ABC. Now a name to drop. Soon a major part in the party. A.B.C.
by Paul Morley

I hold in my hand three letters.

"DOES YOUR LIFE LACK ROMANCE?"

The Fry Man points the finger: he shuts his eyes and chants the message. The message is not medium: this message is above average. "Then why not try A.B.C.? I hold in my hand three letters, A.B.C. an equation that spells dancing, romancing and freelancing. A.B.C.- the radical dance fraction, a democratic dance party, so vote with your feet."

All join in!
"The world's a nightclub tonight, so let's fall in love."

Let's go to bed!
"Easy as A.B.C. Hungry for soul food? Then put alphabet soup on the menu. An escape clause for the '80s, a technicolour manifesto where the rhythm is simple and the beat is strong. Modern as in Mary Quant, and big enough to cry. Perpetual motion times emotion times total devotion."

The sum of the cause!
"Music for radios and the central nervous system. Music for TV transmission and supermarket trolleys. Songs about violence and vitamins, friction and fact."

The Fry Man takes a breather. The A.B.C. fact of life rap-the times have come and you will know. Four times a day/or even more/swallow A.B.C. The fast worker!

IT'S GOING TO BE LOVE…
It's a Wednesday night down at Penny's and everything is wonderful. Sheffield nightclubbers are such a sight, and that's no slight. Such a luxuriant variety of technicolour, cloth, lace, leather, plastic, points, blunts, cut outs, flesh, cut away and keep: the best set of hair-cuts I've ever seen. Even the Sheffield accent is a little more camp than I first feared.
Suzanne does the dance that had her discovered by Phil Oakey: Oakey himself is linked tight with Joanne. Adi promises that the new Clock DVA will be even greater than the old one. Martyn Ware assures whoever will listen that the third Heaven 17 single is some runner. John the suave DJ whips the touched up clubbers to the hilt-a crowded, crawling sound for the crowd, all that Japan as well as the Minds, the Cell, the Darnell, the Sioux, the League, the David, the highlights of soul fortune.
John plays the original 'Shack Up'. The Lemonade Man, Stephen Singleton, framed with a straw fringe and as mobile as a schoolboy, is straight onto the dance floor: he dances quite a shift.
John follows 'Shack Up' with James Brown. The Fry Man, Martin Fry, is straight onto the dance floor, mixing in some steps with his friend. Stephen's the best dancer on the floor: give that man first price. Martin is the most idiosyncratic dancer on the floor: what can we expect considering his size.
Fry and Singleton are two fifths of A.B.C. Their favourite music is Dance, their favourite noise is Loud, their hope comes from the Heartbeat.
Before the end of this year, and then for evermore, A.B.C. will be played in discos right through Britain, Europe and America. In between Was and Whispers, Brown and Redd, Lynn and Linx, Cell and Minds, 'Superstition' and Bowie: no pause in the dancing, no loss in pressure. Their pleasure will be your pleasure. Now a name to drop? Soon a major part in the party! A.B.C.? It's going to be loved.

THE ALPHABETICAL SOUND…
The Fryman does the thing.
"Perfect rhythm is the sign of a pure thoroughbred. Meet the aristocrat, Mr David Robinson! A sucker for syncopation and Mr Drum in the alphabet. Let your fingers do the walking but let Mr Bass Man do the talking. Let me introduce Mr Marc Lickley. Mark says 'I'm through with Matt and into Gloss' and moulds the bass sounds, made of plastic and elastic, that glues the alphabet sound together."

WE DON'T WANT TO BE PART OF ANY CYCLE RACE…
Sheffield: City of colour, Seb Coe, opportunity, motion beyond, cheap buses, dying industry. The factories close down, the lost colour returns to Sheffield's cheeks. In a buckling cottage up a hill that Martin Fry shares with DJ John, he and Stephen Singleton are helping me connect A.B.C. with the sweeping world of great pop, quality dance sound and the Rich Song. They frown when they talk but not far down they're smiling.
Now that Ze is known the world over, A.B.C. are the year's great secret. Whispered about secretly but not leadingly, mythologised over with a maximum of fuss. They've been together as A.B.C. for over a year-before that, three of them were Vice Versa (on their own Neutron label), an electro pip-pish trio, who did all that was possible within the synlimitations and that's much more than Depeche and Numan put together.
A.B.C. have not rushed anything: they've played less than ten shows, recorded nothing. "We didn't want to grow up in public. So many groups are just 20 per cent potential and 80 per cent crap. We wanted the whole thing to be packaged and complete. To be right." The first show was in Sheffield in December. People caught up with Vice Versa, Spandau and their shadows were causing a palaver-A.B.C. were immediately fashionable. "There was a lot of pressure on us, people saying oh you've got to happen now, you've got to get a record out and get it on the futurist thing. We said we didn't care about any of that. We just knew we had something good."
Vice Versa were synthetic and artificial. A.B.C. use real instruments, sing real songs about the real life. And they want to get to know themselves before they get to know you. "Now it's the funk thing-people telling us we have to be in there. But there are things that we feel strongly about, we don't feel the need to surf on any waves or use whatever movement. We think we could come along in three months and be acceptable, because of the music's power. We don't want to be part of any cycle race."
They've been stalking the shadows these past six months to cultivate a mystique-they've been sharpening their act. "That's right, we're not trying to a tack on people. There was nothing that we wanted to push out. But it's starting now!"

- PART TWO OF THIS ARTICLE -
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