These Are My Salad Days: Spandau Ballet On YouTube

Posted in Music, Retrovirus, Video |

By Less Lee Moore

You can’t step twice into the same YouTube river. The channel has undergone enormous transformations since its debut. In just the last few years, there have been heated disputes over copyright in the US and the UK, embarrassing incidents of corporate confusion, and irate fans who rejoice in finding long-loved-and-lost videos only to be crushed when those videos are removed for various reasons.

Thankfully, many bands have stepped up (with apparent legal muscle as well as capital) and created their own Official YouTube channels. This issue we’ll be profiling the Official Spandau Ballet YouTube channel.

“Martin Gore finally returned my tank top.”

My discovery of this channel began innocently enough: I was at a party and bravely offered to sing “Gold” on a friend’s SingStar Karaoke game, only to subsequently scare everyone with my mastery of the lyrics. I couldn’t get the damn thing out of my head and so I did what everyone else does: looked for the video on YouTube the next day.

Although there were a few Spandau Ballet songs I’d loved and never forgotten from the 80s, I was astonished that I remembered every one featured on YouTube. But no matter how thorough my knowledge of the songs, I only remembered a handful of videos. Enter OfficialSpandau . . .

“To Cut A Long Story Short”
Like many early 80s videos, this one makes no sense: the band appears in some sort of candelabra-bedecked castle from inside a haze of fog and weird people make vague facial expressions that are supposed to evoke some secret meaning. But Spandau Ballet push the limits by wearing lots of plaid wool in the form of knickers and kilts. Note to Tony Hadley: Fair Isle sweaters are not New Wave. I am unclear as to why he wears his trench coat and gloves on his shoulder the entire time and emotes at his binoculars. Steve Norman is wearing a pair of lace up sandals frighteningly similar to some “Mia” brand ones I had in the ’80s. There are also faux-Goth dancers mimicking the moves from Duran Duran’s “Planet Earth” video. More fog appears, the band disappears, end scene.

“The Freeze”
Each band member morphs into one another and then looks balefully towards stage right. Tony Hadley, fresh from his audition for the remake of I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang, visits his frigid girlfriend, who desperately wants to figure out a way to get behind the mesh screen in her unfurnished living room. It’s all full of Kemps!

“Musclebound”
This is the kind of video that used to make me uncomfortable as a pre-teen. Maybe it was the low camera angle, the painted midgets, and the confusing Lawrence of Arabia storyline . . . I’m not sure. At any rate, I’m now convinced Peter Jackson watched this video many times back in the day.

“By nightfall these hills will be swarming with Orcs.”

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