On Friday, March 13, 2020, during the uncertainty around public gatherings, Midge Ure played at The Forum in Melbourne with Band Electronica.
The support was The Black Halo, a quirky Sydney three piece who entertained the crowd with interesting songs and self-deprecating humour between the songs.
Then the main band came on – Russell Field , Cole Stacey, Joseph O’Keefe – and then Midge himself.
A quick hello and then straight into the first track, the Phil Lynott solo outing “Yellow Pearl”. Co-written by Lynott and Ure, you could be forgiven for thinking this was a Visage track.
Then it’s onto the first Visage track of the night, the eponymous track “Visage”. The band is spot on with the keyboard sounds and Midge rocks the guitar like the pro he is (sadly not his beloved grey Fender Strat he used at Live Aid).
And next? How can they not go with “Fade To Grey”, arguably Visage’s most well known song.
Ure takes a moment to thank the audience for coming under what are difficult circumstances with the current health scares.
Now the more relatively obscure tracks are done, it’s on to the Vienna album, played in album order. Each song is performed as authentically as possible with Band Electronica creating amazingly accurate sounds from the keyboards of O’Keefe and Stacey.
As they go through the album track by track, Ure switches between guitar and keyboards as each song demands, and Stacey does the same, switching from keyboards to bass (using a guitar pick rather than fingers and thumbs, a playing style this particular reviewer is a fan of).
Ure’s approach to playing this album live with a full band says something about his integrity – it would be so easy to replicate the violin parts with a keyboard, but here we see O’Keefe switch from the keyboards to violin, playing parts I didn’t even know were violin. It makes you go back to the original album and listen more keenly and hear those parts with a new ear on how they were played.
Russell Field’s all-electronic drum kit comes to the fore in Vienna, with that unmistakable drum riff – so many different drum sounds through that song, all perfectly executed.
Before the album’s closer is played, Midge, who has noticed the audience has been rather well behaved yet appreciative so far, encourages everyone to get up and dance. Dutifully, this Melbourne audience obliges and very soon is bouncing away in unison to “All Stood Still”.
Ure rocks the keyboards and guitar with an energy you might not expect from a 66 year old man. But this is a man who clearly loves to perform, and seeing the crowd when they sing his own lyrics back at him clearly energises him.
After Vienna it’s on to a ‘greatest hits’ collection as Midge and the band perform “If I Was”, “Glorious”, “Reap The Wild Wind”, “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes”, “The Voice”, “Hymn”and “Love’s Great Adventure”.
The audience (or, at least 50% of them in Midge’s own estimation) loved every minute. We all hold this 80s legend in awe, to the point we needed his permission to dance. We came to dance. And dance we did.
Trash Disco 
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