Saturday, April 9, 2011

H is for Human & Heaven

For those of you who are new to this blog we're part of an A-Z Blogging Challenge where each day of April (except Sundays) we write a post on a different letter of the alphabet and today we've got up to the letter H.   As this is an eighties blog the H has to be related to something from the 80s and I've chosen to talk about two musical groups - Human League and Heaven 17.

There is actually a connection between these two groups, you see Martyn Ware and Ian Marsh were the founding members of both groups - did you know that?   The story starts in Sheffield Martyn, Ian and a third person -  Glen Gregory - were all at school together.   They were all friends who dreamt of being pop stars as many of us do.

Martyn & Ian founded a group called The Future and invited Glen to join them as they needed a singer, unfortunately (or fortunately as musical history would discover) he was unavailable and so they then asked a singer by the name of Phil Oakley to join them.   The Future would become the Human League.

After a difference of opinion Martyn and Ian left the Human League and this time their third friend Glen was available to join them and Heaven 17 was formed.

I'm really glad that things happened that way because one of my favorite 80s songs is Temptation which was Heaven 17's most commercial success, however I also love Human League and find it hard to pick a favorite out of their songs - Don't You Want Me, Mirror Man, Fascination....the list just keeps on going.

What is your favorite Heaven 17 and/or Human League song?

3 comments:

  1. I didn't know that! Just downloaded Fascination a few weeks ago :)

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  2. Interesting. I didn't know any of this about Human League and Heaven 17.

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  3. "Don't You Want Me" ~ I loved that song years ago and I still love it now. What a great interesting post. :)

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