jester1470 Posted January 12, 2005 Report Share Posted January 12, 2005 Well kinda...Emma and Hog will be supporting Band Aid co-writer and Ultravox frontman Midge Ure in Dundee on the 14th April this year at the Whitehall Theatre.MIDGE URE An artist who has recieved Ivor Novello, Grammy, BASCAP awards along with a flotilla of gold and platinum records, really needs very little introduction.Musical success is seldom measured in time spans of more than a few years, if not Andy Warhol's oft quoted "fifteen minutes", so the fact that by the time Midge's single "If I Was" went to No1 in 1985 he had already crammed several musical lifetimes into a 10 year professional career speaks volumes - Slik, The Rich Kids, Thin Lizzy, Visage, Ultravox and of course the most famous one off group in musical history Band Aid had by then all had the guiding hand of his musical navigation.Then you have to take account of Midge's musical directorship of a series of rock concerts for The Prince's Trust, Wicked Women for Breakthrough and in honour of Nelson Mandela; a Lord Provost award for services to Scottish music; record production for Phil Lynott, Steve Harley and countless others; his video direction of memorable hits by the Fun Boy Three, Bananarama and others, or a whole swathe of landmark singles by Ultravox; TV, theatre and film music credits ranging from 'Max Headroom' to stage and big screen.He wrote and produced Visage in 1980, then hit the top 10 in the summer of 1982 with his first release under his own name, an atmospheric take on the Tom Rush song made famous half a dozen years earlier by the Walker Brothers, 'No Regrets'.Then came November 25, 1984, a historic day for Midge and all of pop music, as 36 artists by the collective name Band Aid gathered at SARM Studios in west London under Ure's production. They recorded 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' a song he had just written with Bob Geldof as the industry's heartfelt and eloquent contribution to Ethiopian famine relief. 600,000 copies sold in its first week in the UK alone was only the beginning: 800,000 more were bought in the second week, more than three million world-wide, and the unstoppable emotion engendered by the project led to Live Aid, the summer 1985 global concert that, all exaggeration aside, spoke for a generation.Within months, a staggering 8 million had been raised for the starving in Africa, and Geldof said that without Ure's initial enthusiasm for the idea, not to mention his rapidly penned sketch for the single, neither Band Aid nor Live Aid could have happened. Midge is still to this day a Band Aid Trustee.Just two months after Live Aid, Midge was back at No.1 in Britain, this time under his own name, with 'If I Was', and by the autumn he had a No.2 solo album to accompany it, entitled 'The Gift'. In 1993, that chart-topper was to lend itself to the retrospective album 'If I Was'. After an initial solo outing to the Oxford Debating Society where his response to "What song would you write for Take That" was met with the characteristically witty retort of "An instrumental!" broke the ice, he supported the album's release with a 22-date 'Out Alone' tour of Britain, armed only with a couple of guitars and a keyboard.In 1996 the new 'Breathe' album was followed by further extensive touring, including dates in the US as special guest to the Chieftains. The Swatch campaign brought spectacular renewed international activity for the record in 1998. The album and eponymous single were subsequently in the top 20 throughout Europe for much of that year, and No.1 in Italy, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, where Midge toured voraciously. 'Breathe' sold over half a million copies in Europe alone. Eberhard Schoener invited him to perform at the re-opening of the Potzdamer Platz in Berlin, in front of an estimated audience of 500,000.Emma and Hog Emma and Hog started working together late last year and give them a few years and their bio will look as impressive as that above - as Hog fronts campaigns for hair restorer and Emma's growing formula both propel them to superstardom.CheersStuart Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hog Posted January 12, 2005 Report Share Posted January 12, 2005 Ha ha, love the last part lol! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Cynic Posted January 12, 2005 Report Share Posted January 12, 2005 That's a high-profile gig....good luck to you both, and tell us all the Midge Ure gossip afterwards Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.