Howard Jones - Live At The Marquee

On September 20, 1983, a few months after he released his debut album, just as his first single “New Song” was about to break into the UK Top 40 and a couple of days before he would make his Top Of The Pops debut (both of which he mentions during the show), Howard Jones played his first show at London’s Marquee Club.  About twenty-five years later a previously unreleased recording of that performance was found in some tapes that were being transferred for possible bonus tracks on the 2018 reissue of Human’s Lib.  Now, thanks to Cherry Red Records, that full show has been released on CD and double LP, and sound great.  Among the thirteen tracks in the set are eight of the ten that are on Human’s Lib, with the bulk of the remaining songs ending up as b-sides or future album cuts.  Jones performance is animated and full of energy, and the crowd is very enthusiastic, as evidenced by the singalong on “New Song.”  While at this point the album had been out for about six months, it’s definitely not a paint by numbers performance, with Jones expanding and extended many of the songs.  Several of the tracks like “Hunt The Self,” “Pearl In The Shell,” and “Equality” also find him kicking up the tempo a little, and the synths sometimes have a harder edge than the softer sounds on the album.  A couple of other notable moments are the fun, upbeat honky tonk piano that closes “New Song” and the extended “Ruth, David and Dennis” story that he tells at the beginning of “Human’s Lib.”  Live At The Marquee is an extremely fun listen and a great listen back to Jones’ early days.  

(Cherry Red Records)