Thursday, October 21, 2010

Dancing With Tears In My Eyes by Ultravox

Like many bands of the early 80s who didn't have a stream of mainstream hits that I would have heard on the radio, I discovered Ultravox in the later 80s after they were past their prime, and indeed after they had broken up. For many long years, the only Ultravox I had was Collection, a greatest hits cassette tape that compiled the output of the four albums that the had done with the "classic" line-up with frontman Midge Ure, synth-guru Billy Currie, drummer Warren Cann and bass player Chris Cross. After this, they canned Cann (no pun intended) and released the thoroughly disappointing album U-vox (which I once briefly owned) before calling it a day.

So, a lot of my Ultravox info was out of context, since I never heard the original albums. More recently I have---you can now buy digital remaster double CD versions where the CD of bonus material (alternates, demos, remixes, live versions and b-sides) are actually longer than the original material. "Dancing With Tears In My Eyes" was Ultravox's second biggest hit; it hit no. 3 on the UK charts. It's from their 1984 album Lament, and it was the first track on Collection, and as such, always struck me as one of the most iconic (if not the most iconic) of the classic line-up Ultravox's output.

Although it actually has a pretty cool music video, I decided to mix things up and put out the "Special Remix" version instead. The Special Remix is mostly notable for being really long, but it's also nice because it separates out most of the elements of the song at at least one point instead of burying it under all the other elements, so you can really hear everything that the song does.

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