Numan

Replicas was his first number 1 album. This Replicas Live DVD was filmed on the night of his 50th birthday at the Manchester Academy and so was THE show of the tour to have a ticket for. It was an amazing night. The DVD contains every song played that night including the three encore, non Replicas, songs: Cars, Everyday I Die and A Prayer For The Unborn. The 2008 Replicas tour was put together so that Gary Numan could celebrate two important anniversaries, 30 years as a professional musician and his 50th birthday, with the fans, the people that have made his long career possible and given him the life he's been able to enjoy. It was felt that the songs played on the tour should be taken from the 1979 Replicas album, and those associated with it, as that was the album that launched the Gary Numan career.

In the U.S., Gary Numan is remembered as a one-hit-wonder, while back home in his native England, he continued to crank out hit after hit and became a superstar in the process. His icy space-age persona and sound may be forever associated with early-80's British new wave (Flock of Seagulls, early Duran Duran, etc.), but he was the originator, and today seems pretty darned original. Numan was a scholar of the David Bowie Ziggy Stardust-era, and used Bowie's space alien approach as a starting point. While retaining his futuristic lyrics, Gary stripped Ziggy's sound free of the distorted guitar riffing and posturing, and replaced it with clinical synthesizers and a standoffish stage persona. His music also gives off a paranoid vibe at times, as evidenced on the hits "I Die: You Die" and "Are 'Friends' Electric?" But Numan's songs can also sedate you ("Down in the Park"), while other times sneak up on you (the unexpected punk rocker "Bombers"). And of course there's his sole U.S. hit, "Cars," which sounds like a not so distant ancestor to fellow futuristic weirdos Devo.