Saturday, February 23, 2013

EMI & UNIVERSAL – THE MUSICAL FALLOUT CONTINUES.


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’sShaddup 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…



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