Ultravox Whitley Bay Ice Rink 4th Nov 1986
The U-Vox tour
The tour was sponsored by Harp lager and support came from Zerra One.
U-Vox was Ultravox’s eight studio album and continued the movement to a straight rock and pop sound. The album was their least successful by most measures, and it was criticised by the media, the fans, and later by the band itself, Midge Ure declaring it “unfocused”. The band sacked their drummer Warren Cann, and replaced him with Mark Brzezicki from Big Country. The band embarked on a tour to promote the album, but it was the beginning of the end, and they split in 1988. The tour saw them playing in arenas; in the north east they played the cavernous, cold, Whitley Bay Ice Rink, which could accommodate more people than the City Hall, but was not by any means the best venue for a rock concert. The band moved away from large gothic stage sets, choosing to stage a more straightforward rock show this time around.
SetList: Same Old Story; The Voice; New Europeans; Sweet Surrender; White China; Dream On; All in One Day; Time to Kill; All Stood Still; Hymn; Lament; Vienna; Passing Strangers; The Prize; One Small Day; Love’s Great Adventure
Encore: Dancing With Tears in My Eyes; All Fall Down
Writing this blog helps refresh my memory about the bands who I have seen in the past. Writing about Ultravox is a good example. I’d forgotten how many times I’d seen the band, and how much I enjoyed their music and their concerts. Both versions of the and were impressive in their own way. The first, John Foxx fronted, Ultravox! were very different to anyone else around at the time, and were a cool, dark, electronic synth band. I remember in particular their performance at Reading in 1978. And will also connect the later, Midge Ure fronted, Ultravox with “Vienna”, dry ice, and gothic stage sets. Happy days that I had put to the back of my mind and almost forgotten. Tomorrow I will start to write about a band who I remember very well, the mighty Uriah Heep. I’ll make my apologies now, it could be a bit of a marathon….
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