Commonsense and history suggests that the merger and
acquisition of 2 music corporate giants would result in some unprecedented
activity. The story of EMI, Universal and Ultravox confirms this theory.
Music lovers of the early-to-mid 1980’s will remember
Ultravox as British electronic pop music stars; their 1981 smash “Vienna” was
recently voted “the Greatest Song Not To Reach Number One” in a BBC survey. Joe
Dolce’s “Shaddup Your Face” [the ultimate One Hit Wonder] kept Ultravox at
Number Two on the UK Charts for 4 weeks.
Ultravox faded away from the mainstream in the second half
of the 1980’s, however their lead singer Midge Ure has never moved far from the
public eye, primarily due to his involvement in co-writing Band Aid’s 1984 charity
song “Do They Know It’s Christmas” and instigating the Live Aid concerts in
1985 with Bob Geldof. Ure remains a Band Aid trustee, as the aforementioned
song continues to generate royalties for Ethiopian famine relief.
In the true tradition of “everything old is new again”,
Ultravox regrouped in 2011 and began working up songs for their label,
Universal. The initial signs of modern corporate music craziness occurred
during the recording process, when Universal demanded an Ultravox album of
songs from “outside” writers. Ure would have nothing of this, thus the
recording of the album continued without Universal’s financial support. EMI
picked up the Ultravox-penned album, “Brilliant” in 2012 however the corporate
chaos surrounding their new label saw the release sink quickly due to zero
promotional support.
Ultravox retains a global presence via its fans however
their ongoing future is in doubt without the financial support of a major
record label. Ure has been touring solo in selected territories in a very
economical manner [500 seat clubs; support act doubling as his backing band] in
order to gauge a “feel” for a fully-fledged Ultravox tour. It’s best described
as a “DIY” process for some of the great music acts from past decades, and
represents a trend for the ages…
