Orchestral Manoeuvres
in the Dark
A few words about what OMD means to me…
As I sit here, less than a week away from OMD’s return to South Africa for the first time in at least 15 or so years, I can’t help but remember the first time I got to see them at the Standard Bank arena in the early nineties.
I have been a fan of them since I was a teenager in the eighties – loving their first 4 albums before they hit really big commercial success. We’ve all heard the biggest hits, from Electricity, to Enola Gay to Joan of Arc, Telegraph, Talking Loud and Clear, Locomotion – and that’s just the first 5 albums! There are at least 10 more tracks that would be instantly recognisable to anyone who listened to the radio between the eighties and the noughties.
Not many people know that they broke up in the 90’s and only got back together after about 20 years apart. Both of the main members had some success with a variety of side projects in that time, but the fact that they got back together after such a long hiatus is quite incredible anyway – not to mention having put together 3 more albums in the last 14 years. I heard once that they were the second most commercially successful band to come out of Liverpool after the Beatles – not a small achievement at all.
There are so many cool parts of my life that I can instantly recall just by hearing a song from that time period – some of them quite sad, but most of them really happy. While most people consider their music to be quite light and poppy – they have had some fairly serious themes and strong lyrics over the years. They wrote a song for the “Organisation” album just after hearing of the death of Ian Curtis – the lead singer of Joy Division – a band they were on the same label with for a time and even performed live with them once or twice. Joy Division is very often cited as a major influence by a VERY large group of huge musicians today. They also had a song about the aeroplane that dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima (Enola Gay), a song about a Klu Klux Klan rally in the southern states of America (88 seconds in Greensboro), and almost too many other background stories to mention here – suffice it to say that their repertoire is FAR from “light” or “poppy” – and their body of work has a wide array of themes and genres, despite being mostly electronic based.
Their first big single, Electricity, has all of its roots in the massive change that happened in music in the late 70’s – pioneered by Kraftwerk – the most influential band in electronic music history. Just listen to Radioactivity by Kraftwerk and you’ll see where it came from. They were on the verge of really massive success following their third album “Architecture and Morality” and its hit singles Joan of Arc and Souvenir, when they decided on a departure from their mainstream journey to record their 4th album “Dazzleships”. You could call it a concept album, you could call it an experimental album – but its sales were less than 10% of their previous release – prompting much stress with their label and the music press at the time. That album has stood the test of time though as most long standing OMD fans rate it very highly indeed (I have 4 separate copies of it!)
Following the departure of Paul Humphreys in the nineties, Andy McCluskey carried on with the name and the band and released a few more albums afterwards on his own. It was at this time that OMD first came to SA – supported in two local concerts by SA’s local superstars Mango Groove. I heard that they even came back some time in the early 2000’s as well – playing one small gig at Emperors Palace (sadly I missed this one) – but apparently the sound was atrocious, so maybe I dodged a bullet on that one.
When they finally reformed and released the first new album “History of Modern” in 2010 – I was ecstatic – new OMD music for the first time in years was amazing. A few months after it was released, they embarked on a record-signing tour around Europe to promote it. I was being sent by my company to Cologne in Germany to attend a massive photographic expo there when a friend of mine told me I should try to meet up with them while I was there. I thought the odds were slim that I would even be in the same country at the same time, never mind the same city. It turns out – the day after I arrived in Cologne, OMD were due to play a small gig at a Tower records store in Cologne followed by a signing session. I couldn’t believe my luck as I went there amongst a crowd of less than 100 people – watched them play 6 songs and then got in a queue to get a whole bunch of CD’s and posters signed – as well as to finally meet them. They were quite surprised to have some English speaking guys from SA at the gig and we got to spend some time chatting to them and have pics taken as well. Probably one of my all-time musical highlights!
So – suffice it to say that I am most excited to see them in SA again on what may well prove to be their last tour. They have announced that Bauhaus Staircase will be their last album so it may well be the last time we see them on our shores. I certainly hope not and I hope that they still manage to do some more stuff in future – although 45 odd years is a LONG time for bands to still be doing things in this day and age. I can’t wait to see them and hope to catch you there – I’ll be the guy with the bandanna and a big camera in the photo pit up front, I hope.
AUTHOR: ROGER MACHIN
PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER – CANON, SOUTH AFRICA
