On the Sunday 30th September 1979 I thought that I had seen the future. At the age of 15 it was my first ever gig, and I was mesmerised by the utter theatre of the occasion. I remember coming out of the Birmingham Odeon that evening as if it was yesterday, and as I trooped with the other ‘Numanoids’ back towards New Street Station… hearing someone sarcastically shouting “oooh its the Subway Army”. Memories of the gig itself are a little more sparse… I think that I was overcome by the whole occasion, and the release of a live album the following year probably did some heavy lifting in that sense but, nevertheless, it remained an important rite of passage… and the start of a lifetime of seeing bands live.

…to the point that, at the time of writing, my two most recent gigs have also been Gary Numan who has been touring the UK with his two 1979 albums Replicas (released under the Tubeway Army name) and The Pleasure Principle.

I generally tend to avoid anniversary tours like this, mainly because I prefer to see contemporary bands in line with my overall philosophy of looking forward rather than backwards in life. Nevertheless, the tour happened to coincide with my 60th Birthday and so I decided to give it a chance, not withstanding the fact that I had seen Numan in Berlin two years earlier (see here) and had actually preferred his newer stuff on that particular evening.

So it was that with a little bit of trepidation that I went to the Leadmill in Sheffield for what was to be one of the more intimate shows of the tour. The place was absolutely packed to the rafters by the time Numan and his band came on and launched into the title track of the Replicas album. From the very first note I felt locked in and, over the course of the next nearly two hours, I felt both transported back to that evening in 1979, and at many more points in between. That’s because all of the 22 tracks played that night (see Spotify link below for the set list) were not only ones that I knew off by heart, but because they were songs which I have continued to listen to over the course of my life… a 45 year relationship between me and these two albums, the memories of which came flooding back as Gary and his band belted out each track…

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/328rASTlgWQcKsfCC2PNWb?si=skCAWvkbRfmytGX3hJqy7g&pi=e-iXDYAGZnRgW5

…and as I stood there experiencing this massive wave of flashbacks I started to think that maybe I had been right, maybe I had seen the future back in 1979, but perhaps not in the the way that I had thought. Rather, in a more abstract sense, I had seen my future, not only in terms of my ongoing and developing relationship with music… but more specifically with the tracks from those two albums… but perhaps also why Numan’s music has had such an effect on me…

Back in 1979 I really liked that he seemed different… but I also think there was an isolationist quality particularly to his early music which really appealed to me as an only child listening to these albums in my room… enjoying my own company in a way that I have continued to do… and there I was alone in the crowd in the Leadmill connecting with these songs once more… and still receiving personal revelations as a result.

But this gig was not just a parroting of old songs… there were new arrangements which made them feel as fresh as the day they were written. All too often things that are labelled futuristic seem to age badly, and often very quickly. However, if this tour proved anything, it was than these albums have really stood the test of time, and I was completely amazed that I found new things in many of the songs… ‘Conversation’ from The Pleasure Principle was like hearing something familiar yet afresh… there are melodies in there that really hit me for the first time… the nod to Kraftwerk on B-side ‘We Have A Technical’, which is also a template for later single ‘I Die: You Die’… and some of my favourites over the years such as ‘You Are In My Vision’, ‘Me, I Disconnect From You’ and ‘Tracks’ were just wonderful… I could go through the whole set and tell you something about why I enjoyed each track…

But safe to say that it made such an impression on me that two weeks later I found myself at the O2 Academy (although I still think of it as the Town and Country Club) in Leeds to do it all over again. I am glad that I did as this had a completely different vibe for me… with an audience three times the size of the Leadmill and a full stage set this was a chance for me to just lose myself in the whole occasion… no reflections on the music this time… just enjoy it and totally immerse myself in it… and that is just what I did…

It did not matter that the set was identical… from the opening of ‘Replicas’ to the final encore of ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’ I just immersed myself if the occasion and came out, not thinking that I had seen the past… but I had developed another layer of my relationship with those albums… and that the future is never over.

-o0o-

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