangest thing they'll be hearing is an old b side, and that their mind wont be open to new experiences.
Cheers for explaining. :) I actually would have loved to have seen them on their Architecture & Morality tour last year (for old times sakes because I was too young to catch them first time round when that album was released) but it sold out so friggin fast that I missed out. It's just the later - post 1980s- albums where they started losing the plot a little (Liberator anyone??).
By 'Eck! My Neck! wrote: Cheers for explaining. :) I actually would have loved to have seen them on their Architecture & Morality tour last year (for old times sakes because I was too young to catch them first time round when that album was released) but it sold out so friggin fast that I missed out.
The A&M gig was good, but it wasnt a patch one the one hour singles gig at Barcelona last year, as some of the people on here might be able to testify. You'll struggle to hear a better crowd reaction anywhere.
As i wrote in my review of the year for 2007:
You have to feel for Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys. You can hardly call Spain OMD heartland, and the gig the night before in Madrid was apparently a disaster, they're playing another festival where the chances are not a lot of people are going to be in your stuff, its 24C. It's the middle of the night. And you're in a tent. What do you do? Only one of the best sets of a 30 year career.
"The name of this band is OMD. The name of this song is Enola Gay." It takes a lot of guts to open with arguably your most famous song. This time it worked, with the entire tent rammed to capacity and everyone singing along. This is another gig I have the live recording of, and it really is quite amazing the volume of the crowd. I can distinctly remember standing near the front on the right , and just looking back every now and then amazed at the atmosphere in the tent. Tesla Girls and Messages followed up. Where do they go from here? Into some of the less recognised 80's and early 90's stuff. Does the atmosphere quell? Hell no. The set continued with the same quality with which it had started, with the crowd singing along to every word. Were all the OMD fans in Spain in that tent? Surely not. But damn well felt like it. Even songs such as Pandoras Box, Seven Seas, the perpetually crap Talking Loud and Clear, got a reaction as if it was Oasis playing Live Forever. Andy Mcluskey was bounding around the stage clearly having the time of his life, probably unable to take in what he was experiencing. In the end he just turned to the crowd and said "you are amazing" he was right, but it would be unfair and unjust not to return to the compliment.
^^ Good review and analysis there Liam. :)
I wish I saw the tour now...... or even the greatest hits one, sigh. The last time I saw OMD was on the Sugar Tax tour of 1991 where they sold out Birmingham NEC arena (!!!!!), I went with (then girlfriend, now lawfully wedded wife) Lorraine who had some bizarre soft spot for Andy McCluskit's stupid flowerpot dancing - she must be ill - but nothing prepared me for how relatively bland the whole shebang was. Still, McBiscuit managed to air some oldies like Enola Gay, Maid Of Orleans and Telegraph with the assembled new backing band of the day.
Some of the more obscure album tracks from Junk Culture, Crush, Pacific Age and Sugar Tax would have made better singles than many of the ones they released. I think part of OMD's problem was that singleswise, they may have released shitloads of tracks but they had very little quality control - too many of these singles were complete duds: Pathetic Engineering aka Magic Roundabout Theme, Never Turn Away, We Love You, Shame, La Femme Accident, Talking Loud and Clear, Dreaming, Every Day, etc.... and should have been left as album tracks. Instead, I often wonder why killer tunes like She's Leaving, Radiowaves, Silent Running, Pretending To See The Future, Motion and Heart weren't given single status instead..... Ah well.......
Uncle Liam wrote:
By 'Eck! My Neck! wrote: Cheers for explaining. :) I actually would have loved to have seen them on their Architecture & Morality tour last year (for old times sakes because I was too young to catch them first time round when that album was released) but it sold out so friggin fast that I missed out.
The A&M gig was good, but it wasnt a patch one the one hour singles gig at Barcelona last year, as some of the people on here might be able to testify. You'll struggle to hear a better crowd reaction anywhere.
As i wrote in my review of the year for 2007:
You have to feel for Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys. You can hardly call Spain OMD heartland, and the gig the night before in Madrid was apparently a disaster, they're playing another festival where the chances are not a lot of people are going to be in your stuff, its 24C. It's the middle of the night. And you're in a tent. What do you do? Only one of the best sets of a 30 year career.
"The name of this band is OMD. The name of this song is Enola Gay." It takes a lot of guts to open with arguably your most famous song. This time it worked, with the entire tent rammed to capacity and everyone singing along. This is another gig I have the live recording of, and it really is quite amazing the volume of the crowd. I can distinctly remember standing near the front on the right , and just looking back every now and then amazed at the atmosphere in the tent. Tesla Girls and Messages followed up. Where do they go from here? Into some of the less recognised 80's and early 90's stuff. Does the atmosphere quell? Hell no. The set continued with the same quality with which it had started, with the crowd singing along to every word. Were all the OMD fans in Spain in that tent? Surely not. But damn well felt like it. Even songs such as Pandoras Box, Seven Seas, the perpetually crap Talking Loud and Clear, got a reaction as if it was Oasis playing Live Forever. Andy Mcluskey was bounding around the stage clearly having the time of his life, probably unable to take in what he was experiencing. In the end he just turned to the crowd and said "you are amazing" he was right, but it would be unfair and unjust not to return to the compliment.
Eh? Was I at the same gig?
OMD came on after The Gossip. You couldn't get anywhere near the tent for the Gossip but it was barely half - it that! - full for OMD, certainly not 'rammed to capacity'! I just remember them opening with Enola Gay and the tent being virtually empty, next to no one there, then all these little Spaniards came running from outta nowhere, pelting past us.
Remember Liam, I was stood outside the tent with Nickos, Leggy and Gem - you were right down the front (one presumes) with Alex. You certainly didn't have a view of the bigger picture, like wot we did! 
Not a bad review, but vastly exaggerated!
Was it empty? Cath told me her and Nick couldnt get in!
I presume the only explanation for this is that they left at the end of The Jesus and Mary Chain and there was a rush of people coming from that side.
I was down the front but not with Alex, from what I can recall he was in the very front row trying to get someones attention. Norbert was with him, bopping around and (probably) annoying some short person wiyth his height.
Pandora's Box came on the radio today whilst i was driving.Didn't recognise the intro and thought it was that bloody Mental As Anything song 'Live It Up' at first.However it was actually quite nice to hear it and the optimistic feel of the song matched the moment - bright sunny day , blue sky , open road.
Andy Mcluskey's alright really.A nice bloke.Although i was rather rude to him at a Kraftwerk gig in Birmingham in 1991 
johnny wrote: Pandora's Box came on the radio today whilst i was driving.Didn't recognise the intro and thought it was that bloody Mental As Anything song 'Live It Up' at first.However it was actually quite nice to hear it and the optimistic feel of the song matched the moment - bright sunny day , blue sky , open road.
johnny wrote:
Andy Mcluskey's alright really.A nice bloke.Although i was rather rude to him at a Kraftwerk gig in Birmingham in 1991
Why - what did you insult him with ?
Let me try and guess....
I know , By Eck.I'm deeply ashamed that i took some small pleasure from an OMD song.The hot weather obviously made me take leave of my senses.I seem to have these lapses when i'm driving of late.I actually took some pleasure from a Phil Collins CD whilst driving a while back.3 hail Marys done and oaths taken never to stoop so low in listening taste again 
re the insult at the Kraftwerk gig.In a quiet moment between songs i shouted out something like OMD are shite!!.Mcluskey was standing just a few feet away.Yer can't miss the fucker with that elongated horse face
johnny wrote: I know , By Eck.I'm deeply ashamed that i took some small pleasure from an OMD song.The hot weather obviously made me take leave of my senses.I seem to have these lapses when i'm driving of late.I actually took some pleasure from a Phil Collins CD whilst driving a while back.3 hail Marys done and oaths taken never to stoop so low in listening taste again
Well, you're forgiven....... after all, is it just me or did anybody else think that their "Sailing On The Seven Seas" hit sounded simultaneously like Alvin Stardust (the very first time the vocals come in) and Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus" (rhythmically)?
johnny wrote:
re the insult at the Kraftwerk gig.In a quiet moment between songs i shouted out something like OMD are shite!!.Mcluskey was standing just a few feet away.Yer can't miss the fucker with that elongated horse face
Horse face!!! So that places him neatly alongside Alanis Morissette and Ruud Van Nistelrooy then? :p
Nah , Van Nistlerooy is a tiny pinhead compared to the never ending chin that is the Mcluskey gargantuan boatrace
