Be Bop Deluxe
They are one of British rock's classic marginal bands. Everyone
seems to have heard of them and yet few have actually heard their
work.
A number of their tracks - such as Ships In The Night
and Sister Seagull - were played on UK rock radio in the
70s, and the group were endlessly touted as 'the next big thing'
by the likes of DJ's Johnnie Walker and Alan Freeman. But by many,
the band were dismissed as a bunch of Roxy Music wannabes.
Be-Bop Deluxe played self-referential art pop with enough nods
to Heavy Metal and Prog Rock stylings to appeal across the board.
It should have been all so simple. People may have even overlooked
Bill Nelson's grotesque glam barnet and the awful Sunburst
Finish album cover from 1976.
But punk wasn't a forgiving phenomenon, and Deluxe were swept
away by a movement whose more imaginative survivors might have
felt considerable affinity with them (Bauhaus and Scritti Politti
spring to mind).
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