Midge Ure at Parkway Theater (21 Aug 2024)

Legendary Scottish musician and producer Midge Ure headlined the Parkway Theater, in Minneapolis, on Wednesday, as part of his “Band in a Box” tour.

Transmission’s Jake Rudh compiled some of Ure’s favorite songs, playing music videos of Human League, XTC, David Bowie, etc. Ure would later say that when he was backstage, he wanted to enjoy and dance to the music videos.

If you didn’t know, Ure calls his show “Band in a Box”, which he described “consists of myself on electric guitar, synthesiser and vocals alongside my long time keyboard player Charlie Round-Turner playing live with various loops, samples and programmed drums.”

The stripped-down duo and with this arrangement, it would afford Ure to pull in any songs from his vast catalog, including some deep cuts and everything from his solo work, to Visage and Ultravox.

 

The setup is similar with Ure’s last appearance in January 2020, due to the astronomical expense of bring his whole band to America: “A last-minute cancellation by his intended touring partner had almost scuttled the scaled-down US tour (in Europe and elsewhere, he’s touring with full band and playing the Vienna album in its entirety), but Ure decided, to everyone’s delight, to professionally carry on. The result is a very intimate, honest and open performance wherein the audience determines the show itself, through questions and song requests, resulting in a priceless extended living-room style concert.”

Now, with Charlie helping out Ure, including pointing out when Ure missed a song on his setlist (they played “Sleepwalk” before the David Bowie cover).

 

It’s good that Charlie was there, otherwise, we wouldn’t get the great story that accompanied “The Man Who Sold the World.” According to Ure, he jumped on the offer to record the David Bowie cover for the film Party Party. He didn’t have anything to say about the film, other than that it was a “sh*** version of Porky’s.”

What he didn’t know was that famed video game director Hideo Kojima (from Konami) was a huge fan of Ultravox and flew in to London to see Ure play and begged him to let him use Ultravox’s version of “The Man Who Sold the World” for the fifth and final installment of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

I was worried when he played the hit songs “Fade to Grey” early and “Vienna” in the middle of the set (both well received, of course)… I was wondering, how else does he have left? Then you realized how much we’d all forgotten how many hits Ultravox had, such as “All Stood Still” and “Hymn”, which were played back-to-back. A few members of the audience left their seats and started dancing in the aisle.

Ure didn’t play any recent songs, in fact, he said if he were to announce a new song, there’ll be a “tumbleweed silence.” Ure, now 70, have seen it all throughout his musical career. He knows it takes a little time for songs to be loved and become “classics.”

If you’re a fan of the New Romantics period, you definitely need to catch Midge Ure if he is playing in your town.

Remaining tour dates: