AMG Review of BBC Radio 1 Live in Concert

Dave Thompson
All Music Guide

In 1981, Ultravox, a band that couldn't get arrested when fronted by John Foxx, spent most of the year on the charts. By that May, Vienna, released the previous autumn, had spun three singles into the U.K. Top 15, while the album itself waltzed to number three, and remained on the charts for a whopping 71 weeks. It was during this period that the group was invited to perform live for broadcast on #Radio One. No surprise, then, that Ultravox chose a set list drawn exclusively from Vienna, running through seven of the album's nine songs. Not wishing to mess with success, the versions varied little from their studio counterparts, but even so, on-stage the songs had added strength and a sense of urgency, while Midge Ure had yet to discover the smug wink, wink that would soon become his trademark.