Spandau Ballet
Parade

THE REVIEW

Spandau Ballet - Parade (1984)

Outside it's bad weather, the elements are raging, meteors are splattering on the windows, and what's better than picking up a telescope and looking back into your memories? So, down with a Cuba Libre and another skeleton in vinyl in the closet.
Second episode same party, same sea, October 30, 1984. As you know I only review albums that I have intensely experienced. An album must have been worn out, it cannot be evaluated except by the test of time: if it ages well, if it withstands comparisons and if it is not resold in second-hand markets for half a euro.

So, even if the Spandau weren't among my favorite bands, I had read a terrible review in Rockstar of the single Only when you leave, big voice like that of Philip of Edinburgh of the unpleasant singer - it was defined. Yet Parade spun around my ears since that distant late 1984. Reason? At my delayed friend's party there were always new musical innovations, - the Spands reached the top of the charts only in mid-1985, so it was a novelty to play it as a background at a party. It wasn't like today, where an mp3 immediately travels around the world, back then records and tapes had long promotional launches, with sometimes unpredictable results. So, same couch, same group of 80s cool guys, and Emanuela, the self-proclaimed cousin of Max aka Retard: just like the script from last year, the lady with a face like her bottom, comes back to me with a candid: Hi, do you remember me? - yes, yes, I say, and then? We seemed like actors from a movie, Last Year in Marienbad, petrified in the same gestures of the previous year.

The moment was crucial, under a spotlight of psychedelic light from the house, green color, this cute bitch in a tight light brown velvet leopard jumpsuit, and the classmates watching me, waiting for my moves and especially knowing about the missed opportunity from the previous year... I look at Enzo who with an affirmative look tells me in Morse code: Go on, what are you waiting for, who cares, don't you see how cute she is, put aside your pride..." And Roberto telepathically says to me: do as you please, but this time act tough, it's she who looks for you, not you..."
In short, between the crossfire of glances from friends, my withdrawal dark circles, and the green spotlight, I opted for an okay, let's pretend I'm falling for it again. So Emanuela and I sit on a couch, she apologizes for the year before, blah blah, that she was seeing someone else and was undecided, blah blah, and then to my surprise she says "listen, let's go talk over there, a little more alone?" And I increasingly with the playboy look from our area- okay.
In short, I saved face, everyone at the end saying the girl fell for it, Rivoli no longer misses a beat, oh yes, it didn't deny the reputation of one of the coolest in school...
And while she talked and talked, I loved and hated her, and on the Technics platter, Parade was looping, I don't know who the hell put that 33... and I was so concentrated on making out with her that I almost didn't hear the album. Tony Hadley's tenor voice, the Kemp brothers' guitars, fake funky rock, fake like the 80s economic boom, seasoned with cotton candy sax sprinkles by Norman, sailed as the background of the most boring yuppie lounge party of the era. Yet, among the Campari and some late hour flashes of lucidity, Highly strung struck me, a bit less I'll fly for you, dramatic Nature of the beast, beautiful, and then Revenge for love - my revenge..., Always in the back of my mind, the poignant With the pride. The whole album flew by like that, less beautiful than the previous True, the real masterpiece of the Spands, but I can't help but remember it with pleasure precisely for its disengagement and its purely 80s frivolity. Beautiful and formal songs, well played and well arranged, clean like Roxy Music without Eno, the more commercial ones, with lyrics that remind of seventeen-year-olds writing furtive love poems under the desk during class.

How did it end? Because I immediately sensed that Manuelita tended to have a foot in two shoes, the story lasted very little. I've always wondered if our timid story was influenced by the enormous distance between our neighborhoods that were at opposite ends, I, Nuovo Salario, she at Eur. But today I wonder: were the Spands the poor cousins of Duran? Guys, live the Spands rocked, their concert at the Eur sports hall in '87 was better than Duran's at the Flaminio stadium. I swear, I was there.