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From their earliest incarnation to the present day ABC have maintained their doctrine of change. "Change is our stability. Change is our strength." In the summer of '81, following a series of live performances which saw ABC unleashing a collection of High Butane floorfillers to an unsuspecting audience, the group secured a gigantic worldwide deal with Polygram Inc. Their first record release hit the top 20 - Tears Are Not Enough, an aggressive pop funk workout.

More hits followed in Poison Arrow and The Look of Love culminating in the release of ABC's debut long player The Lexicon of Love. An album that took modern pop music through a whole list of sophisticated twists and turns. At times like modern-age Norman Whitfield, studded with rich orchestration and memorable songs. Love scenarios real and imagined, fiction and fact, reinvesting cliches with original wit. The Lexicon of Love made number 1. ABC made success a byword. Late '82 found the group experimenting in a sixty-minute film format in Julien Temple's Mantrap and embarking on a sell-out world tour - A tour that began in Dublin November '82 and culminated in Tokyo March '83. (Martin Fry ceremoniously flushing his gold lame suit down the toilet of the Keio Plaza Hotel).

Disappointed with the new age conservatism that ran rampant in the U.K. circa '83 and dissatisfied with xeroxing past successes - ABC then set about re-inventing their style, a style that indelibly influenced many of the groups in their wake. ABC skinned down from a 16-piece soul revue to a five-piece unit. Where the emphasis was less on tuxedos and more toward acoustic instrumentation, placing the focus back onto electric guitars. There followed "Beauty Stab" a 12 song concoction that redefined ABC's notion of glamour. In it, zip gun guitar anthems were mixed with sophisticated protest and prophecy, across a backdrop that documented England '83 in all its ugly glory. Beauty Stab also contained their self-explanatory manifesto That was Then But This Is Now. Clearly it was the work of a group trying to escape their past. Critical and public response was at times confused. Where was the group that had produced All of My Heart a year earlier? ABC were momentarily out of fashion but never out of focus.

January '84 saw Mark White and Martin Fry in self-imposed exile, sickened by the lack of invention, imagination and style, that paraded itself across the pop charts. They began a journey that took them across America, White studying the delta blues jazz scene in New Orleans and adding to his formidable collection of guitars in Mexico City. A series of recordings took place in Los Angeles and were subsequently scrapped violently. Both men left for New York the following day. In the Pyramid Lounge and in New York's niterie Area seeds of a brand new line-up were formed. Eden and David Yarritu were drafted.

On their return to London an alphabetical recording crew was materialising - in Martyn Webster, whizz kid engineer and dub master general. In Gary Moberley, a high-speed Australian electronics expert for whom the good life meant fast cars and faster programming. Gary was introduced to the team for his complex understanding of the Fairlight machine - "in a nutshell it's a tin box made out of left over Fosters' cans." And in Keith LeBlanc Beatmaster whose musical adventures had included records featuring Malcolm X, James Brown and Arthur Scargill and whose DMX brutality and booby trap snare was to become a feature of many an ABC song.

ABC return with a brand spanking new jet trash manifesto and the knowledge that Mickey Mouse is, was, and always will be bigger than Elvis. In an age when Frankie went to Hollywood and Frankenstein came back, ABC release Fear of the World, 15 Storey Halo, So Hip It Hurts, but first, How To Be A Millionaire. Flamboyant and flash. Larger than life and twice as ugly. From chain store pop to chain saw pop group. And back again.

Ladies and gentlemen - ABC ........