I don’t recall now how I actu­al­ly dis­cov­ered Be-Bop Deluxe and came to be the own­er of their 1976 album Mod­ern Music. Pos­si­bly I heard the album’s sin­gle Kiss of Light on the radio, since it is that song that slots into my mem­o­ry as “the first”. Equal­ly, I may have been intro­duced by school­mates Rocky Col­lier or Chris Hobbs, since they too were big fans and indeed the lat­ter was there with me at my first ever gig: Be-Bop Deluxe at Leeds Grand The­atre, Feb­ru­ary 1978. How­ev­er, own the album I did, and my over­rid­ing mem­o­ry is the feel­ing of rev­er­ence I had for it. The themes and con­cepts con­jured up by band leader and gui­tar genius Bill Nel­son were thrilling and oth­er­world­ly; I recall at the foot of the back cov­er a line that summed it up sim­ply but effec­tive­ly: “Music and lyrics writ­ten by Bill Nel­son to enchant”.

Mod­ern Music was the band’s fourth album, so I had dis­cov­ered them late (to be fair, I was only thir­teen) and only ret­ro­spec­tive­ly edu­cat­ed myself in the band’s evo­lu­tion from glam rock pre­tenders to sophis­ti­cat­ed art rock­ers. The band had formed in Wake­field in 1972 and had start­ed out play­ing the West York­shire pub scene, one reg­u­lar venue being the Stag­ing Post in Whin­moor, Leeds. Sev­er­al per­son­nel changes had ensued by the time I had got into them, with my defin­i­tive line-up being Simon Fox on drums, Char­lie Tuma­hai on bass and Andy Clark on key­boards, an ensem­ble that under­stood Nelson’s vision and was emi­nent­ly capa­ble of help­ing him man­i­fest it.

The track list­ing itself gives hints of the fan­tas­ti­cal nature of that vision: Orphans of Baby­lon, The Bird Charmer’s Des­tiny, Hon­ey­moon on Mars, The Dance of the Uncle Sam Humanoids. To the unini­ti­at­ed, such titles might smack of prog-rock con­cept-album pre­ten­sion but the melodies, the tex­tures, the hooks, and the over­all musi­cal splen­dour argue against such a sim­plis­tic appraisal. It is cer­tain­ly con­cep­tu­al, and indeed Nel­son can get away with mak­ing the whole of side B a suite of short tracks merg­ing into one anoth­er, but pre­ten­tious it ain’t. Too much qual­i­ty.

The album cov­er shows the band besuit­ed and un-rock star like, with Bill pre­scient­ly sport­ing a “TV-watch” (or smart­watch, as we’d call it today, albeit with­out the anten­nas!). This was noth­ing like their glam rock ori­gins, nor any­thing like the punk nihilism that was burst­ing onto the scene at around the same time (in the same month as the album’s release, Sep­tem­ber 1976, the 100 Club was host­ing a two-day punk fes­ti­val fea­tur­ing the Sex Pis­tols, the Clash and the Damned). Mod­ern Music rep­re­sent­ed a unique sound and vision, and although the band would only release one more album and dis­band before they could achieve last­ing fame, it stands as a mon­u­ment to Bill Nelson’s con­sid­er­able musi­cal abil­i­ties.

Here is the title track, which gives but a flavour of the music though I would rec­om­mend immers­ing one­self in the whole album to get the prop­er Be-Bop expe­ri­ence.