Why is "Replicas" by Gary Numan / Tubeway Army such a GREAT album and I never heard it before?

1. Tie between Replicas and the first Tubeway Army album (because it's punk rock okay?)
2. Dance
3. Berserker
4. The Fury

Don't forget Stormtroopers in Drag single...

I confess to a similar surprise of a Numan live experience. I hadn't listened to him in a long, long while and a friend of mine literally dragged me to see him, totally spur of the moment at the last minute while we were on vacation. I had not much choice about it and my expectations were low, this was the 90's and what can I say? The bit of the show I was lucky to catch was truly amazing.

Many Numanoids (including me) think 'I, Assassin' is his best album, if you have a thing for very dark, bleak, bizarre, snakey funk. And also, he's made a comeback of sorts recently. 'Pure' is not bad at all. Avoid anything from the about 1985 to about 1996 however.

Sounds nice. ;)

In a PR mailout today:

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Artist: Gary Numan & Tubeway Army

Album: Replicas Redux - Expanded 2008 Tour Edition

Label: Beggars Banquet

Release Date: February 25, 2008

Gary Numan Replicas 2008 UK Tour: Feb 29, 2008 Bristol Academy (£17); March 1 Sheffield Corporation (£18); 2 Glasgow ABC (£19); 3 Belfast Spring & Airbrake (£22); 4 Dublin Tripod (27.50/32.50 Euros); 5 Nottingham Rock City (£19); 7 Newcastle Academy (£17); 8 Manchester Academy (£19); 9 Norwich UEA (£17) 10 Wolverhampton Wulfren Hall (£19); 11 Cambridge The Junction (£19); 12 Brighton The Dome (£19); 13 Oxford Academy (£17); 14 Southampton University (£20); 15 London indig02 (£25)

In early 2008 Gary Numan celebrates his 30th year in music and turns 50. To celebrate this, the pioneering electronic album Replicas will be re-issued as Gary Numan & Tubeway Army - Replicas Redux on February 25, 2008. This is a week before Numan performs the original LP plus B-sides on a 15 date UK tour in March 2008. The album includes the breakthrough single 'Are 'Friends' Electric?', which gave Numan his first simultaneous Number 1 single and album when Replicas joined it at the top of the charts a few weeks later. 'Are 'Friends' Electric?' originally charted as a picture disc and Beggars Banquet are promising a very limited edition picture disc of the track plus 'Down In The Park' as the flipside as recognition that both songs have remained influential for three decades. The new Redux re-issue also features for the first time a complete earlier version of the Replicas album recorded in late 1978 and January 1979, along with the original B-sides and further out-takes, adding up to 27 tracks across the two CDs.

Released on the punk indie label Beggars Banquet in March 1979, 'Down In The Park' was the first single to be taken off the album, receiving great support from Radio 1 DJ John Peel who booked the 21-year-old from West London for two sessions in the same year. At the time Numan was still operating with a band name - Tubeway Army - although in effect he wrote all the songs and played everything on the LP except for bass and drums. He changed to a solo act in time for his second number 1 single of 1979, 'Cars', which was swiftly followed by The Pleasure Principle so that he headed both album and single charts again. The next three albums, Telekon, Living Ornaments and Dance reached 1, 2 and 3 and in 1981 he sold out three nights at Wembley Arena but lost money because the stage set was the biggest moving structure seen in this country at that point.

Different generations have identified with Replicas' atmospheric music, images of technology out of control and a ripped-up London of the near future. The imagination of one young man in Cleveland, Ohio, namely Brian Warner, was fired by the 'apocalyptic' imagery of 'Down In The Park' and as Marilyn Manson he later recorded the track with producer Trent Reznor (also a fan) from Nine Inch Nails. Nirvana's Kurt Cobain namechecked the guitar-led 'It Must Have Been Years' as an influence in his journal and The Foo Fighters covered 'Down In The Park' for the X-Files soundtrack, Songs In The Key Of X. In the late '90s Damon Albarn recorded the more obscure Replicas 'outtake' 'We Have A Technical' and of course Sugababes scored a UK Number 1 in 2002 by sampling 'Are 'Friends' Electric?' for their single 'Freak Like Me'. Other acts who have covered tracks on the album include DJ Hell, Smashing Pumpkins, Beck and Moloko.

As the NME argued recently, 'Numan's influence on electronic music is unparalleled.' In fact Mojo said of his 2006 album Jagged that the 'innovator of the late '70s never sounds like he's having to play catch-up' and Kerrang concluded after listening to the album that 'Numan is still as vital as ever.' So, 30 years after Tubeway Army's first single in February 1978, Numan is currently recording a new album and has several releases already scheduled including the Jagged Live EP (www.musictvstation.com/acatalog/gary-numan.html) and Jagged Edge - a set of alternative versions and mixes from the 2006 CD, due out in the new year.

Interviewing him tomorrow, Ned. My editor says he's a lovely affable forthcoming chap. Will report back...

Oh, and if you have any questions for him, then please fire away. I'm going to be mostly talking about Replicas, as he'll be performing the album in full on his forthcoming tour.

Hmm. Will think up a few.

ask if he knows where the PKD android is

link

Replicas is so good

Xpost: ask him about Dick. No, seriously. Be interested to know if he still reads SF.

yeah there's some obvious cribbing from PKD on this album (my question was a serious one!)

modern sci-fi pretty much blows chunks tho. Increasingly I think Alex in SF is right that the genre has exhausted itself and is content to run around in circles (endless series' of space operas mixed with half-baked "cyberpunk"/noir tropes, basically)

Ask him if he's still fond of fretless bass, and if he has considered reintroducing it into his sound. (I, Assassin is my favorite album of his.)

Is "Down In The Park" really about masturbation? ("with a friend called five")

I've been weirdly obsessed with the Dark Light Live album I picked up for two dollars. Two disc live thing (obviously), from 1994, doesn't even have "Cars" on it, but man, it's a pretty killer set.

ask him how he gets that marmot on his head to sit still

Just got off the phone. Bloody hell, what a fantastic interviewee he turned out to be! Frank, forthcoming, clear-headed and remarkably grounded.

(But I didn't get to ask any of the above questions. Sorry.)

Well! Saw the Replicas tour last night: a stunning show, shivers up the spine, tears in my eyes, the works. (And I speak as someone who got off the Numan bus in the very early 1980s.) He played the full album, not in its original sequence, plus B-sides and out-takes from the same period, then encored with "Cars" and a couple of other oldies. Can't believe how well it holds up today. ("We are so fragile, they could give us a war just to keep us amused.")

Review -- interview.

Numan's 50 on Saturday!

Saw the tour in Glasgow. Great show. The people I was with know the record better and felt the guitars were too heavy, but the sound worked for me. (Reminded me of Chrome in places, though they came afterwards.)

Actually Chrome were contemporaneous -- first album was in 1976, 77 or so -- and they did eventually end up on Beggars but only after a variety of earlier releases.

Yeah, you're right, though I was thinking of the later sound, with less tapes and cut-ups.

. . and do see the tour, if you've got the slightest interest in Numan.

Seeing as I'm in the US...

modern sci-fi pretty much blows chunks tho. Increasingly I think Alex in SF is right that the genre has exhausted itself and is content to run around in circles (endless series' of space operas mixed with half-baked "cyberpunk"/noir tropes, basically)

I never go on ILE, is there a place where people talk about books? It's an interesting question. Early Cyberpunk writers Gibson, Sterling and Stephenson have been doing a good job recently with either near-future semi-real world settings, or Stephenson's meta-historical fiction. I think recent sci-fi by Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow, Richard Morgan, Chris Moriarty, Neal Asher and Ian McDonald are doing really creative things with post-humanism and such.

'Jagged' is still casting a dense oily fog around my living room on a regular basis. It's one for those lonely nights.

Had a chance to pick up that two-disc reissue I mentioned back in December for nothing today and am listening to the second disc now -- some of the tracks had surfaced on the mid-90s CD as bonuses but mostly this is otherwise unheard versions from the first formal recording sessions. "Are 'Friends' Electric?" has a very different vocal for most of its length, soft and reflective and more in tune with the two spoken-word breaks from the final version.

i've been wondering whether the 2-disc reissue is worth dropping the money for. unlike certain new wave retreads, numan isn't known for teaser dubious "reissues" and "remasters" of his back catalogue (the gazillion greatest hits/compilations aren't his doing).

If you never had the album, definitely get this (same basic price); if you already did, go my route and get it for nothing or cheap. It's an interesting addendum.

So the bonus tracks are really that good huh?

Numan told me that the idea for the reissue came from Beggars, who sourced the demo versions on CD2 - some of which he had no memory of recording. Although initially wary of the idea of an anniversary reissue, the second CD caused him to view it in a much more positive light.

i was listening to my Spotify Daily Mix today and they had a Tubeway Army song. i thought to myself that i know this voice but have never heard of this band. the song was "Are 'Friends' Electric?" and it's fantastic, really great stuff. is this album any good?

Uh, yes. To put it mildly. See various posts of mine above.

i just reread this thread, how have i missed this for all these years?

i'm going to start with Replicas and go from there. i'm so excited i feel like a kid in a candy store.

His live show gave me permanent hearing damage in my left ear a few years back, approach with caution.

Start with s/t Tubeway Army, it is slightly less synthy than replicas but very nearly as good

agreed!

My friend who grew up in Seattle and was in several pre-grunge bands insisted that the s/t was a powerful secret ingredient of that scene

i'm going to take the advise and start out with the self titled. can't believe i didn't know a thing about this.

He peaked pretty early - Telekon is magnificent but it's pretty much downhill from there. This from 1983 may well be the worst thing ever committed to youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=96&v=ca9Mfmtdr7o

I think a lot of ILM would probably say Dance should be the jumping off point - no hits on that one but it's a sneaky good record. I like Berserker a lot too but it's not exactly a great one. You can pretty much skip everything else up to the Gothy Numan phase which is a very different sound but generally quite good, especially the last two records.

if I were you I'd get Replicas and Pleasure Principle first, both are stone classics. that first Tubeway Army record is great too though I think it's kinda frontloaded. still a pretty cool sound that I've never really heard anyone imitate all that well...like Ziggy Stardust gone dorky New Wave. try to seek out the "Bombers" single as well, that one's ace

I will stand by Dance. Indeed, I did so again earlier this year

http://thequietus.com/articles/23814-gary-numan-dance-review-reissue

I'll have to take another listen. Many, many years since I last heard Dance.

I would start with Replicas, then go back to the self-titled, then The Pleasure Principle and Telekon. I personally like to love all the Beggars Banquet era albums - even Warriors clicked for me eventually, but I'd familiarise yourself with the first four before going any further.

the title of this thread is apropos. i did listen to Replicas and then played it again. i never did get into Gary Nuwman when i stated to listen to New Wave and i missed it. so glad i was turned on to this as it's right up my alley.

FUCk is this a good album

Yup

^

The Bowie debts are clear, but it inhabits such a fully formed, hermetically sealed universe

The newish 40th anniversary version is interesting, the complete thing as early versions and a bonus disc with alternatives, the odd b-side and peel sessions.

(Not sure how much of this has been out before)

and I love the chunky guitars as much as (and in "The Machman" more than) the synths.

https://www.superdeluxeedition.com/news/gary-numan-40th-anniversary-reissues/

I like the idea of Numan as bizarro Bowie, especially since that first Tubeway Army LP has such a Ziggy Stardust vibe to it

this album really has held up remarkably well. in retrospect its a pretty strange one even for that era, what with that long slow burn title track and 2 closing instrumentals

it explains why Bowie was so bitchy toward Numan

“I nearly married a human” is better than any of the Berlin trilogy instrumentals imo

And yeah it’s the coexistence of the waning new wave rawk guitars and the blooming new synths that makes it his best record

Also hooks for months

I love when Gary goes all Barry White on "Are Friends Electric?", but, Gary being Gary, instead of whisper-in-your-ear cooing it's all "so I found out the reasons for the phone calls and smiles" paranoia...

it explains why Bowie was so bitchy toward Numan

Yeah, of all the various clones, he was the one who suddenly -- and almost completely and totally -- looked like he could be a serious threat and competitor for the space he'd carved out for himself not merely critically but commercially. History shows differently but that wasn't clear at all back at the end of 1979.