Howard Jones, ABC feat. Martin Fry, Haircut 100 at Uptown Theater, Kansas City MO (2024-08-25)

The so-called Second British Invasion returned en force, some forty years later–

It was the 1980’s once again in midtown Kansas City at the Uptown Theater as Howard Jones, ABC featuring Martin Fry, and Haircut One Hundred and their many radio hits, kept an already happy crowd even happier – some reliving the carefree days of their youth, others discovering the songs that helped define a decade.

While all acts were highly anticipated to see live, perhaps the one that most were curious about was Beckenham, UK band Haircut One Hundred, on their first US tour outing since 1982 (yes, you read that right!) featuring original members Nick Heyward, Les Nemes, and Graham Jones (drummer Blair Cunningham had to bow out due to health concerns).

The band recently had released an expanded multi-disc, deluxe edition version of first album Pelican West, and both the group and the crowd were visibly smiling for the majority of their upbeat thirty-minute set, working in six of their biggest songs.

We’d forgotten how much the horn section mattered in their songs and the second half with an extended and empowered “Fantastic Day”, their UK Top 3 breakthrough hit, “Love Plus One” and initial single, “Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl)” were all greatly received (with the band graciously meeting fans after their set too) and there's every hope it won’t be another four-decade wait for the group to play nearby again.

Some acts build their image and stage presence on class, and ABC featuring lead singer Martin Fry is certainly one of those, maintaining an elegant and debonair persona for well over four decades. The hits were plentiful over the years for the Sheffield, UK band (same hometown as Def Leppard?!) and Fry still flies the musical banner, though it’s with various touring musicians instead of his original bandmates.

The good news is, the seasoned touring band (which includes guitarist Toshi Yanagi (from the Cletones – the Jimmy Kimmel Live house band), Andy Carr on bass, Daniel Mandela on keys, Peter (Dishwalla) Maloney on drums, and keyboardist / tenor sax player Robert “Bobby” Hughes are all solidly good in their own right, and play together very well, with Yanagi and Hughes especially shining in their solo moments.

ABC had ten UK and five US Top 40 singles in the 80’s decade, so much was familiar during their hour-long set. Fry, dressed in a shiny gold lamé suit jacket was still in prime voice from their opening modern classics, “When Smokey Sings” and “Show Me,” to first single, 1981’s “Tears are Not Enough” (that charted well enough to let them record a full album), to their set-ending biggest hits, “Be Near Me” and “The Look of Love.”

Among the offerings at the merch booth, were copies of Fry’s new deluxe autobiography (with exclusive CD), “A Lexicon of Life”, also available online.Few musicians of the so-called Second British Invasion of the 1980’s have been as successful and had the longevity of singer, songwriter and synth musician Howard Jones. Jones had an impressive six Top 10 singles on the UK charts in less than three years (‘83-’86) and five US Top 20 songs during that fabled decade.

Since then, he’s continued regularly touring and releasing new music, live albums, and recent deluxe reissues (all totaling some 10million units moved), with a recent best-of compilation, “Celebrate It Together – The Very Best of Howard Jones 1983-2023” (via Cherry Red Records) out now in multiple formats.

A key and not-so-secret ingredient of Jones’ continued success is his top-tier backing band of many years: Nick (Kajagoogoo, Steven Wilson) Beggs (bass/stick), Robin (Fish, Tracy Ullman) Boult (guitar), and Robbie Bronnimann (keyboards/tech). Keyboardist Dan Clarke unfortunately was lost to cardiac arrest last year (at the young age of 31), and they have dedicated the entire tour to his memory, performing hit, “Hide & Seek” nightly in his honor.

We’ve caught Jones semi-regularly over the years, most recently last summer when he supported Boy George and Culture Club outdoors in Kansas City and his upbeat setlist of generally positive songs is always uplifting; and in more recent years, more welcome to be heard, than ever.

His Olympic walk-on music set the stage for an impressive eighty-minute headlining set, beginning with mega hit, “Pearl in the Shell” and breakthrough single, “New Song”, while working in a little “Twist and Shout” at the end of “Everlasting Love”, most of which the audience all sang along with.

Bassist Beggs was a co-founder and eventual vocalist of the Nick Rhodes-produced Kajagoogoo, and their hit, “Too Shy” was performed (like last summer) after a legal warning of sorts by Jones (maybe the reason that he and the crowd, rather than Beggs, sang the song, with Jones also noting he’s been wanting to get the band to reform and tour again). It’s great to hear the song played live at all, really.

Jones had the crowd yodeling and howling like wolves during an extended “Life in One Day” and on more recent tracks like 2013’s “The Human Touch”, he’s adapted to the more modern club beats of DJs like Diplo, Paul van Dyk, and Oakenfold, for more extreme bass shaking and thumping.

“What is Love?” started acoustically before the familiar chords kicked in, with the crowd’s “whoah-oh’s” drowning out the band, to end the main set. The audience singing continued on the chorus of the one encore, “Things Can Only Get Better,” with the song elevating into the club version done by French DJ Cedric Gervais (responsible for the hit Lana Del Rey “Summertime Sadness” remix) to end the evening on a vibrating exclamation.

They came, they saw, they conquered – the Second British Invasion of the '80's had its live encore and based on the response, Kansas City would welcome back Howard Jones, ABC, and Haircut One Hundred together or separately, to return anytime.

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