Gary Daly and Eddie Lundon were at school together in Kirkby, Liverpool. Shortly after leaving school in 1979 they formed China Crisis, a pop / rock band which would go on to become very successful during the mid and late 1980s – chart success in the UK, Europe and some smaller success in the Americas. 1985 saw the release of their third album “Flaunt The Imperfection” which was the focus of this performance at The Lowry in Salford – a complete play-through of the album, all ten tracks being performed in order. The album play-through concept is something we see quite a lot of from 80s bands, although generally this is done at a suitable anniversary of the release such as 25 years or 30 years – “Flaunt The Imperfection” was released 33 years ago, a fact that required several members of the band to confirm after some basic calculations during tonight’s performance.
“Flaunt The Imperfection” was an album produced by Walter Becker of Steely Dan fame, someone they were hugely honoured to have on board. Both Daly and Lundon were massive Steely Dan fans and seemingly suggested his involvement to their record label, Virgin Records, but never expected them to deliver.
The show was opened with the first track from the album, “The Highest High”, accompanied by a big screen showing artwork images from the album and also some old photographs of them in the studio. A simple way to show the nostalgia of this event but nevertheless very effective – it reminded the audience just how long ago this music was created.
The band then went through the next few songs “Strength Of Character”, “You Did Cut Me” and one their most famous singles “Black Man Ray” but in between each track we were able to hear some real insight of the process they went through working with Becker. The most surprising part for me was just how much producer Becker influenced some of the tracks, to the point where he changed the sound significantly with what appeared to be some small touches. Gary Daly described this as “sprinkling fairy dust” which is an excellent way to describe it.
Daly is an excellent communicator and he continued to do this all the way through the rest of the album play-through. He has a real ability to talk about technical elements of the musical creation process but explain them in terms that everyone can understand – he also has a lot of natural charisma which absolutely helps this whole experience. I particularly loved the way he described how they played demo tapes to Becker with only the instrumental on the tape and them singing live over the top – something you would never be able to get away with in this day and age.
The band completed the album play-through, including “King In A Catholic Style” – another single release – and “The World Spins I’m Part Of It” which Daly confessed that they had never played live until this tour. This level of honesty was a real feature of Daly’s narratives where he was very keen to hand credit over to others for what had been created but he still knows his influence on the album was huge – pointing out where he had personally created the bass line instead of bass player Gazza Johnson (who was also back playing bass for this tour).
After a short interval, the band returned to play some of their favourite songs from other albums and their greatest hits – a China Crisis gig wouldn’t be complete without their two biggest single successes “Christian” and “Wishful Thinking”.
Album play-through gigs are without doubt designed for the hardcore fans of the band and this was no exception, but based on the very full Quays Theatre at The Lowry then there are plenty of those around. There is nothing quite like hearing new music from a new band or a new album from a band you already know but album play-through gigs have their place – it was amazing to hear detailed recollections of how it was created all those years ago and good to hear the tracks played live in the same style in which they were written to be played.
Reviewer – John Fish
on – 13/10/18
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