Smoothies! (Parade - Spandau Ballet)

Member Name: basil40

Product:	Parade - Spandau Ballet
Date:	22/02/05 (285 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 1980s, Quality over quantity

Disadvantages: Dated

WHO ARE SPANDAU BALLET?
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Good question. They were a five band made up of Tony Hadley (vocals, suits), Gary Kemp (bass, suits), Martin Kemp (guitar, suits), John Keeble (drums, suits) and Steve Norman (sax, floppy hair, suits). Between 1980 and 1986 they pretty much ruled the roost as far as smooth British pop was concerned. Their cool musical style, sharp suits and mixture of epic ballads and funky uptempo tracks set the female teenage population to frantic levels of knicker-wetting throughout the mid-80s.

WHAT'S PARADE ALL ABOUT THEN?
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1984 saw an epic battle of pop wits between the "big five": Duran Duran, Wham, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Culture Club and Spandau Ballet. Guess who came last? Yep, the Spands! This was their follow-up to their number one album True, from 1983, and their fourth overall. They'd already really peaked with that album and Parade, rush-released to avert public memory loss, was quite frankly shit or bust.

THE TRACKS
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There's only eight of the buggers, so it shouldn't take me long to talk you through this album. Let's go:

**1. Only When You Leave**
Smooth as a Herne Bay pebble. A George Benso-type guitar floats throughout the track and Tony Hadley barely moves out of second gear. It's a tight five minutes of pop and one featuring the obligatory Steve Norman sax solo. It's uptempo, but you hardly notice the drums because because their so far down in the mix. This track was Spandau Ballet's comeback single and reached number 3 in the summer of 1984.

**2. Highly Strung**
"This is the song of Little Jo/she's just a girl I used to know", coos Tony on the opening (and closing) line line of this track. The big star here is the raunchy guitar solos. Remember the time when guitars were described as raunchy and were often used in the case of artists who didn't normally "do" guitar solos? This is a great track and reached all of number 14 when released in August 1984.

**3. I'll Fly For You**
I hate slow song with a passion. Love songs should be banned. Occasionally, however, one slips through the net, jumps in a taxi, knocks on my door and say "Oi 'Orrigan! Listen to me and eat your words!". Prince's Sometimes It Snows In April is one and this is another. Again is jazzy, a little tapped beat stays resident throughout until the whole thing stops and Hadley goes: "and when you sing to me, the shoo-be-doos you sing so well" just like the bit in True when exactly the same things happens and he goes: "and now I've come back again". In fact I'll Fly For You is Parade's True. Does that make sense? Released as a single in October 1984 and scraped into the top ten.

**4. Nature Of The Beast**
Uh-oh, we're back to the cheesy wimp-pop territory occupied on their early singles like Lifeline and Instinction*. Wafer thin backing vocals and dreamy sax nestle nicely among the uptempo rhythms as the vocals of: "this is the nay-cher-her" resound in the background. NOt great and therefore not released as a single album for obvious reasons.


**5. Revenge For Love**
"You give me sweet revenge for love", goes the chorus which I thought was the verse, actually, but there you go....anyway, it's another uptempo number with see-through instrumentation-by-numbers but not overtly offensive.

**6. Always In The Back Of My Mind**
This song should have been released as a single because:

a) it's very catchy
b) it's like nothing they've done before
c) it doesn't feature a sax solo

Only joking. It's just like the rest of the tracks except the sax solo is much longer! But for the year this was made in and if you take into consideration the mood of the era, Spandau Ballet were only doing what countless others were doing at the time and that was finding and image and winning formula and sticking to it. They did that very well.

**7. With The Pride**
A good song overshadowed by the fact that, at about five and a half minutes in length, its two minutes too long. Tony sings "just leave me with pride" in a male Sade kind of way and it becomes increasingly apparent on this album that there's noting here to really test him. Until.....

**8. Round And Round**
Hurray! What a great song. A fairgroundy sort of organ married to a mid-paced chugger of a beat, this was released in December 1984 when everyone was going for the Christmas number one spot: Wham!, Paul Young, Kool And The Gang, Alvin Stardust (!), Gary Glitter (!!!!!!), Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Culture Club. With the exception of the shiny brothers (Glitter and Stardust - geddit?) all the other appeared on the one single they hadn't reckoned with: Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas! Doh! Needless to say this reached number 18 behind Bananrama.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
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One final hurrah in 1986 with the Through The Barricades album and then.......disintegraton. Gary Kemp, the songwriter, threw his dummy out of the pram and retained the copyright to all the band's hits that he had wrote. He went on to "star" alongside Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner in the bodyguard as Houston's assistant after also appearing in the film, The Krays, with his brother in 1990. British TV viewers would have spotted him in 2001 playing Jamie Holt in the occasional BBC series Murder In Mind.

Martin Kemp of course went on to play Steve Owen for four years in Eastenders. Since then only Serious And Organised, an ITV series, has been of any real note.

Tony Hadley, of course, did rather well in Reborn In The USA , a show that for the first time in my life made me sympathise with Americans.

The other two, I've heard, are resident Burger Flippers Of Note in a reputable fast food joint. Mwah hah ha!

SPANDAU BALLET DISCOGRAPHY
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SINGLES:
To Cut A Long Story Short Nov 1980
The Freeze Jan 1981
Musclebound / Glow Apr 1981
Chant No. 1 (I Don't Need This Pressure On) Jul 1981
Paint Me Down Nov 1981
Instinction Apr 1982
Lifeline Oct 1982
Communication Feb 1983
True Apr 1983
Gold Aug 1983
Only When You Leave Jun 1984
I'll Fly For You Aug 1984
Highly Strung Oct 1984
Round And Round Dec 1984
Fight For Ourselves Jul 1986
Through The Barricades Nov 1986
How Many Lies Feb 1987

ALBUMS:
Journey To Glory Mar 1981
Diamond Mar 1982
True Mar 1983
Parade Jul 1984
The Singles Collection Nov 1985
Through The Barricades Nov 1986
Heart Like A Sky Sep 1989
Gold - The Best Of Sep 2000

Look at that: four albums in three years. That's a sight you don't often see!

OVERALL
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Well, it was shit or bust for this album and I think it speaks volumes that they only achieved one more top ten single after I'll Fly For You. But I believe they were always a singles band, so I'd advise The Singles Collection from 1985 as a great starting point, or if you really have to have that patronising song about Northern Ireland (Through The Barricades), get The Best Of from 2000.

*is Instinction a real word?

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