It’s no secret that I sometimes wish that I was born at a much later time. Being a young person during the 70s and 80s when rock music was considered ‘yellow culture’ by the Singapore Government (and heavily suppressed) meant that I missed watching my favourite bands coming down to Singapore to play. Of course, the Singapore of 2012 is totally different from the Singapore of 1982, where rock concerts of contemporary popular bands happen almost every week.
Thus far, I have been fortunate enough to have been able to catch a few musical heroes from this era viz. The Police, Elvis Costello, Elton John, Echo & the Bunnymen, Lloyd Cole and even Bob Dylan. Come 10 March 2012, I can add Orchestral Maneouvres in the Dark (OMD) to this rather short list as the band play the Esplanade Theatre.
OMD was instrumental in getting me to jump on the post-punk bandwagon back in 1980. I was struck by the band’s performance of Enola Gay in the post-punk/new wave film Urgh! A Music War and the rest, as they say, is history. OMD quickly became one of my favourite bands and I consider the first three albums – Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Organisation & Architecture and Morality – to be essential listening for any scholar of the synth-pop epoch.
Back when OMD released its strong comeback album – History of Modern – I was fortunate to be able to interview Andy McCluskey (whom together with Paul Humphries form the core of OMD) via email but now am looking forward to actually speaking to the duo by phone very soon (for TODAY) ahead of their performance during Mosaic Music Festival (MMF) 2012. I can only hope now that I will get a chance to meet my heroes sometime in March. What say you, MMF organizers???
Tickets now available at SISTIC.
Originally posted on 1 Feb 2012
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