Who's Got The Look?

I've got the answer to that question...Martin Fry has STILL got The Look. Have just returned from a night out watching ABC throw the crank on the Way-Back Machine. Seeing one of my pop idols from the 80s was an hour and then some of unadulterated joy. I was especially glad to see that Martin Fry has kept himself together and has seemingly avoided falling into a chasm of drugs and booze, or worse yet been found bent over bare-assed in a public park doing god knows what to the local squirrel population. No, Martin was looking in fine fettle. Imagine a blond James Bond gone slightly to seed. Not a bad way to look at 50. Maybe the poofy quiff wasn't quite as lush and buoyant, but it was nonetheless there and he was still rockin' it.

But best of all was that voice. He hasn't lost it at all. Not that he would be considered one of the seminal voices of 80's BritPop (I mean, he was no Rick Astley, but then he's in a stand alone category for skinny white boys with big funky voices now isn't he?), but Fry had his moments. All Of My Heart is still a beautiful pop ballad that Fry just wrings out oodles of deep emotion:

Well I hope and I pray/That maybe someday
You'll walk in the room with my heart
Add and subtract/But as a matter of fact
Now that you've gone I still want you back

I know, Martin, I know.

Undeniably the highlight of the evening was his cracking rendition of Stevie Wonder's Uptight followed immediately by the most winning of all ABC songs, When Smokey Sings. You can have your Poison Arrows and your Looks of Love (Sisters and Brothers should help each other, god, he's so totally right!) but I will take the Temptations/Four Tops inspired pop bliss of this classic any day of the week. (I hear violins too!)

And even if my love for ABC is simply the product of nostalgia, I simply do not care. I have not smiled so hard and so genuinely in that particular way since I was 11 years old in the brown shag splendor of my vanilla suburban existence in Beaverton, Oregon, watching the goofy schlock of that 1983 cinematic gem 'Mantrap' air on MTV.

Now, if only Aztec Camera would hit town...