My daughter brought home some maths homework that really didn’t make any sense to me. I wondered if it was just me, but the more people I showed this homework to, the more people who were confused and baffled by it. There just seemed to be something wrong with the whole thing.
The often feel this frustrated about the Blue Aeroplanes. Brilliant live, the Bristol band mixed this sort of post-punk funk with Gerald Langley’s poetic turn of phrase. They released a handful of brilliant albums after forming way back in 1981, flirting with major labels and earning admiring glances from the great and good (Michael Stipe amongst them), but despite some near misses there was never the concerted chart success that the band certainly justified.
Fast forward to the present, and the band are still going, albeit with the inevitable personnel changes, and a slew of reissues that have shown there is still interest in the band. And that’s the point. Just like my daughters homework, the more people I share the music of the Blue Aeroplanes with, the more that people fail to understand how they’ve never heard of the Blue Aeroplanes, and equally fail to understand why lots of other people managed to miss them as well.
So, here’s your chance. Not just a tour, but a tour where the band play (basically) all of their singles. So, familiarise yourself with this little playlist of what you might expect, and then get yourself a ticket, and go see something special. You’ll be baffled why you missed it for so long.
December Tour Dates
3rd The Bodega, Nottingham
5th Hare & Hounds, Birmingham
6th The Fleece, Bristol
7th Water Rats, London
8th The Globe, Cardiff
