1980s new wave/synth-pop masters Heaven 17 will be coming to North America this fall for their first-ever headlining transatlantic tour celebrating their storied 40-year career. The acclaimed British duo of Martyn Ware and Glenn Gregory will perform their much-loved greatest hits, including “Temptation,” “Let Me Go” and “Hands Up To Heaven,” classic tracks and other highlights. The 15-date We Don’t Need This Fascist Groove Thang outing launches September 16th at Daryl’s House in Pawling, NY and will stop in major cities including Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Toronto, Philadelphia, New York City (September 27th), Los Angeles (September 29th), San Diego, San Francisco, and Portland, among others, before wrapping in Seattle on October 6th. See below for full list of North American tour dates. Tickets are on sale now; visit https://www.heaven17.com/live-dates for more information and to purchase.
“Our first trip to America as Heaven 17 was to New York in 1981; in fact, it was my first-ever trip to the USA and was a truly amazing experience. I can’t remember how on earth this came about, but we were going to play our first-ever live performance at the legendary Studio 54,” shares Gregory. “We have, believe it or not, only ever played the States twice since then – once at a brilliant sold-out gig at The Highline Ballroom in NYC and the other at the Music Tastes Good festival in Long Beach, California, both in 2017. So, it’s certainly way past the time for Heaven 17 to finally come and tour in America and we are on our way! We know we have some amazing fans over there and we’re really excited to, at last, be able to play in front of all of them.”
Taking their name from the Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange, Heaven 17 grew out of the experimental production outfit the British Electric Foundation, itself an offshoot of the electro-pop group The Human League. In 1981, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh left The Human League, recruited vocalist Glenn Gregory and Heaven 17 was born. Their critically acclaimed first album Penthouse and Pavement, featuring their debut single “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang,” followed the same year and remains a modern classic and just as relevant today.
The group’s second album, the platinum-selling The Luxury Gap (1983), was the moment when everything clicked into place to overwhelming effect, becoming an undoubtable pop masterpiece. The album’s first single “Temptation” is a song of desire and lust, brilliantly framed by a musical structure, which stormed the charts, peaking at #2 on the UK Singles Chart. Subsequent Top 20 singles off the album, “Come Live With Me” and “Crushed By the Wheels of Industry,” cemented Heaven 17 as one of Britain’s most important post-punk bands.
Over in the U.S. during this time, their self-titled Heaven 17 album (1983) was a re-working of Penthouse and Pavement with three songs deleted, replaced by “Who’ll Stop The Rain,” “I’m Your Money,” and “Let Me Go,” the latter of which received high rotation airplay on alternative rock and new wave radio stations, including LA’s KROQ and Long Island, NY’s WLIR, plus frequent MTV exposure.
Heaven 17 spent the rest of the 1980s releasing a few more albums – How Men Are (1984), Pleasure One (1986) and Teddy Bear, Duke & Psycho (1988) – before a hiatus ensued until 1996, when they released Bigger Than America and burst back onto the airwaves with their U.S. dance smash single “Hands Up To Heaven.” After another break, the 2000s saw the releases of Before After (2005) and Naked As Advertised (2008) and Heaven 17’sreturn to the stage. Now a collective between Ware and Gregory with piano and synth player Flo Sabeva and soul singers Kelly Barnes and Rachel Mosleh very much part of the live dynamic, Heaven 17, who largely refused to play live during the ‘80s, is now a powerful live act, performing headlining tours throughout the UK and alongside the likes of La Roux and Squeeze. The group’s slick post-modern critique of modern society has never sounded so resonant, nor been so necessary – We (still) Don’t Need This Fascist Groove Thang!
HEAVEN 17 TOUR DATES
We Don’t Need This Fascist Groove Thang – USA and Canada Tour 2022
Friday, September 16 – Pawling, NY @ Daryl’s House
Saturday, September 17 – Red Bank, NJ @ The Vogel
Sunday, September 18 – Boston, MA @ City Winery
Tuesday, September 20 – Detroit, MI @ Magic Bag
Thursday, September 22 – Chicago, IL @ Park West
Friday, September 23 – Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall
Saturday, September 24 – Philadelphia, PA @ Keswick Theatre
Sunday, September 25 – Alexandria, VA @ Birchmere
Tuesday, September 27 – New York, NY @ (Le) Poisson Rogue
Thursday, September 29 – Los Angeles, CA @ Belasco
Friday, September 30 – San Diego, CA @ House of Blues
Saturday, October 1 – Santa Ana, CA @ The Observatory
Sunday, October 2 – San Francisco, CA @ Bimbo’s 365 Club
Wednesday, October 5 – Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom
Thursday, October 6 – Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre
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