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Thursday, April 3, 2008  12:29 am 

No Great Dark Numanoid

I went to see Gary Numan the other week. It wasn’t planned, but a friend had a spare ticket and his very generous girlfriend thought your synth loving xxjfg writer would enjoy the experience more than her.

numaneye

It’s not that we are Numanoids or anything, but Robert (hello if your reading!) who lived in my street and shared the school bus with me was.

Gary is a bit of a strange one. I have lots of love for the early punk of Tubeway Army who’s cold mix of guitar and synth differs so greatly from the American synth punk wave. Where bands like Devo, Nervous Gender and The Screamers thrash frantically Tubeway Army are a far more considered affair sharing more in common with Jubilee period Adam and The Ants and having an obvious ‘influence’ on bands like Elastica and most recently Late of The Pier.

By the time Gary dumped the guitars and escaped the English punk scene he was in a total word of his own with DJ’s like Afrika Bambaataa as excited to meet him, as Kraftwerk “In the late 70s and early 80s Gary had the rhythms that DJs wanted to get hold of and people waited for his records on the dance floor.” says the Zulu Nation head. It’s another one of those odd things like Bowie on Soultrain.

For me personally I find Numan un-listenable after the second album. I get people trying to convince me, but I don’t even like the original Numan songs that later got sampled in tunes I do like. Nowadays Numan seems to be a shit industrial goth. So why go and see him?

Gary was plying one of those ATP Don’t look back type things – the whole of the classic album Replicas. And if that wasn’t good enough, Dave Unpop had egged me on with idea that Gary would drive out on the stage in his Davros/Sinclair C5 machine. Just check this video.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uahZLfoZ954[/youtube]

Genius. Who needs Daft Punks pyramid or the Justice cross, this is Gary Numan driving around in a little bumper car! (and recreating a brilliant album too). I couldn’t wait and went a Numan feast which messed up my Lastfm charts for that week. I told people excitedly where I was going that night. They looked at me weird and i truly felt what it was like to be a Numanioid.

We arrived full of expectation watching whole families of Numanoids packing the Brighton dome awaiting the man. I felt under-dressed and tried to hide my clearly over exuberant use of a coloured t-shirt while some goth Klaxons all dressed as the bloke from Crystal Castles inadvisably covered Josh Wink’s Higher State of Consciousness to an audience of 30-40 something’s at 9pm on a week day. They didn’t stand a chance, and went down with slightly less hatred than if they had chosen to cover John Foxx and change the words to ‘Underpants’. I latter found out they were South Central.

At last the auditorium went black.

The atmosphere was tangibly electric.

The stage lit up like Tron as a bunch of Ladytron look-alikes stuck up the keys on what were clearly not vintage synths, but hey – it sounded fucking cool! This was it, i was experiencing an album and a gig from beyond the grave, an almost perfect Replica of, erm, Replicas! And then it happened. I was living the new romantic futuristic dream, all but willing to sell my soul to Gary join his alienated 80s army, and declare to the world loud and proud ‘I am a Numanoid!’ when this fucking noise started. At first I thought there was some mistake, but sadly it was your humble author who was mistaken. In a hideous Run DMC vs Aerosmith nightmare THERE WERE GUITARS. Let me say that again – THERE WERE GUITARS. WTF????

How could he possibly do that to me? To us? Is this like when The Stones went disco? When Phil started singing with Genesis? Is this what it was like when Dylan went electric? My mind was tumbling, and I was in a living hell.

Perhaps it’s for the best.

We identified the guitar criminal as a chubby looking Chris from Three Colours Red, whose only redeeming feature was once being in a band with the guy from Diamond Head.

I don’t walk around wearing black every day. Maybe my friends are electric, but they know how to appreciate the space between sounds.

Let this be a warning to you all!

NEVER EVER GO AND SEE GARY NUMAN

Gary Numan – I nearly married a human

(even if he promises to drive around in the bumper car)


labels >> gary numan


16 Comments »  


16 Comments on “No Great Dark Numanoid”

  1. seandonson

    Thursday, April 3, 2008   8:39 am

    I came very near to seeing him once as I had (and have) an intense love for Replicas, The Pleasure Principle and Telekon. But as I was online getting ready to get tickets it dawned on me that everything hes made since Telekon is well… total bullshit. Except for Change Your Mind by Sharpe and Numan, which is rad in a pretty non Numanesque way. Anyway, I’m glad that I’ve read this and know I didn’t make a mistake by missing it. I knew it just might ruin what I loved about him.

  2. davemc

    Thursday, April 3, 2008   9:13 am

    stu, it weren’t THAT BAD. it was better, at least – i think – then when i saw him in 99 in manchester. but nowhere near as good as when he did Telekon in the London. Also, Replicas is fundamentally a guitar album! I did find it a bit dispiriting that his band only actually seemed really into it when they did rubbish new song at the end though.

    He should do an album with Black Strobe. Black Strobe should also do an album with Sunn 0))) and Satyricon – kind of anthemic EBMblackmetalfusionfunk with clouds of billowing black guitars over the top.

  3. davemc

    Thursday, April 3, 2008   9:29 am

    hopefully he’ll release the Living Ornaments video on DVD soon (with the little car!!!). I stand by Dance as an album. One day I’m actually going to get round to listening to all the 80s Numan LPs I bought in a frenzy when I was 19, but the covers to some of them give me the fear.

    The Fury, apparently, is not that bad: http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/44354.jpg

  4. Brian

    Thursday, April 3, 2008   11:34 am

    Aww…
    Gary’s a cat lover so giv’em a break.

    He reminds me of Rick Moranis though.

  5. Teep

    Thursday, April 3, 2008   11:54 am

    fair enough… still, I saw him on tour for the jagged album, which I thought was very listenable and sufficiently dark and the show was descent… the highlight for me being ‘prayer for the unborn’ http://youtube.com/watch?v=4eLgRu9Sm2I

  6. davemc

    Thursday, April 3, 2008   1:49 pm

    “He reminds me of Rick Moranis though.”

    I always thought *I* was the only person who got that! no one else sees it…

    check out the nume’s wall of swords:

    http://money.independent.co.uk/property/homes/article3221419.ece

    aw. poor gary. i love him.

  7. davemc

    Thursday, April 3, 2008   1:52 pm

    sorry, broken link: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/house-and-home/interiors/gary-numan-lord-of-the-swords-764265.html

  8. Dan Nixon

    Thursday, April 3, 2008   2:43 pm

    Stu,

    That Independant story references the thing I told you about Newman getting arrested for spying while flying his plane around the world! It reads like he wrote the article himself though, very odd.

  9. sassa

    Thursday, April 3, 2008   8:37 pm

    look at his kitchen, those chairs are way cool!

  10. Georgie

    Thursday, April 3, 2008   10:48 pm

    I suspect Gary was never quite the same after ‘Blade Runner’ was released. It made visual what he had been trying to accomplish through his music for his entire career up until that point(Roy Batty even had his hairdo, for Pete’s sake).

    Speaking of hair, once in the late 90’s I shared a few pints with the Man himself at a football pub in his hometown of Hammersmith. At some point in the evening, he graciously let me try on his toupee. It fit like a glove.

    (:{D

  11. Jon Lester

    Saturday, April 5, 2008   6:33 pm

    I’m a fan but I don’t mind saying it’s not for everyone. No artist is.

  12. dona

    Sunday, April 6, 2008   4:17 pm

    thanks for that awesome review. I will never go see Gary Numan!

  13. davemc

    Monday, April 7, 2008   9:29 am

    it wasn’t very good, but it was still better than Gay Against You.

  14. burkowitz

    Monday, April 7, 2008   11:10 pm

    unrelated to gary numan:

    http://www.myspace.com/certainbreeds

    italo-horror influenced vancouver outfit right up your alley

  15. Justin Baum

    Tuesday, April 8, 2008   11:58 pm

    Funny, a few days after reading this I noticed Feadz released a track on Ed Banger called Numanoid. Beatport top 10 electro-house! :-p

  16. Andrew

    Saturday, April 12, 2008   9:12 pm

    I think ‘never ever go and see him’ is a bit strong.

    To be honest I blame the sound desk guys at the Dome; I went to the Brighton and London dates and the guitars were nowhere near that high in the mix for the London show.

    I see Numan a lot and the Replicas show is a very bad example of the average gig.

    Please give Gary another go. Please.

    Evidence of good later career music;
    Exposure, She’s got Claws, Music for Chameleons.

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