N°65 ABC - THE LOOK OF LOVE

ABC is short for the Acid Black Cherries but is also a British new wave band from the eighties which was a continuation from an earlier band called Vice Versa. Vice Versa was founded late 70's by Stephen Singleton and Mark White, later members of ABC. Martin Fry came on board in 1979 as a synthesizer player. When Fry took over the lead vocals later on the band renamed itself to ABC in 1980 when they dropped Vice Versa founding member David Sydenham.

Their first album The Lexicon of Love made it to the top flight of the UK charts and ABC's succes was rocketing to the sky high. It contained well known top ten hits such as The Look Of Love (posted here), Poison Arrow and All Of My Heart. This succes would prove hard to come again. Their second album didn't flop but never proved to be as successfull as their debut. Following this taning success of the second album Singleton left the band and ABC continued as a due with Fry and White.

A third album in 1985 brought their success to a downfall and this is the period where Martin Fry needs treatment for a disease called Hodgkin's desease. After this he returned with a more poppy album called Alphabet City and finally ABC ties into their first success from Lexicon of Love. King Without A Crown isn't the biggest hit but you sure must know The Night You Murdered Love or When Smokey Sings.

Their fifth and final album got released in 1989 and was called Up. Their hopes of being 'up' the charts again was sunk because the dance/house influences on that final CD never got approval by the fans. The band took a break after their 1990 tour after a decade of creating new wave, dance music for their fans.

In 1997 Martin Fry claims the name ABC as his band name and starts performing the old hits without any of the original band members. Also he releases a new CD called Skyscraping but apart from some of the fans no one ever heared of that CD I guess. The final approach to get all the original band members together for a reunion in 2004 failed as Singleton and White didn't want to meet Fry. The fact that Fry claimed the band's name never got appreciated by the other two.

I've seen Martin Fry perform on The Night Of The Proms in Antwerp a few years a go and it was pretty good but then again it was Martin Fry singing ABC and it wasn't ABC as a whole. There's no future for this band as a band but I'm happy Martin Fry keeps the songs alive.

Finally I'd want to say I'm sorry for the readers of this blog since I haven't had the time to update this one regularly the past few weeks. I'm actually on a week's holiday in Spain and had a busy week before as well. I'll try and update next Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday so at least some catching up is done.THanks for understanding.