re the retirement post, you aint fucking wrong!! Numan's far past the sell by date on his loaf.
for everyone else, the Numan jibes dont bother me, stopped being hardcore in 1989...and can probably list more reasons than most for why he should quit and crawl under a rock...both professionally and personally
if ya wanna have a jibe at me, dig deeper than my 20 year old tattoos
Synth Britannia
Friday 16 October
9.00-10.30pm BBC FOUR
Gary Numan's 1979 appearance on Top Of The Pops heralded the invention of synth-popThe electric story of a generation of post-punk musicians, who took the synthesiser from the fringes of musical experimentation to the centre of the pop stage, is the subject of this documentary film, which continues BBC Four's ongoing assessment of popular music's most significant movements.
Welcome to a time when there where no guitars and no drums just synthesisers. In late-Seventies Britain, musical heroes of the day were a young bunch of post-punk pioneers, obsessed by Kraftwerk, Kubrik's Clockwork Orange and British author JG Ballard. Around the country, acts like early Human League, The Normal, Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle and Joy Division were synthesising the sound of the future against the backdrop of a bleak, concrete, high-rise Britain.
Despite their pioneering sounds, none of these acts met with much recognition until 24 May 1979, when the future of British pop finally arrived in the form of a punk who loved sci-fi and played the synthesiser. Most impressively, Gary Numan was on Top Of The Pops and, with songs like Cars and Are Friends Electric?, he ushered in the synth-pop era. As Britain shrugged off the austerity of the late Seventies and entered the Eighties, with a shift to the right, synth-pop became the new soundtrack.
As well as Numan's success, Daniel Miller's fledgling indie label, Mute, produced huge synth acts, including Depeche Mode and Yazoo. And, across the country, fringe post-punk bands such as Ultravox, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and a revamped Human League stepped out of the pages of the NME and onto the front page of Smash Hits.
Eighties progressive synth-pop became increasingly formulaic, lacking the invention of its original pioneers. However, by 1983, acts like the Pet Shop Boys and New Order would show fans that the future of electronic music lay in dance music.
The film features interviews and music from a host of artists and industry figures, including Daniel Miller, Richard H Kirk, Martin Gore, Vince Clarke, Andrew Fletcher, Philip Oakey, Martyn Ware, Gary Numan, Bernard Sumner, Alison Moyet and Neil Tenant.
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