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.

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)

Epilogue -
This post is tagged with punk wave rave replicas tubeway army zulu nation