Put The Needle On The Record - Week # 27

Put The Needle On The Record Week #27 Tubeway Army - Replicas

For this weeks feature we go back to April 1979 and the Tubeway Army album "Replicas".

This album is the album that started off my love affair with synthesizers and electronic music, it is a groundbreaking album in so many ways but is definitely the album that started the wealth of synth bands that followed, the likes of OMD, The Human League, Visage, Midge Ure era Ultravox, Japan, Heaven 17, Depeche Mode and so many others.

I still remember very clearly watching Top Of The Pops in, I think it would have been May 1979, when Tubeway Army appeared with the track "Are Friends Electric?", they looked like something from an alien planet, the effect it had on me and i'm sure many others was incredible, the lightbulb moment for me regards electronic music because it truly opened my eyes to electronic music and Gary Numan brought electronic music to the mainstream, that's how important this album is to me and countless others.

"Are Friends Electric?" actually made steady progress up the singles chart, however, once it appeared on Top Of The Pops, it made Gary Numan a massive pop star and this impacted on sales of the album.

The album has a science fiction concept as its core, with songs about androids and machines and a dystopian world.

The interesting thing about this album is that it still had lots of guitar on it (The Machman and You Are In My Vision) and wasn't a complete electronic album, however, the synthesizers were the key ingredients on this long player. A nod of appreciation for Numan's lyrics on this album, they are outstanding and fit perfectly with the music and the overall concept.

It is probably one of my most played albums of all time.

Two singles were released off the album, "Down In The Park" (Which failed to chart) and of course, "Are Friends Electric?" (which reached number 1 and stayed there for 4 weeks), I also think "Me I Disconnect From You" should have been released as a single.

The album also reached number 1 in the UK Album Chart.

Track Listing

Me I Disconnect From You
Are 'Friends' Electric?
The Machman
Praying To The Aliens
Down In The Park
You Are In My Vision
Replicas
It Must Have Been Years
When The Machines Rock
I Nearly Married A Human

So if you have the album in your collection and have n't played it in a while, dig it out and give it a spin!