Youtube used to be one of the first places I visited.
I could spend hours after hours just going through and discover new favorite artists, songs and albums, but also looking up all the "lost" live performances, which a lot of the times, seems to rarely find their way on a quality DVD/Blu-ray release.
I like the classic Midge Ure Ultravox line-up, especially the one during the early 80s along with the album Vienna (1980), however my favorite version have always been the more chaotic and raw period from 1976-1978 where the band called themselves Ultravox! (! was a tribute to german kraut-rockers NEU!) and were heavily inspired by artists such as Kraftwerk, Roxy Music, David Bowie and Sex Pistols, but also the bleak and futuristic work of J.G. Ballard.
Between 1977-78 they got a record deal with Island records, and went on to release three solid albums, Ultravox! (1976), Ha!-Ha!-Ha! (1977) and Systems of Romance (1978) that was to be produced by Brian Eno, Steve Lillywhite and Conny Plank.
Their first one feels almost like a "best-off" album, as it includes very different kind of music genres, with everything from prog-rock, punk, disco, synth-pop, reggae, classical music and kraut-rock, however it did not go well with the audience or the critics, as england was now on the verge of having their own punk-rock mania, and without much chance of scoring any hit-singles, Ultravox promising debut ended up as a complete failure.
Angered and frustrated by poor record sales and little to no media attention, the band decided to go with the "flow" and include a much more angrier sound and lyrics which seemed to back up the bands flirt with the punk-rock genre, however the real key moment on their second album was the stunning synth-ballad, Hiroshima Mon Amour which was to become the direction the band was always looking for and something which would connect them with their future releases, Systems of Romance (1978) and Vienna (1980).
While the John Foxx Ultravox never seemed to hit off with the critics or the record audiences, they did however play a very important part in closing down the bridge or gap between the prog-rock/glam-rock/disco and the punk-rock where as Ultravox sought for something more futuristic (not quite Kraftwerk) but with a more melodic, warmer and tighter sound, one that would finally be "perfected" when Gary Numan decided to ditch the punk-rock and go all synth which would become a stroke of genius as his megahits Are Friends Electric (1979) and Cars (1979) meant that the "future" had arrived.
I go a little carried away, sorry about that. Anyway, here is my favorite live performance of the haunting synth-pop masterpiece, Hiroshima Mon Amour from the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1978.
A very different version than the original, but I think they should have went on a recorded this live performance as a single, as it is just as powerful as the album version.
Here is actually the whole clip, containing both Slowmotion (fantastic album opener of Sytems of Romance and Hiroshima Mon Amour). There is another video with better picture quality, but the sound is not so good as this one.
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but as I slowly habituated to the T and the H became less I have gradually got back to listening to music at sensible sound levels. I am now enjoying the pleasure of falling in love with it all over again mostly through watching live performances on Youtube.
). It just sounds awesome.
