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Fade To Grey

I was unaware, on seeing the exotic figure of Steve Strange in Bowie's video for 'Ashes to Ashes', and then, more prominently, in the one for Visage's 'Fade To Grey', that he was a South Wales Valleys boy like me, from Newbridge, about twelve miles' drive away from my grim home town. I was very much taken with both the song and its video at the time, though the latter looks more than a little ridiculous now.

The song, however, still sounds great - which perhaps owes more to the talents of Billy Currie and Midge Ure than Strange himself, who wasn't that much of a singer. He was, however, the focal point of the band, and of a broader moment in pop culture, in his brief tenure as arbiter of all that was fashionable in London.

On the B-Side, 'The Steps' is a moody instrumental incorporating heartbeat-like drums and synths suggesting organ chords and brass fanfares. I had always supposed 'Fade To Grey' was the debut Visage single, but no - wikipedia tells me 'Tar' had preceded it the year before, a song about "the pleasure and pain of nicotine".

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