OMD and Hannah Peel

The first single I bought for myself was Tubeway Army's 'Are 'Friends' Electric?', which would have been around May 1979. I followed that with a brief flirtation with Ska, before settling into what would turn out to be a lifelong love of electronic music in 1980.

At one point I owned less than a dozen albums from this genre - bands like: Depeche Mode; Blancmange; The Human League; Soft Cell; Ultravox; Gary Numan; Duran Duran; Kraftwerk, and Orchestral Manouevres in the Dark - but I believed I had a comprehensive collection. And then I started listening to David 'Kid' Jensen in the evenings, and realised just how much I was missing (hello Japan and Simpole Minds!).

In an unexpected turn of events, I ended up interviewing Gary Numan for the 'Art Of Longevity' podcast a couple of years ago, and I told Keith, who runs the podcast, that that was the only one I'd do. But then he convinced me to interview Neil Arthur from Blancmange a few months ago, and then OMD, which happened today.

I wouldn't say that I'm becoming laid back about interviewing my childhood heroes, but I was fairly calm about today's chat, and as it turned out, Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys were both absolutely charming, and made a sterling effort to run with all my questions.

And in the evening, the Minx and I drove over to Leeds to see Hannah Peel playing. By sheer coincidence, the venue was the same place that I went to for a pre-lunch drink with the girls on Sunday - the Belgrave Music Hall - and the Minx and I had a bite to eat in the bar before heading up to the actual concert room.

Happily, the support act, Francesca Ter-Berg, turned out to be fascinating; she combines traditional Yiddish music with some engrossing electronic manipulation of her cello's sounds.

And then it was time for Hannah Peel, who - despite one horrendous but mercifully brief technical issue - gave a great performance of her album 'Fir Wave', which was originally released in 2021. She is someone who clearly takes a lot of joy in her performances, bopping along with her own music, which sounded terrific.

For her encore, she played three tracks accompanying herself on her music box, and then she and Francesca duetted on 'Unheard Delia', which I always find moving.