I had almost lost hope that this time would come
Hot on the heels of their third US appearance at 80s Weekender #9 in Los Angeles at the Microsoft Theater on February 15th, long time favorites Heaven 17 will undertake an actual North American Tour. I didn’t get too worked up over the 80s weekender concept as it is a cavalcade of New Music stars doing their 4-5 biggest hits on a revolving stage filled with:
- Violent Femmes
- Wang Chung
- A Flock of Seagulls
- The Romantics
- Big Country
- Missing Persons
- Heaven 17
- Farrington + Mann Original Members of When in Rome UK
- Dramarama
- Josie Cotton
- China Crisis
and if it came down to it, I’d go for H17 and China Crisis alone. I’ve seen Wang Chung do a full set ages ago. But such events fill me with vapors of cognitive dissonance. As a real music fan, I prefer something deeper that the shallows of fickle pop. So that’s why this tour is of much greater interest to me! Having seen Heaven 17 live on video, they can be truly amazing as they have built up a band with incredible performing muscle to do their songbook justice.
If course, the stinging irony is that I am traveling to the UK in about six weeks to see Heaven 17 perform a one-off concert of both Human League albums that Martyn Ware wrote back when the band were more amazing to me. Though I would love to see the band perform their own canon of songs, the further irony is that we will be leaving Chicago exactly four days ahead of their kick off performance there at Park West. C’est la vie! None of these dates will be anywhere near us, but don’t let that stop anyone reading this from attending! I want this tour to sell out so that maybe next year we can get another US leg that comes to the Southeast where we live. Tickets go on sale this Friday, February 7. You know what to do.
HEAVEN 17 | We Don’t Need This Fascist Groove Thang US Tour | 2020
May 8 | Chicago, IL | Park West
May 10 | San Francisco, CA | Independent
May 11 | Seattle, WA | Triple Door
May 12 | Vancouver, BC | Commodore Ballroom
May 14 | Toronto, ON | Mod Club
May 16 | Pawling, NY | Daryl’s House
May 17 | New York, NY | Le Poisson Rouge
May 18 | Boston, MA | Sinclair
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Post-Punk Monk 
I honestly think this is the universe telling me I have to work for my H17! Seeing Luxury Gap Live in 2018 was simply brilliant and I will NEVER for get it. Seeing Travelogue and Reproduction live with Glenn on vocals is going to be a real treat. Swinging H17 in NYC a week before an already planned vacation might be just to much for my bank account or credit cards to bear. I WILL send surrogates though!
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Saw them at the Highline Ballroom in Sept 2017. EPIC!!!
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schwenko – Aaaah! So at least one PPM regular confirms having seen H17 in 2017? Excellent! Are you going to make it a double, sir?
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Just secured my ticket for the Cambridge, MA show. it’s quite a small club. Now hurry up, May!
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Taffy – I knew you wouldn’t let me down! Now jsd needs to confirm his tickets!
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Mr. monk,
good luck on your trip.
As much as i would like to see them, currently
they won’t appear anywhere near me. unless
i strike it rich and travel.
good luck to those going, and write back on
your experiences. i’m sure ewwwtube will
document it for those of us that can’t make it.
later
-1
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I have not seen an official notice yet, but I can’t imagine this tour is still happening. I was planning on trekking from LA to SF for it.
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David Ponak – Welcome to the comments! Great to see you adding your spice to the gumbo. According to the Martyn Ware webinar I watched on Monday, the whole year of gigs is off the table for now. I don’t blame you for trekking to SF for it. If you’re that much of a fan, here’s a great podcast with the same host as the webinar was that’s even better: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6NEsLASjaFTPtWCfYmmTwa
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Happy to contribute! I’ve been enjoying going through your old pieces!
I little revision to this piece, H17 never actually made it to the LA 80’s Weekend show! Apparently some work visas never came through, and we didn’t even find out until the show was in process and their set time came and went with NO HEAVEN 17! I mainly went just to see them.
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David Ponak – Arrgh! So you attended that 80s Weekender in L.A. specifically for Heaven 17 [a noble gesture] only to find out they were no-show while in the audience? That actually happened to us once. We went to the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, a fantastic festival we often attend, specifically to see Harold Budd perform. We entered the venue, The Knoxville Museum Of Art at roughly 11:30 p.m. to see a larger band setting up. We asked around and discovered that Mr. Budd had fallen and broken a rib a few days earlier so he was still in California. Fortunately, the band setting up, Bing + Ruth, played music in a similar enough vein to be a very effective proxy. I saw afterward on Heaven17.com that the Work Visa Crisis® that began in the Obama administration was still cutting a bloody swath through all of the acts that we like, including them. Between America making work visas difficult and more costly to obtain, and Brexit, not to mention worldwide pandemic, seeing live music is harder than ever. And yet, this is the only way for most musicians to earn money now. Hmmm.
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The new tour dates are out in case you’ve not noticed yet head over to https://www.heaven17.com/
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slur – We saw the revised dates in the middle of January. So not driving to Chicago in the teeth of winter even for Heaven 17. Maybe next summer would work as I don’t anticipate Covid-19 cooling down sufficiently by then, either,
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