Yazoo Newcastle City Hall 19th November 1982
Yazoo were the British synthpop duo formed by Depeche Mode member Vince Clarke (keyboards) and Alison Moyet (vocals). They came together in late 1981, and over the next 18 months they made two albums which blended Clarke’s synthesizers and pop tunes with Moyet’s bluesy vocals. They had big single hits with “Only You”, “Don’t Go” and “Nobody’s Diary”. From the official Yazoo site: “I put an ad in Melody Maker looking for a semi-professional band,” say Alison “Not someone who’d just had a massive hit album.” Vince: “I’d heard Alison perform under various guises and I knew she was an amazing singer,” Vince recalls. “I wanted songs to be sung with a lot of emotion. I didn’t know how it would work, but I wanted to try.” Schooled in the ideologies of the “splendidly low rent” punk scene, Alison was hardly looking for stardom: “Ambition was wanting to move up from being third on the bill at a pub to headlining at a pub,” she recalls. “Vince was an anomaly – he’d taken it to the next level with Depeche Mode and achieved success at a point when, for me, there was nothing cool about being on Top Of The Pops. But when he got in touch, there was a certain perverse appeal in trying something I’d never done before. It’s almost freak like, this idea of someone from Basildon moving out and actually doing something. I found it incredibly compelling.”
On stage Yazoo incorporated a slide/film visual display, using seven slide projectors and film projectors. The films and slides were (back) projected onto five screens at the back of the stage. From a review of the time: “Three of the projectors produce most of the animated effects on the centre screen and there are approximately 350 different slides seen in each set. The screens are used to display various pieces of photography and graphics, which ‘sort of’ relate to the music.” A great concert by an excellent pop act. Yazoo split acrimoniously in May 1983; however they have reunited to play a series of concerts in recent years.
Setlist: Situation; Too Pieces; Goodbye Seventies; Winter Kills; Bad Connection; Tuesday; Bring Your Love Down (Didn’t I); Midnight; Chinese Detectives; In My Room; Don’t Go; The Other Side of Love; Ode to Boy; Only You; Situation.
28 Feb
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