Midge Ure (UK) four-date NZ tour in April 16 Dec 2014
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Midge Ure (UK) four-date NZ tour in April
The voice of
Ultravox, Midge Ure will perform four New Zealand shows in
April 2015 – remarkably his first concerts here since
electro-pop legends Ultravox visited our shores for the
Sweetwaters festival in 1982.
Fans in Auckland,
Wellington, Nelson and Christchurch can look forward to
intimate solo acoustic performances from Midge Ure (UK),
with details as follows:
• Bodega,
Wellington (April 17) – Tickets from Ticketmaster.co.nz
•
• Aurora
Centre, Christchurch (April 18) – Ticketek.co.nz
•
• SkyCity
Theatre, Auckland (April 19) – Ticketmaster.co.nz
•
• Theatre
Royal, Nelson (April 20) – TicketDirect.co.nz
•
•
Tickets
for all four concerts are on sale from 9am Thursday December
18. See promoter website Plus1.co.nz for complete
details.
Special guest on the tour is Boh Runga
performing material from her solo and stellar*
albums.
Scottish-born Midge Ure has been fearlessly
innovative over the years – through creative production
and songs like Fade to Grey (Visage)
Vienna and Dancing With Tears in My Eyes (Ultravox)
and solo gems including If I Was, and No
Regrets.
Ultravox was a major
influence on the new romantic and electro-pop movements of
the early '80s, and continue to be so today. Their
successful trademark was combining Midge's powerful guitar
riffs with sweeping synthesiser motifs and state-of-the-art
visuals.
Ure’s 1984 songwriting collaboration with
Bob Geldof, ‘Do They Know It’s
Christmas’ was a heartfelt contribution to Ethiopian
famine relief. Band Aid was produced by Ure and the single
sold more than three million copies in the UK, and the song
kept returning to the charts in 1989, 2004 and again this
Christmas (2014) with a new version and revised lyrics to
help fund the fight against the Ebola virus.
MIdge Ure
live in New Zealand - with special guest Boh Runga. See Plus1.co.nz for
details.
Classic Midge Ure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DuCIGvsbMA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSza93W6n1M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp20I5dgrRs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jQbfw0HXX0
MIDGE
URE – PAST TO PRESENT:
His musical career
speaks volumes - Slik, The Rich Kids, Thin Lizzy,
Visage, Ultravox.
Midge Ure appeared to the
wider public in a moment of heady teen success with Slik.
Their sway-along single 'Forever And Ever'
took over at No.1 in the UK from Abba's 'Mamma Mia'
on Valentine's Day 1976.
Soon outgrowing Slik's pop
dimensions, Midge was snapped up by ex-Sex Pistol
Glen Matlock the following year for his new outfit,
the Rich Kids, who charted amid an
avalanche of press with a self-titled EMI single early in
1978.
By 1979, Ure had been asked by Billy Currie,
Chris Cross and Warren Cann to become the new frontman in
Ultravox.
The songs of Ultravox were
massive hits the world over, generating seven consecutive
top ten albums in just six years. Indeed, Vienna recently
was voted the Nation’s favourite number 2 single of the
80’s, finally granting it a coveted Number 1
position!
Even by then, the Midge Ure story had some
individual chapters, of course. He wrote and produced
“Fade to Grey” for 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. The unstoppable emotion engendered by the project
led to Live Aid, the summer 1985 global concert that, all
exaggeration aside, spoke for a generation.
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.
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'. Further
solo albums followed with “Answers to
Nothing” in 1988 and“Pure”
in 1991 on BMG.
Delivered in 1994, the new
'Breathe' album was followed by further
extensive touring. The Swatch campaign brought spectacular
renewed international activity for the record. 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. 'Breathe' sold
over half a million copies in Europe alone. Respected German
composer 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.
Ultravox reformed in 2009
with a three-week tour of the UK and Ireland, culminating in
their show at London's historical Roundhouse being captured
on the live DVD "Return To Eden". They
continued to tour, before releasing their first new album in
25 years Brilliantfollowed by a huge UK
arena tour with Simple Minds.
This
year Midge Ure released an acclaimed new solo allbum
Fragile which returned to his progressive synth
roots with soaring melodies and introspective lyrics. The
album features collaborations with Schiller
and Moby.
Midge Ure is a
recipient of Ivor Novello, Grammy, BASCAP
awards.
ends
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