The Steel City Tour, Brighton Centre

It’s a Friday night and about 3000 people are waiting for Heaven 17 to come on stage at the Brighton Centre. There’s a level of eager anticipation amongst the crowd as this is the first part of a trilogy of Sheffield’s finest pop bands that make up the touring Steel City Tour.

The band final emerge to a polite round of applause. A moments hush descends as the last of the crowd finish their mobile calls home giving promises to their teenage kids that they won’t be too late home, or similar homespun instructions to Friday’s babysitters. Glenn Gregory struts across the stage looking as debonair as I remembered, sporting a waistcoat and fedora hat. Only he and Martyn Ware remain. Ian Craig Marsh opted out of the tour, back at University or something. As youthful as Gregory is, Martyn Ware is not. He’s happy enough though tucked behind a bank of keyboards: a cross between your slightly seedy uncle and Roland Rivron. No matter, Gregory belts out a tune, the support band is professional – the drummer looks 16 - and the two backing girls hit every note. And Billie Godfrey is from Brighton too.

The great thing about music is its ability to pass through time. It’s emotive and provides us all with nostalgic moments. I can still recall hearing Heaven 17’s Penthouse & Pavement album for the first time. I was with a group of teenage friends having a picnic in a sunny Berkshire field. A new lad from Merseyside brought his tape deck and a copy of the album south. It was 1982, and Alex had an older sister who was already living the New Romantic dream in Reading. I was hooked.

The 17 tore through their 40-minute set. I fully expected them to end with Temptation and they did just that. It was fantastic and exactly what the audience wanted to hear. They kicked off the set with Fascist Groove Thing and got treated to Come Live With Me, and Penthouse. We learnt that Let Me Go is both Glenn and Martyn’s favourite H17 track and that we’d been the best audience so far on tour. And because we’re in Brighton, we got a special high-energy, techno version Geisha Boys. Well, I think that’s what Gregory meant.

Twenty minutes later, after a glass of water and a sit down, we’re back in for ABC. In reality it’s just Martin Fry. No matter. Can anybody remember the other three original members anyway? Fry looks now like a Tory MP from Norfolk, or Max Moseley. But like Gregory before him, Fry can still sing. A bigger band supports him, and you get the impression more instruments means more sound. H17 relied more on keyboards – not a great surprise – whereas the men no longer in gold lame suits have got a guitar, keyboard and a rather too lively girl accompanying on percussion. She came into her own whilst imitating a rodeo rider on ABC’s new track ‘Ride’. It struck me at this point that these guys are attempting to write pop songs for a generation who don’t want pop music anymore. Pop is a young person’s game and the mistake reforming pop acts make is mentally dropping back into the era that first made them famous. Ride sounded like a watered-down Prince. And he’s 50. Fry ran through a 40-minute set of classics, hitting the high notes on cue and completing the show with the classic ‘Look of Love’. The audience lapped it up.

Yet another intermission and another opportunity for a breather. The Human League topped the bill. Aside from being last on, you got the impression Phil Oakey was behind the whole thing. That could have explained his appearance for the opening track ‘Seconds’, impersonating Morpheus from the Matrix. Behind him the set was serious. You could have been in the Apple Store in Regents Street, enough for me to be checking around for a brochure to take away. Dry ice and a deliberate build-up with just 3 mics visible from the pit below. The emerging stage was a two-level affair with a trio of keyboard players motionless on the higher level. As we moved onto Mirror Man we got our first glimpse of Joanne and Susan. It was refreshing to see that even after close on 30 years the singing is hardly improved and the dance moves beggar belief. Joanne is inexplicably wearing a flapper dress for the first couple of numbers. I can’t stop staring as she mouths the words verbatim over the course of the next 45 minutes, as aside from walking backstage and forward a couple of times, I’m not sure she lifts her feet once. She could be any 40-something mother of two at a family wedding after two glasses of Pinot Grigio. The other one is robotically turning left and right with her arms above her head. Phil is singing Mirror Man; Susan is dancing to Hey Mickey.

Four songs in, including dragging Empire State Human back from 1979, Phil stopped for a breather. The hushed audience listened as Phil applauded H17 and ABC. A cry of “I love you Phil” from the bloke behind me drifted away amidst the smoke. The gals returned and we were off with The Lebanon, (Keep Feeling) Fascination, more costume changes before arriving at Don’t You Want Me (Baby). Susan is still flinging her arms around and slightly off the beat but she’s dragged the original white fur coat used for the Don’t You video out of the wardrobe. As with both ABC and H17, the best was saved for last. The audience sung along with every word. I wondered how many of these people had seen any or all of these groups in their 80s hey-day? I didn’t. Just like catching Prince at the o2 Arena last year, I did it to make up for missing him first time round. I was slightly disappointed at Phil’s need to thank everyone one final time in the middle of Don’t You Want Me, but he was seemingly as euphoric as the middle-aged crowd in front of him.

As people drifted out into the cold December night air, everyone had a favourite track that hadn’t been played. Hardly surprising when each act had barely 45 minutes per set. Minor detail. All said, it was a solid show and we’d all gorged ourselves for just less than 3 hours of great songs and great memories from a time when such events would end with a lift home from your Dad.