Just imagine. Imagine you were in Sheffield in the late 70s: you’re on the edge of a music scene that that has thrown up Def Leppard, or is throwing up The Human League, at least one of whom will morph into Heaven 17; some guy in glasses is picking up glasses in the local pub – a guy who will one day be Jarvis* – and even The Arctic Monkeys are still twinkles in the eyes of someone who isn’t even of dating age yet.
Imagine you are Martin Fry – you get asked to join a band, the name changes and in 1980 you make your first album. That album is The Lexicon of Love. It is a monster hit. This album turns out to be so good that – well, you’ve heard of “difficult 3rd album syndrome” – this is “difficult every single recording you’ll ever make again syndrome”.
So, The Lexicon of Love live in concert, just Martin left – he’s older than we are, for goodness sake! What’s the point? Nostalgia? The blesséd, curséd nostalgia. No matter who you are, you’ll be nostalgic for something. For many people, including me, it’s music. For others it’s the smell of napalm in the morning – I mean cinema. For others still, it’s the long-gone glory days of a sports team. I often feel a tinge of shame for indulging in nostalgia: “Look forward, not back!”, we’re told, for most of our youth. Once you’ve got the end in close up, the temptation to look backward, where there’s more to see than in the opposite direction, is difficult to resist.
BUT. The orchestra, the orchestration, how this album was meant to be – live.
I kept trying to count the number of players in the orchestra last Saturday night. There were a lot and the sound was rich, full of drama and FUN.
The concert, perhaps wisely, was in two parts. Part One kicked off with an overture from the orchestra, just as if we were at a showbiz-zy musical or some opera. The rest of this first part was taken up with songs that weren’t from TLOL. Highlights were, When Smokey Sings – the first number, The Night You Murdered Love, How to Be A Millionaire, The Love Inside the Love, Ocean Blue and Be Near Me. Some of which were from 2016’s The Lexicon of Love II.
Of course, as with any audience demographic like this concert’s, the constant to-ing and fro-ing to the lavatories was irritating. However, this was not such a huge problem during the second half of the show, which was, of course, the whole of TLOL in its entirety. I’m not going to list all the songs, you either know them or you don’t, but I will say that it was thrilling – ‘Poison Arrow’-, occasionally moving – ‘All of My Heart’ -, and still cynically, wryly funny – ‘Date Stamp’ ‘Valentine’s Day’. All with all those swooping, soaring arrangements.
Many really quite old people, me for example, spent the whole of the second half of the gig on their feet, bladder exigencies forgotten in the dream of being 20 again.
Many congratulations to the Southbank Symphony Orchestra, its conductor Anne Dudley, the band, the wonderful female vocalist and, of course, the superlative Martin Fry for making this old fool feel good, if not young. A fantastic, nostalgic night out for both of us.
*This is Martin Fry’s joke.
Set List
Ewan Lawrie, Writer 