Heaven 17 are celebrating the 30th anniversary of their Penthouse & Pavement album a year early (it's not 1981 yet!) with a special tour and no less than two documentaries on BBC2.The tour will feature H17 members Martyn Ware and Glen Gregory preforming the seminal album 'in it's entirety' for the very first time, together with loads of special artists and guests you can read about here.
Two separate documentaries about the making of P&P, and the 30th Anniversary show, are confirmed for transmission Sunday 16th May on BBC2 at 11.20pm (concert) and Monday 17th May (making of), same time same channel.
The album which effectively mixed electronics and funk, perhaps for the first time, was only luke-warmly received when it was originally issued. Apparently misconstrued, and perhaps not unsurprisingly, as a 'yuppie' kind of album with it's business-like image and approach, despite the opening (We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang and digs at the new money-centred society, war-mongering and other subjects such as organised religion.
Although the 'Penthouse' A side provided the more poppy singles (none of which even reached the top 40), I was fonder of the 'Pavement' B side which was more akin to the full-electronic former-Human League sound (you can imagine Oakey singing some of those). Particulary good was the repeated 'for a very long time' on the vinyl run-out which didn't always work (damn those automatic turntables) and which no way could be converterted to digital / CD format..hurrah foy vinyl!
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