Music Reviews 4U - Spandau Ballet - To cut a long story short - Review
Spandau Ballet - To cut a long story short 7" Vinyl single
To cut a long story short is quite apt as a reference point to start this in a series of music reviews. This review will cut the story of the music down into sections. Not only do you get an overview of the music, we'll include a few facts about the people and the equipment and my own memories of the time (if I was around then when the music was released, I was )!
So, lets go back to 1980 to a band now named Spandau Ballet and as the last strains of punk rock were fading out, the 'new wave' music came into the British pop scene.
The post punk scene was an exciting time as new musical technology having recently emerged, now forged ahead, changing popular music forever.
Spandau Ballet - To Cut a Long Story Short video -
filmed in the London Dungeon Tourist attraction
Spandau Ballet - the group
Formed in Islington in the mid 1970's, after a few lineup and name changes including the Gentry, they took the name Spandau Ballet that was apparently from a piece of Berlin Graffiti about Rudolf Hess, the last WW2 prisoner in Spandau Prison in Berlin.
By now fronted by Tony Hadley (Vocals), Gary Kemp (Guitar, Synths), Steve Norman (Guitar, later Sax), Martin Kemp (Bass) and John Keeble (Drums) this was the group that has endured over the last 45 years with hiatus, breakups and reunions allowing.
Their breakthrough came playing at the Blitz Club in Covent Garden and Billy's in Soho in 1979-80, the Covent Garden area had been slated for redevelopment but likely due to the financial situation of Britain in 1979 after the collapse of the labour Government in 1979, this fiscal vacuum left the venue available until the nation became more financially viable and redevelopment could take place.
Spandau Ballet - Before the discord
The Blitz became one of the places for the new, young avant garde often students or fashion trend setters to be seen. The 'New Romantic' movement created by the Blitz and Billy's clientele for example were a diametric opposite to the nihilistic punk rockers of the Sex Pistols ilk. Punk imploded with the legacy of the late Sid Vicious.
The 'Blitzers' of the New Wave were in effect the 'new Dandies' (Dandies had been the Ne Wave of their time in 1700's and 1800's London), the New Wave dressed in retro chic fashion, created their own take on the past and with many fashion students among the crowd, a new 'look' emerged in London, spreading out across the country.
Spandau Ballet became the house band at the Blitz, playing dance music inspired by soul and by American stars such as Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett.
The key to the song was the repetitive riff running through the song that songwriter Gary Kemp came up with as the hook. Steve Norman, Guitar and later Sax player said that essentially once Gary had the Riff, the song was established.
The legacy of the track was that it launched over 30 dance music bands in the following year alone onto the charts. It created a new genre of music that rubbed along with performers like Eric Clapton, Elton John and Dire Straits - whose more traditional music structure co-existed with this new craft.
The Equipment - Enter Synth-Pop - the Sequenver and the Arpeggiator
Music technology in the 1970's had moved on from the Keyboards of the 1960's Mellotron (a proto synth) and the early Moog Synths of the late 1960's.
Keyboards such as the 60's Fender Rhodes and the Vox Conqueror were ironically by this era having a resurgence as the Ska genre was being revisited by groups such as the Selector, The Specials, Madness and Bad Manners, who were putting their own mark on this music.
Duran Duran and Depeche Mode were two of the contemporary groups who were using the emerging new synth technologies in their music. Gary Kemp had bought a synth which no doubt contributed to the new music.
Synths like the Roland Juno, Yamaha DX7, Odyssey, Prophet and Emulator brands made their presence in the UK music charts felt. You can identify the signature sounds on many of the hits of the time. Emulator was one of the first Synths to have a sampling function.
The Yamaha CS-10 was as they say 'instrumental' in the sound of To Cut a Long Story Short. What some might say was that the riff of the song was a programmed arpeggiation, some Synths of this time did have arpeggiation functions - a single note when played could then create a set of played notes around that core note.
(Some Synths of the era could be programmed to play sequences of notes and arpeggiated notes in 'sequences' hence these Keyboards later became known as 'Sequencers').
The Yamaha CS-10 had no arpeggiator, but by using the LO-FI Oscillator, an arpeggiated style could be created. Certainly in the Studio, with the use of multi tracking, the arpeggiated phrases could be 'cut and pasted' electronically by re-recording the phrasings and adding them in sequences to a track.
This was before the days of computerised 'cut and paste music' production was around, although Digital recording consoles were coming in by 1980, if you had the money!
To the video
The song having achieved air play on Radio 1 by DJ Peter Powell and others got this as then unsigned band out into the public domain and led to Chrysalis Records signing the band.
The subsequent video for the song was filmed in a venue called the London Dungeon, a tourist themed attraction in Tooley Street, London. The group were brilliantly styled in their fashion, it made anything of the punk era decidedly old hat.
The band adopted a Scottish military Tartan inspired look for the video and with friends in the new wave movement who were often art school and fashion students, they were at the epicentre of a new look for avant garde youth of the time.
The music sounded exciting and the limited space of the filming venue concentrated the action onto the group and a few of the Blitz club entourage appearing as extras in the video.
Shot for a by now modest budget of £5000, there is no doubt that this video really launched the band visually. It shows simple works well, when you compare it to some of the modern productions of today costing in real terms so much more to achieve.
The first time I saw the group was on a Saturday morning television show, I thought on seeing their performance this was Band unique, this was very different and I liked it. The riff was catchy and the electronic style of the music was refreshing.
As the front man, Tony Hadley really stood out, his style was almost operatic, we hadn't seen anything like this in this form before.
The only reference point to this style was from singers like Mario Lanza, Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra from the 50's and 60's - Tony Hadley by chance had met Frank Sinatra at a concert in London.
The Legacy
The legacy of the song cannot be just written off as a piece of throwaway pop music, when it existed in precisely that sort of arena - in the charts for a few weeks and gone, as was the fashion.
That said, we now still hear on the radio many of the pop music hits of the last 60 plus years rubbing shoulders with music from the stars of today.
Could this song be improved? I doubt it, it did what was required, the band had the visual image to carry it off on stage or on Top of the Pops and the other music shows of the time. The lyrics are quality, meaningful and are delivered over the insistent and urgent arpeggiated riff.
Even now 45 years on this song does not rally sound dated, music technology may have moved on, but even today songs from that 80's era and before are still sampled in modern music. The test is that it still sounds great today.
The longevity as I frequently say is down to the legacy of this group having done the musical apprenticeship as a group in the pubs and clubs. With the talent of the players and the song writers, great music endures.
It was fortunate in this era that Gary Kemp could write his songs as he envisaged them. Today, song writing is more like a unionised restrictive practices exercise with every man and his dog on the credits for their one or two lines of contribution it seems.
The legacy of this song is that one man wrote it, the contributions of the players in the studio brought it to life and it still sounds great.
It didn't need Uncle Tom Cobbley and his mates putting their Ten Shillings worth into the song to make it work.
The memories of the era
The early 1980's were an interesting time if you were young and in London or the London area like I was at the time.
The Cold War was at its height and we lived in the shadow of that and the fact we might be literally gone in a flash.
I worked in London over the first few years of the 80's and briefly in the Kings Road in 1983 near the World's End part of Chelsea, it was a great time to be around the capital.
Not only that, but I was making music with a band made up of people I had been at school with, we had left school in 1982 and were writing our own music which we slotted in between covers of mostly 50's and 60's classics.
It was a great time to see the fashions, even then young people of our age wore the fashions as 'normal' attire, this didn't sit well with many of the starchy office environments of the time, but you'd often see women who worked in shops or offices creatively using make up and hair styling that made them stand out. They looked great, different, stylish. It was an exciting time to be there - like the 60's was for the previous generation.
It was a great era to be around in, the 90's with its grungy laziness seemed to be a backwards step.
You just had to be there in the 1980's to see the young peacocks. The 80's had the advantage over the 60's in that it also had great music of its own time and also the legacy of the 60's to draw on which it did.
There was a buzz and a vibe to the time. To cut a long story short, I was there....
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