[…continued from last post]

It was a dozen years ago today when I first posted about the Visage Mark III lineup which had bade itself public in 2013 following what seemed to be many months of behind the scenes pronouncements by various and sundry. That the Visage II seemed to evaporate before achieving liftoff, initially led me to think that if we heard anything from the beleaguered band, it might count for a small miracle. As I’d been trained to do over the decades of Visage inactivity [in spite of my enthusiasms] I ignored it until it could not be ignored any longer.

Right before the announcement of Visage Mk III there was also the Detroit Starzz project that appeared to be ready for takeoff before it seemed to slip back into the shadows in the time that Visage once again became a going concern. At the time I never managed to hear any of the songs which had begun to trickle out to the public. Though years later I finally managed to hear a few. The material with Steve was pretty good and I would be happy to hear more, but to date, it hasn’t happened.

As the reality moved closer to the surface, it transpired that in spite of fan interest, Midge Ure was keeping far removed from the band that he had initially built. His interest lay in the then-current reactivation of the Ultravox mothership by that point. Naturally Billy Currie also demurred. As did Barry Adamson, who became an underground star in the 90s with his solo career.

A bigger rift was down to Rusty Egan initially being involved then pulling out of the project after coming to loggerheads with the behind the scenes business practices of the new regime. Visage had been down to Rusty dreaming big and getting his friend Ure to believe in it. From 1979 to 1986, the constant in Visage had been Steve Strange and Rusty. The excellent B-side “I’m Still Searching”‘ from the “Night Train” single was said to be down to Egan working with Strange with no other members involved. I was initially dubious of what the band could do without a prime mover like him.

But there would be some continuity. Steve Barnacle was still the bass player. And before Rusty departed, he did make an enormous impact on the new music by inviting the great Robin Simon to play guitar in what must be the most canny move ever. Hearing this gave me some hope. Then I heard that Mick MacNeil of Simple Minds was involved, as was original keyboardist Dave Formula [at least in the writing]. I cautiously adopted a wait-and-see posture.

I noted that the label activated to sell these new Visage wares was calling it self Blitz Club. Appropriately enough. The first issue in February of 2013, under the Visage name was a three track DL and CD-R of…an old B-side. “Frequency 7,” which was all over the place usually in its somewhat tedious dance mix. Which was here along with the much more striking 7″ version that was only on the Radar “Tar” 7′ single. I was happy to have the song in digital form, but the brickwall mastering was not instilling me with the fullest of confidence. Nor was the post-modern Randome remix that was… inconsequential. For a Visage said to have an album in the oven, this tired rehash didn’t telegraph a strong hand. Why did they not lead with new material?

It was three months later when a new Visage website was revealed to the world and it gave me no little hope at what the new effort might accomplish. Copy on the website discussed the modus operandi of the new Visage, and it prominently noted that there would be analog synthesizers used throughout, and it specifically cited no brickwall mastering, though the “Frequency 7” single had obviously slipped out without it being caught. This was all encouraging, but it’s deeds, not words, that matter. And then April brought not only showers but the first new Visage single since “Beat Boy” in “Shameless Fashion.” I thought it was certainly a Visage song in name at least. I was curious and there was a Visage Soundcloud account so I bit the bullet and tried before I bought. Which, if anyone knows me, is so not how I roll. Typically, I wait until I own a physical copy in my hands to hear and judge anything. But Steve had been through the wringer. It could have been a disaster.

Not bad, I thought. Not bad at all. Not exactly top flight Visage but having Robin Simon playing guitar on this certainly kicked it up several notches. Steve was admirably garish on the Peter Ashworth cover photo. After hearing this I was becoming cautiously excited against my better judgement. May brought the news that the album was going into pre-sale in a signed deluxe package with bonus disc for…£20.00! I was ready to bite. I just needed a little push.

Then the second track dropped in a Soundcloud clip that I awoke to one morning and this was no little push. This was a huge shove! “Never Enough” was incredibly powerful. It sounded easily the equal of my favorite Visage track, “Visage.” It was a storming dance track with one of my top guitarists slaloming effortlessly through the Mororderspace like Jean-Claude Killy. After listening, wide-eyed to this just once, my next step was getting to the Visage website and pre-ordering the deluxe “Hearts + Knives” package as well as the “Shameless Fashion” CD-5 single!

When they arrived I was stunned to hear that they had succeeded. Wildly. It’s the goal of every old band to regroup decades later, record a new album that pays deference to the foundational ethos of the band that made their name in the first place, while bringing the band into the present somehow. It’s virtually guaranteed not to happen, of course. But in this instance, it magically did. Everyone involved gave their best to the effort and it managed to go over the top into being the kind of success that was utterly rare in this fallen world.

Making music that hit all of the 1979-1980 marks was no mean feat! My favorite bands fail to do this continually, but this Visage lineup somehow managed it. But the coup de grace was in the emotional grounding that the singer brought to the table. The lyrics made reference to the difficulties that Steve had lived through and gave it all an emotional grounding that had never been a prominent feature of Visage. Visage was always hot electronic dance rock. End of discussion. But now on a song like “Hidden Sign” when Steve spoke in the middle eight of walking through Paris in the rain with tears streaming down his face, I really felt the hurt he was referencing. The old hauteur was gone with the wind as Steve got real and vulnerable!

And I was astonished as single after single was peeled from this bounteous album! Every track I wished would be a single ultimately was! And these were physical, CD-5 singles, with the exception of “Lost In Static” which was a 12″ single. Ironically, the only vinyl single from Visage during the new wave of hipster “vinyls.” By the end of the campaign there had been six [6!!!] singles released physically from this album in a time when active bands I also loved, like Simple Minds, hadn’t released a physical single in almost a decade.

Then Visage did something that was listed as a goal as far back as 1983 but really, no one ever expected them to achieve; they went on tour! What I wouldn’t have given to have seen this crack team live! At one point there were rumors of a US tour hitting Chicago [and we would have been there] but in the end the thorny US work visa issue may have scuttled the plans. Meanwhile, Visage were on a tear. And I was eager to soak up the bounty of music they were proffering.

It was late in 2014 that brought another unexpected development with an orchestral album featuring newly recorded arrangements of Visage classics abetted by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. As they had very memorably made the John Bryan Widescreen Extended Version of the already brilliant “Never Enough” easily secure the “best remix of the 2010’s” gold cup, I was hot to hear the results of them embellishing a wide spectrum of Visage material. In that we were saving for a big vacation that year, I missed the pre-order so the bonus CD-R of mixes is still missing from my Record Cell.

Next: …Endgame