Heaven 17 – The Luxury Gap Tour – 2018

November 16th 2018 – Bournemouth O2 Academy

Supported by: Claudia Brucken & Susanne Freytag (xPropaganda)

This month saw me catching up with a band I never got to see before….Heaven 17. I guess because, as far as I know, they never played Leicester?

I’m not sure they ever came to Nottingham either, until 2019? strange as they are from Sheffield. They popped up in Birmingham mainly, Coventry a couple of times and weirdly…Buxton!! I don’t know either!

To be fair, for many years when they were at the top of their game, they didn’t really tour at all, so now they were touring the superb “The Luxury Gap” album, it seemed a good time to give them a go, now we live near Bournemouth….it was after all ,the 35th anniversary of the album’s release!! Yes, I did buy it on first week of release…hahaha!!

The added bonus was that the support act was Propaganda, one of my favourite 80s bands…..well, the two main singers anyway in Claudia Brucken & Susanne Freytag, so it’s pretty much the same thing and they were now called xPropaganda (maybe for legal reasons?).

xPropaganda

We might as well be back in the 80s but a bit like Heaven 17, Propaganda didn’t tour either, they were signed to ZTT records and got over-shadowed by the sudden rise to fame of Frankie Goes to Hollywood. The timing couldn’t be worse for them and although their first album was phenomenal (A Secret Wish), it stayed under the radar for many.

I was a big rally fan and was ecstatic when the BBC chose “Jewel” as the soundtrack for the RAC Rally highlights programme on BBC2. It is such a biting and aggressive synth tune, it fitted so well with rallying.

Anyway, tonight, they begin with the alter ego of “Jewel”…..”Duel”. Confused? Both songs are the same lyrics and tune, but Duel (quite a harsh song title) is sung softly and melodically, with “Jewel” (a soft song title) is sung in an aggressive combative way……I don’t know if this counts as mixing metaphors, but that’s how it seems to me……you always could get your fill of pretentiousness and confusion in the mid 80s synth bands…loved it!

The set is pretty mush the track list for the first album, “A Secret Wish” which was great news and a superb start to the evening.

Set List

• Duel
• Dream Within A Dream
• The Murder of Love
• p:Machinery
• Sorry for Laughing (Josef K cover)
• Frozen Faces
• Dr. Mabuse
• Jewel

Heaven 17

Heaven 17 are made up these days of Glenn Gregory (Vocals) and Martyn Ware (Keyboards) with two fantastic backing singers in Hayley Williams and Kelly Barnes. There was also a superb keyboard player, who I think was Berenice Scott (also of Simple Minds)? Certainly looked like her, but apologies to the player if it was someone else 🙂

I’m not sure what Glenn was on, but right from the off he was “high on life”, he had so much energy it was unbelievable, to the point you wished he would just slow down a lil bit…lol. fair play! Loving life!

The energy he threw into “Crushed by the Wheels” was fantastic! Glenn’s voice has always been very strong and distinctive and tonight it sounded great….couple of ropey moments, but maybe that was caused by his energy!

The first half of the show totally played The Luxury Gap in full, as billed! Then there was a bonus of a few Human League songs! For those who don’t know (there may be some young ones reading this), Martyn started off in the Human League and was the integral driving force to some of their greatest early hits.

The songs they chose were dark synth tunes, brilliant. Then back to a selection of tracks from “Penthouse and Pavements” lifting the energy in the room again.

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The encore obviously included Temptation again, with a strong vocal performance from Kelly Barnes, stunning.

Then the announcement that only the geeks were interested in, that the tatty old on-stage keyboard was the one used to originally write “Being Boiled”….its a Korg 700S, if you wanted to know (someone might want to know) 😉

The sound when “Being Boiled” is still cutting edge and that was written in 1978!!

To finish a really good singalong to David Bowie’s Let’s Dance finishing off a great night. It seems incredible, for whatever reason, they guys hadn’t toured more…..but it was worth the wait to catch them!

Set List

• Crushed By the Wheels of Industry
• Who’ll Stop the Rain
• Let Me Go
• Key to the World
• Temptation
• Come Live With Me
• Lady Ice and Mr Hex
• We Live So Fast
• The Best Kept Secret
• Circus of Death (The Human League cover)
• Crow and a Baby (The Human League cover)
• You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ (Barry Mann cover)
• (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang
• I’m Your Money
• Play to Win
• Penthouse and Pavement
• Encore: Temptation, Being Boiled (The Human League cover), Let’s Dance (David Bowie cover)