Show 73: Ultravox - Live at The Whisky A Go Go, Los Angeles - 30 December 1979
Its been a while since we last featured one of my favourite bands from the 1970s and 1980s, Ultravox. So I've remastered a gig from an interesting point in their history! And broken one of my own rules to do it...
This is an audience recording! But apart from some very brief moments when someone is close to the mic (especially at the beginning), you can barely tell. Its a great performance, very raw and exciting. This one has been subject to some judicious EQ, level balancing and noise reduction and has polished up really well.
Original singer John Foxx left after they began 1979 with no record company, after being dropped, and after a short tour of the USA (there's a remastered gig from Philadelphia on that tour on the Live and Loud! Archive already HERE). It seemed Ultravox were finished until keyboard player Billy Currie, who had been working with Midge Ure in Visage, persuaded him he should become Ultravox's new singer (it may actually have been Ure persuading Currie!). Without a record deal, Ultravox reconvened, wrote some songs and arranged to play some live dates in America in November and December 1979 - and we have a recording of the last show from that tour for you this time.
It's not quite the full set - Hiroshima Mon Amour and, I think, King's Lead Hat are missing, sadly - but what IS there, from set opener Astradyne to set closer I Can't Stay Long, is a great record of a band enjoying themselves and gelling - they went on to sign a record deal in early 1980 and included many of the new songs played at this gig on their first album as a quartet, Vienna. The set also features a few tracks from the last album with John Foxx (Systems of Romance) as well as an early version of a song which didn't make it onto record at all (at least, not as a studio recording).
There are more Ultravox shows to come, so be sure to come back! In the meantime, this show is now available for free download HERE as 1 MP3 file.
Astradyne
Quiet Men
All Stood Still
Western Promise
I Can't Stay Long
Labels: 1979, Ultravox
Fantastic gig.....any more Ultravox with Midge?
Flip Martian 16 August 2016 at 00:38
There certainly will be! At least 1 more in the next few months.
genepool 28 August 2016 at 06:20
Great show. It's really interesting to hear the Foxx material with Ure singing. I do prefer the Foxx versions but it was fun to hear it. I'm also really surprised at how complete the Vienna songs are. I would have thought they'd have a lot more differences at that point.
Flip Martian 3 October 2019 at 07:38
Yeah I think Midge's voice suits the new material better than it does the "Foxxvox" material. Like having 2 great bands for the price of one though :)
Mark Radbourne 18 December 2016 at 12:44
"A version of "Sound On Sound" appears on the b-side of "Passing Strangers" but it's retitled as "Face To Face".
Flip Martian 18 December 2016 at 14:01
Indeed it was. SOS was definitely the early version of FTF.
Rusty Egan 15 December 2019 at 22:26
I WAS THERE King's lead hat was the encore
Lucky beggar - great gig! Amazing energy they had back then.
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