Category: ABC

A GUEST POSTING by KHAYEM

https://dubhed.blogspot.com/

Something To Believe In: An ABC ICA

I posted an ABC selection over at my blog back in November 2022, which was well received. JC had the following to say:

Here’s the thing……

The Lexicon of Love was such a perfect album that I reckoned ABC would never be able to come close to matching it. As a result, I more or less ignored everything that followed and had no idea so much material had been released since. I’ll need to give this mix a good listen over the coming days/weeks/months – I’ve so much to catch up with just now.

PS : Do you fancy adapting this piece to turn it into an ICA?

How could I refuse an offer like that? However, I was clear from the start that, rather than a rehash of my original post, I wanted to come up with something new. Over four months later…

I confessed then, and I’ll admit now, that I must have been one of the few people on the planet who didn’t buy The Lexicon Of Love in 1982. In my defence, I was 11 years old and didn’t get enough pocket money to spend it all on records. However, I belatedly caught up with ABC’s albums up to and including The Lexicon Of Love II in 2016. I admire that Martin Fry resisted attempts to do the latter until then – there must have been an incredible pressure to go there with each ABC album in the past three decades. When he eventually revisited that world, it was with the benefit of all that lived experience and an older, wider perspective.

Not that any ABC album is bad. The musical styles and genre-hopping may have been frequent between 1982 and 2016 (rest easy, there’s not an experimental drum ’n’ bass ABC album hiding in there) but the characteristic ABC sound and lyrical themes remain intact throughout.

I played around the 10-song selection here a fair bit but I’m happy that the final ICA gives ABC a fair shout, from their debut single to their last (to date) album.

Side One

1) The Very First Time (Traffic, 2008)

Traffic was ABC’s first album of the 21st Century and over a decade since their previous release. This is the second song but was an immediate choice for an opener here, a modern take on classic ABC.

2) The Greatest Love Of All (Album Version)  (Up, 1989)

ABC go clubbing. There was a whiff of bandwagon-jumping with this one, but their choice of collaborators was impeccable: Graeme Park and Mike Pickering on this track, Frankie Knuckles, David Morales and Derrick May on the single remixes. Up is not my favourite album, but Martin Fry and Mark White had definitely not ‘sold out’.

3) Tears Are Not Enough (Extended Version) (Tears Are Not Enough EP, 1981)

What a statement of intent for your debut single. If anything, the song is even better in it’s extended 12” version, a format that ABC immediately embraced with some stunning results throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Would I lie? Could I lie?

4) Bad Blood (Alphabet City, 1987)

I wasn’t a fan of When Smokey Sings when it was released as a single, though I’ve come to appreciate it much more since, particularly when I paid more attention to the lyrics. The record buying public clearly disagreed. Whilst the single narrowly missed the Top 10 in the UK, fourth album Alphabet City scored ABC their first Top 10 hit since The Lexicon Of Love. It’s chock full of poptastic tunes, as Bad Blood attests.

5) Who Can I Turn To? (Skyscraping, 1997)

ABC released two albums in the 1990s, Abracadabra in 1991 and Skyscraping six years later. By the time of the latter, ABC was essentially a solo vehicle for Martin Fry, writing with collaborators including Heaven 17’s Glenn Gregory on this song. This ‘comeback’ album wasn’t a commercial success and it was more than 10 years before a new album emerged. A shame as Skyscraping deserved more.

Side Two

1) Vanity Kills (U.S.A. Remix)  (Vanity Kills EP, 1986)

Third album How To Be A… Zillionaire! delivered a new ABC line-up and diminishing chart success, again which is a shame as there are some great pop songs within. Vanity Kills made #70 in the UK singles chart and #91 in the US Billboard Hot 100. This rather good remix by Mark ‘Spike’ Stent didn’t get a UK release until the 2005 expanded issue of … Zillionaire!, as far as I can tell.

2) What’s Good About Goodbye? (Love Conquers All EP, 1991)

I’ve opted for a B-side rather than an album track from Abracadabra, not because the album is poor but I just really like this song. What’s Good About Goodbye? features earlier as a line in Bad Blood. Clearly it stuck in Martin Fry’s brain as he returned to it a few years later, pairing it with the equally great line, ‘What’s fair about farewell?’

3) Valentine’s Day (Album Version)  (The Lexicon Of Love, 1982)

I briefly toyed with the idea of not including anything at all from The Lexicon Of Love. I mean, everyone knows it surely and for many, it raised the bar so high that ABC couldn’t hope to match it for brilliance. Then again, how could I ignore it? Valentine’s Day is so familiar, it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t actually a single (apart from in Japan, who knew their onions). A classic Trevor Horn and Gary Langan production, eminently quotable lyrics from Martin Fry and a band who were really at the top of their game.

4) I Believe In Love (The Lexicon Of Love II, 2016)

For the sequel, the only returnee from the 1982 crew apart from Martin Fry was Anne Dudley. She co-wrote a few songs, though not this one, which Fry wrote with Matt Rowe, who I only knew from his time as one half of remix/DJ duo Biff & Memphis. It’s a slow-building song, starting off with acoustic guitar and ending as a bit of a banger. Great stuff.

5) United Kingdom (Beauty Stab, 1983)

Beauty Stab suffered at the time from not being The Lexicon Of Love II, keeping some of the lush, string-laden sound of it’s predecessor for a rawer, guitar-based sound. United Kingdom is a simple, piano-led piece, Fry duetting with himself on a sadly still-relevant song about life on the dole. A perfect closer to both Beauty Stab and this iCA.

Khayem

Wow.

Just when I thought the blog was fading quietly away into obscurity, a few words about the debut single from Duran Duran sparked a lively response, the majority of it on the favourable side.  My special thanks, however, to my dear friend Drew for his pithy ‘fuck off’.  Reading it made me laugh out loud, which is no mean feat these days – partly as I knew that if he had chosen to make any sort of response it would have been exactly along those lines; above all else, when a mate from round these parts tells you to fuck off, he knows that there is likely to be some sort of comeback line rather than taking the advice/instruction to heart.

Which is why the latest entry in this series is another shiny product from another shiny new act from 1981.  It was tempting to go with Spandau Ballet, but that would have been taking the piss (although I do reserve the right to feature To Cut A Long Story Short at some point in the future).  Instead, I’m heading out of London and to the steely industrial city of Sheffield, which arguably, along with Glasgow and Manchester, were the UK’s most innovative and interesting cities music-wise in the late 70s/early 80s.

ABC made it big in 1981, just reward for the efforts in particular of Stephen Singleton and Mark White who, together with Ian Garth and David Syndenham, had been members of Vice Versa, part of the city’s vibrant electronica scene since 1977. They had supported many acts that had gone on to enjoy critical and occasionally commercial success, going as far as establishing their own label, called Neutron Records on which there were two EPs in 1979 and 1980. The latter piqued the attention of a fanzine writer/editor from Greater Manchester by the name of Martin Fry who, having interviewed Singleton and White, then found himself being asked to join Vice Versa on keyboards.

Within a year, having learned that Fry was a superior singer to Singleton, Vice Versa had put him upfront and began to move towards a sound that was more pop-orientated, including Singleton taking up the sax. In late 1980, the decision was taken to change the band name to ABC, stripping back to a trio and then adding a bassist and drummer.

They were snapped up by Phonogram Records, who were so confident of immediate success that they agreed to allow the band to continue to use the Neutron Records imprint. The first 45 via the new arrangement had catalog number NT101, released in late October 1981:-

mp3: ABC – Tears Are Not Enough

It was a pop/soul/funk debut that had barely a trace of electronica. It must have come as a shock to those who had followed Vice Versa through thin and thin with barely a nod to all they had written and recorded the previous four years.  It was bright, breezy, fresh and infectious.

Listening to it now, it offers a template for the pop sounds that would emerge in 1982 – I’m surely not alone in thinking that George Michael was listening and adopted it for the early Wham singles – not forgetting also that the new wave kids who had loved The Jam were picking up on this sort of sound as Paul Weller incorporated brass and keys onto the records and the live shows, and thus laying the foundations for The Style Council.

Phonogram, despite the single going Top 20 after a slow and steady climb up the charts, took the decision to ditch producer Steve Brown and bring in Trevor Horn to add something just a bit more substantial to the sound, including the latest synth technology and orchestral arrangements. The results, the following year, saw hit singles in Poison Arrow, The Look of Love and All of My Heart, as well as the album The Lexicon of Love eventually selling 300,000 copies in the UK and more than 500,000 in the USA.

I think it’s fair to say that the change of producer nailed it for ABC, that and the expensive marketing and promo campaign offered up by the record label. It brought fame and fortune but in the long-run caused friction between the band members with neither Singleton nor White choosing to be part of the modern-era ABC which tours the nostalgia circuits, preferring instead to reform Vice Versa in 2014.

Tears Are Not Enough was a very fine and cracking debut single but it got dwarfed by what followed, with the Look of Love being as near a perfect pop single as there has ever been. I’m still not sure if Horn hadn’t been brought on board whether or not ABC would have been an international success. It’s interesting to note that they struggled to enjoy much success with different producers in later years.

Here’s the b-side to the debut.

mp3: ABC – Alphabet Soup

This is a gazillion miles removed from the polished stuff on the debut album.  Lots of bass-slapping and funk elements abound… I think it’s fair to say if they had gone down this road in 1982, they wouldn’t have stood out.

JC

ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ctel (aka ACID TED)
ON 11 NOVEMBER 2008

Mrs CTel writes: This is my last posting so I thought I’d blow all (any?) credibility and go down in blaze of gold lame. Grab your hairbrush, flick your fringe, and sing along: “if you judge a book by its cover, then you judge the look by the lover. I hope one day you’ll recover. Me – I go from one extreme to another.” Pure poetry! Martin Fry may be hanging onto his former glory by his fingernails these days…but then so am I. Suppress your cynicism, dig out the glitter ball and enjoy the ride. It’s been fun.

mp3 : ABC – The Look of Love

JC adds in 2016….

the photo used above is randomly lifted from t’internet.  I’m guessing they are models posing for some sort of publicity shot.

Back in 2008, the CTels supplied a really beautiful photograph to go with the original posting.  I don’t think however, it would be appropriate to use it again all these years later .  It’s just too sad and those of you who followed ctel back then, and indeed visited my own place in the early days, will know what I’m on about.

Hope you’ve enjoyed the little trip down nostalgia lane these past few days.  I’m due back in Glasgow soon and will post some of own ill-informed rubbish again as of tomorrow.