i wonder what happened? both shows postponed?
upside is, i bet not everyone will be able to make the new dates and maybe now i can get a ticket! they did a really great article on the post on friday about them.
Erasure's Edge: Still Sharp
By Richard Harrington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 29, 2005; WE07
THINGS THAT are unlikely to happen anytime soon: Erasure toning down its act.
Specifically singer Andy Bell toning down his act, since the synth-pop band's only other member is keyboardist and occasional guitarist Vince Clarke, who tends to be stock-still, deadpan and taciturn.
Not Bell, who sings like a choirboy but has been known to ride atop a gigantic prop penis while dressed in a tutu. One of the first openly gay pop stars, Bell used to cover Tammy Wynette's "Stand by Your Man" sporting bell-bottom cowboy chaps with the backsides cut out, long before Prince or Christina Aguilera struck that ex-pose. With a 3 1/2 -octave range ascending to sweet falsetto and a penchant for eye-popping outfits that might seem more appropriate to a drag-club revue, the flamboyant Bell has brought lighthearted lunacy to the rock stage: The stage set for Erasure's last tour in 2003 was an Edwardian drawing room, with Bell favoring the look of a grand lady, this just a few years after insisting to England's Daily Mirror that it was time for Erasure to tone down the act.
For the tour that brings Erasure to the 9:30 club Monday and Tuesday after a string of 10 sold-out concerts at New York's Irving Plaza, Bell suggests "it's kind of toning downish, a little bit. We haven't got that many props. I do look forward to someday being dressed all in black with just one spotlight -- that's what everybody does . . . "
Not yet, thankfully, and certainly not Erasure.
For this show, Bell says, "we have an inflatable Grimm brothers fairy forest and two little risers on there with Vince and myself. I come on as an angel and we have two little fairy backing singers. And Vince just has his computer with him in front, and halfway through I go off and, during 'Rapture' by Blondie, come back on dressed as a matador Elvis. And the singers go off as I'm doing 'Ave Maria' and they all come back on dressed as Marilyns having their skirts blown up, and then I strip off for the finale and have my sparkling pants and two fanny fanners."
In other words, it's Erasure as usual.
The mystery, of course, is what Bell, once described as "as camp as a row of tents," will talk the generally reserved Clarke into wearing on stage.
" Vince chose his outfits," Bell insists. Let's just say they involve, at various times, gold lamé, Indiana Jones wear and satellite dishes.
Clarke has become quite the good sport about such things in the 21 years that Erasure has been together, though he seems to abhor the spotlight as much as Bell seems to love it.
"He hates being on stage," Bell confides. "I think he quite likes being famous for his music, but he hates being on stage and doing all those things where you have to interact with the public."
It's something Clarke has been doing a few years longer than Bell. He and fellow keyboardist Andrew Fletcher formed No Romance in China back in 1976, and French Look with guitarist-keyboardist Martin Gore; when singer Dave Gahan signed on in 1981, the group changed its name to Depeche Mode and helped invent synth-pop. Though Clarke wrote most of that band's bouncy debut, "Speak & Spell," he quit after that one album and, looking to offset the impersonality of synth-pop, sought out warm-voiced vocalists. Clarke first teamed with Alison Moyet in Yazoo (soon shortened to Yaz and only a bit longer-lived), and then with Irish singer Feargal Sharkey as the Assembly (lasting only a single).
In 1985, Clarke began auditions for a new project, originally intending to use 10 different singers. The 42nd to audition was Bell, whose timbre and emotional quaver were remarkably similar to Moyet's. Bell's reading of "Who Needs Love (Like That)?" impressed Clarke enough that Erasure was formed on the spot; the song would become the duo's debut single.
Though Bell was probably chosen at least partly for his frontman potential -- there simply wouldn't be much else to look at otherwise -- he says Clarke was himself "pretty wacky. I saw him playing the Space Invaders machine [at the audition], and he had a completely bald head except for this fringe coming out from the front, back combed so he looked like a peacock in reverse. So he's pretty bizarre himself. "
Bell, now 42, had come out at 16, which was a fairly brave thing to do in the '70s. So was walking down the street in hometown Peterborough, England following the local bagpipe and drum band while wrapped in faux-tartan (actually his mother's old curtains). Turns out the Pipes & Drums & Military Band of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards was a major early influence with its British No. 1 of "Amazing Grace." But so was Klaus Nomi, the gay German-born cabaret artist known for singing arias in a glass-shattering falsetto (he was also a major influence on David Bowie). And so was Blondie, whom Bell once called "the soundtrack to my coming out," happily blaming Debbie Harry for "[giving] me the confidence to be the person I am."
A shared influence with Clarke, now 44, was Abba, and Erasure anticipated the worldwide revival of interest in that group with the 1992 EP "Abba-Esque." By then, Erasure had enough hits of its own that the Swedish Abba tribute band Bjorn Again was able to counter with "Erasure-ish." That was also the year of Erasure's infamously over-the-top "Phantasmagorical Entertainment" tour, captured on the recently released concert DVD, "The Tank, the Swan and the Balloon Live!" That's the one where Bell sports a fringed and spangled leotard and high heels and covers idol Judy Garland's "Over the Rainbow" teetering on a pair of ruby slippers with nine-inch heels.
"I tend to go gung-ho when I'm on stage, and apart from singing and wanting everything to be perfect and in tune, I'm kind of flaming around and dancing, if you can call it that," Bell admits, adding, "I think sometimes that has taken away from the music. People have only just kind of started talking about my voice after 20 years -- and I think my voice is quite good! At the same time, if I'd just stood there with Vince and the synthesizer and just sang, I think it would have been too boring. Maybe I would have bored myself."
By the middle of the '90s, it seemed as if Erasure was, in fact, a bit bored with itself: 1995's "Erasure" was a tad too experimental and uninvolving. Aside from an empowering single, "In These Arms," 1997's "Cowboy" felt indifferent; 2000's "Loveboat" wasn't even released here.
Yet Erasure's most recent album, "Nightbird," has been acclaimed as a return to classic form. It's the group's sunniest, most optimistic and upbeat collection of songs, the last judgment reflecting the album's content more than its tempos. Erasure's first set of original songs in five years, it's very much the result of the two albums that preceded it in 2003: "Other People's Songs," a covers album that refocused Clark and Bell as writers, and the two-CD "Hits! The Very Best of Erasure," which reminded them of their gift for melancholy yet highly danceable synth-pop. They did some writing together in England and New York early last year but constructed "Nightbird" mostly by sending songs back and forth over the Internet, from Maine (where Clarke lives after marrying his long-time girlfriend) to Spain (where Bell lives with his partner of 20 years, Paul Hickey).
Also factor in the attention paid in the past couple of years to such bands as Scissor Sisters (who had the best-selling album in England last year), Fischerspooner, the Postal Service, Goldfrapp and Ladytron, all of whom celebrate the joys of synth-rooted music.
According to Bell, "we were enthused by all the electro-clash material going around, especially in London, where it's kind of an underground scene, with lots of kids doing this minimal electronic stuff like the early '80s, before Erasure were formed. We wanted to nod and make a reference to that. After having done 'Other People's Songs,' we wanted our melodies to be really strong.
"And also there was a certain maturity," he adds. "I don't know if that was from being 40 or from having a major operation that kind of tilted the songs."
What Bell is referring to is the double hip replacement he underwent last year to replace hips that had been weakened by drugs while Bell battled pneumonia in 1998. Soon after, he was diagnosed with HIV, though Bell didn't make that public until December. On Erasure's Web site, Bell wrote, "my life expectancy should be the same as anyone else's so there is no need to panic. There is still so much hysteria and ignorance surrounding HIV and AIDS. Let's just get on with life . . . making music, doing a live tour and generally having a good time."
Bell also notes the poetic irony of a band known for synthesizer sounds now being fronted by a semi-cyborg who still favors high heels.
"If I couldn't move, they could just put a magnet under the stage and people could draw me across," he jokes before adding that "with Vince's music, especially when you're working in the studio the kind of frequencies that you get, it feels like a holistic massage but with laser beams of sound, so it's like acupuncture needles. I really do feel like that."
Later this year, Bell will finally release his solo debut, made with British DJ and production duo Manhattan Clique, and Erasure may finally release its acoustic album, "ballads done with violins and guitar, a different way of singing," Bell says. "It's lovely, so beautiful. It sounds like Billie Holiday!"
