‘Are Friends Electric’ - Tubeway Army, 1979
For those of you that don’t know Tubeway Army was an alias that Gary Numan used in the late 70’s before embarking on a successful solo career as, well, Gary Numan (b.t.w another stage name). A few years ago I decided to check him out at the electric picnic festival but only based on two songs of his that are by far his most popular songs - Are Friends Electric and Cars. As these songs epitomise the whole 80’s snyth pop era. What suprised me about his live performance was how heavy his music was, real hard rock at times. I was expecting keyboards, synthesiser’s etc but found gibson’s instead and he was brilliant.
This song features some very heavy use of synthesiser’s which reach some very high notes and backed up by your normal drum and bass digest. To be honest I haven’t a clue what the song is about except that he’s talking about friends or so called friends which I believe are ‘robots’ judging by the song title. Here’s a live version of the song that was performed on the Old Grey Whistle Test music show. By the way the spoken word in the song reminds me a little of Mark E. Smith….
Last 5 posts by Des
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