Sal Solo, Mik Sweeney, Gary Steadman, B. P. Hurding
UK group that were part of the 'New Romantic' scene. Originally a punk band called
X-Ray Spex but in 1979 renamed themselves Classix Nouveaux after singer
Poly Styrene was replaced by
Sal Solo and radically changed their musical style in the process. CN became fairly succesful in many countries, playing to crowds of up to 25,000 people. Their final appearances came in 1985 after which they split up, with Sal Solo going on to start a solo career.
Music has its moments - although it is neither french nor 'french' in its delivery; 'Night People' undoubtedly remains a sympathetic debut but don't be fooled by all of its 'electronic' credits - there's far more to rock than dance like a robot (except for the excellent reggae-synthie '623' with multilingual title references in predominantly instrumental track). Not that they were one-hit wonders - CN did manage to produce some memorable songs that won't be remembered just as 'hits' - 'Guilty' (which is far better in this album version than altered single cut), menacing midnight-ish 'Or a Movie' and 'Soldier'... the rest generally kills the potential it actually has - mostly due to Sal Solo's often theatric high-vocals demonstration that borders very close to self-parody instead capturing the essence one 'Phantom of the opera' has...
'La Verite' dips further into programming-cum-rock affairs where songs like '1999' give very little to often pathetic style the band provides. Bizarrely, both records kick off with 'Forward', of course - not identically; while the original opener for 'Night People' crashed promising techno intros for horrific almost-heavy metal guitar experiments, 'La Verite' variant fools you with its subtlety - of course 'Is It a Dream' (ironically their biggest hit?!) starts a rather clumsy journey of 'Three Tenors into one' getting nowhere with most of it - the title track is a disaster; besides '1999', 'Never Again' (a deserved hit THIS one) seems to provide suitable space for what would've happened if CN only functioned as a band instead being a driving vehicle for their bizzare frontman...
'Secrets'... dunno, really.