The Steel City Tour: Human League, ABC and Heaven 17 at the Hammersmith Apollo
Daryl Easlea, Record Collector, February 2009
THE STEEL CITY TOUR is a thrilling glimpse of the once- future through the lens of the past. What these groups attempted in Sheffield at the end of the '70s was to take things somewhere new, buy their synths and look outside the narrow prescriptions of the London media scene. Hence you had the Human League singing the Righteous Brothers, Heaven 17 parodying big business and ABC wanting to put Bob Dylan to the disco beat.
Total word count of piece: 239
Best Databases: RBP is Runner-up in Best Niche category
Video: Johnny Marr talks about Rock's Backpages
RBP on Spotify: The genius of Judee Sill
RBP Album Club in Chicago, June 30th: Paul Yamada and Liam (Plush) Hayes celebrate a Curtis Mayfield classic
Essential Listening: Roy Trakin meets the Replacements in '87
Essential Reading: Andrew Smith's history of the first dotcom boom
RBP Album Club, July 11th: Nick Hornby and Nick Coleman celebrate Southside Johnny's debut
Join the Facebook group now