Spandau Ballet Music Shhet

By 1983, with the new romantic movement they'd sprung from a rapidly fading memory, the members of Spandau Ballet showed they had no intention of traveling the same path…

Thirty years after their first recordings and almost twenty after they disbanded, british prime new romantics came back with a new CD (containing re-recording of some of their most popular tunes plus a couple of new songs) and a tour in 2009. Recorded live at the famous O2 Arena in London, this DVD caught the band in an inspired night: it's hard to believe they were away for so long, since their perfomance was so hot, tight and, at the same time, so relaxed it seemed they were never apart. They surely didn't lose any of their musicanship. And none of their elegance either, for the matter.

Spandau Ballet - Live From The N.E.C (2005) [DVD9 PAL]
DVD9 -> 6.11 Gb | All Regions | PAL 16:9 | 01:14:07 | ISO Image
Audio: English (Dolby AC3, 6 ch) / English (LinearPCM, 2 ch) / English (DTS, 6 ch) / English (Dolby AC3, 2 ch)
© 2005 SME S / SMV | 201258 9
Rock / New Wave / New Romantic

Spandau Ballet were nearing the end of their time as a commercial force when this 74-minute concert documentary was filmed in Birmingham on December 16 and 17 in 1986. However, they were still packing the seats in front of a large, enthusiastic crowd on this well-shot movie, directed by one of the most prominent figures in music documentary-making (Geoff Wonfor, most famous for directing The Beatles Anthology series). It's a straightforward record of a flashy mid-'80s hit pop band in concert, with plenty of shadowy, shifting colored lighting and much slick posing by the fashionably dressed on-stage players. The 13-song set contains a number of their biggest hit singles, including "True," "Gold," "Through the Barricades," "Fight for Ourselves," "Chant No. 1," "To Cut a Long Story Short," and "Lifeline."

"If you know this one, you're showing your age," a wry Tony Hadley says by way of introducing "Cut a Long Story Short," Spandau Ballet's 1980 hit from their formative years as a prototype New Romantics band. Still fun, still refreshing with its post-punk vitality and Bowie-esque sound, "Cut a Long Story Short" cheerfully closes out this 1990 Birmingham, England, concert before a massive crowd. Not that the preceding 17 or so songs on this performance document are anything less than spirited.

Rumon Gamba: ‘Having recorded symphonies and film music by Malcolm Arnold and knowing how well his music is received by audiences around the world, I was surprised that there was no disc dedicated solely to his music for the ballet. The four scores featured here on this disc have such strong musical ideas and dramatic narrative, to say nothing of their sheer beauty and passion, that they come alive as pieces of music in their own right. And such contrasts on this programme – brutality and energy (Electra), sweeping romanticism (Rinaldo and Armida) and humour in all its guises (Sweeney Todd). I particularly enjoyed recording Rinaldo and Armida which deserves its place in the repertoire alongside those ballet scores we hear all too often in the concert hall.’

During the 1920s many French composers reacted against the Wagnerian influences of the late nineteenth century, the impressionism of Debussy, and the dominating atmosphere of the circle round César Franck, and turned instead to the everyday world – the circus, the music hall, the fairground and jazz – for inspiration. The two French ballet scores presented here combine many of these elements and being collaborative efforts, provide a unique cross-section of the work of a dozen composers – some well-known, others barely mentioned in textbooks on the period……..