Line-up

Headliner
ABC Last time in Melbourne: First time!

Venue

Palais Theatre

Lower Esplanade, 3183, Saint Kilda, VIC, Australia

palaistheatre.com.au/

Capacity: 2,896

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Additional details

Doors open: 20:00

Concert in your area for Pop, Rock, and Indie & Alt.

Find out more about Pop and Rock.

ABC biography

ABC are an English new wave band from Sheffield. They formed in 1980, and have undergone several lineup changes over the years.

Frontman Martin Fry is the only permanent member of ABC, having never left the band since their formation in 1980; it’s also true that the band themselves have never officially disbanded over the course of their three-decade-plus career, which perhaps beggars belief given the undeniable fluctuation of the fortunes over the course of that time. They enjoyed their greatest success in the eighties - perhaps unsurprisingly, given the popularity of the new wave genre during that decade - and their 1982 debut album ‘The Lexicon of Love’ contains most of their early hits. ‘Tears Are Not Enough’ hit the top twenty in the UK, as did ‘Poison Arrow’, which would go on to feature in the eighties-set video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

It was the 1985 record ‘How to Be a...Zillionaire’ was the group’s biggest success on the other side of the Atlantic, with the single ‘Be Near Me’ seeing ABC hit the top ten in the U.S. for the first time. Since 1990, the group has effectively only comprised Fry, but he continues to use the name to tour - he’s especially popular on the eighties nostalgia circuit - as well as record new material, with ‘Traffic’ released in 2008.

Live reviews

There’s probably no single genre of music that represents the eighties quite as accurately, or as obviously, as new wave; it genuinely is synonymous with the decade, and among its genuine success stories were ABC, who formed in Sheffield back in 1980, right in time for the sound’s explosion. Their debut album The Lexicon of Love was a huge success on both sides of the Atlantic, topping the charts in the UK and making the top twenty-five over in the U.S., and spawned a slew of hits that were not only successes in terms of sales and radio play at the time, but continue to stand up as classics of the genre today, especially their signature song ‘Poison Arrow’. Although singer Martin Fry now remains the sole original member - he tours with a new backing group for the most part, with David Palmer only briefly rejoining him as part of VH1’s Bands Reunited programme in 2004 - the ABC name continues to be used for both live shows and new material, with Fry still proving himself both an engaging frontman and a fine singer, too. They regularly line up alongside other eighties acts like T’Pau and Rick Astley, so there’s plenty of opportunity for a multi-faceted blast of nostalgia where their shows are concerned, too.

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