Human League Tribute Band: The Human League are a synthpop band formed in the late 1970s, who achieved great popularity in the 1980s and a limited comeback in the mid-1990s. Originally a post-punk synthesiser based group from Sheffield, England, the group has seen numerous line-up changes over the years, the only consistent member being vocalist and songwriter Phil Oake The Human League emerged from the fertile music scene which emerged in Sheffield following the advent of "punk rock" in Britain in 1976. Martyn Ware and Ian Craig-Marsh, both working as computer programmers at the time, and combining a love of pop music (such as glam rock and Tamla Motown) with avante garde electronic music, acquired a Roland System 100 synthesizer and began to create music in their own rehearsal facility. Initially they formed a group called The Future with Adi Newton. Newton left to form the outfit Clock DVA, whereupon Ware and Marsh adopted the name "The Human League", and recruited Philip Oakey as a frontman. The Human League released their first single, "Being Boiled" c/w "Circus Of Death" on Bob Last's Fast Product record label in 1978, which caused something of a stir on the independant scene. Adrian Wright joined the group, projecting slides during their live performances. By 1979, they signed up a recording contractVirgin Records, keeping Bob Last as their manager. This four-piece line-up recorded two albums for Virgin, Reproduction and Travellogue. Despite some favourable press (for example, David Bowie called them the "future of music"), and regular live shows, commercial success appeared to be eluding them. (For instance, the single "Empire State Human", which peaked at number 62 in the charts). Tensions grew within the group, until finally Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware left to form Heaven 17, leaving Oakey and Wright with the group name, but a contractual obligation to perform a European tour. New line-up Wright & Oakey hastily recruited bass player Ian Burden, guitarist Jo Callis (formerly of The Rezillos) and fronted the band with two singers, Susan Ann Sulley and Joanne Catherall, schoolgirls whom they had met in a Sheffield nightclub. At the time, synthpop was starting to become fashionable due to the success of groups like OMD and Ultravox, but female vocals were rarely heard on synth records, so the addition of Sulley and Catherall gave the group a distinctive sound. Re-energized by the addition of new members, the band went on to record their breakthrough album Dare, and have many chart successes. The band achieved their greatest success in the early 1980s with their style of dance-oriented synth-pop music. Their most famous single "Don't You Want Me" reached number one in the UK charts during the Christmas of 1981 and was one of the biggest selling singles of that year. The band also had a number of other hits but their success faded towards the mid-1980s. Arguably, one problem was the length of time the band took to make a record. Dare! was followed by the six-song EP "Fascination" (featuring hit singles "Mirror Man" and "Fascination") as a stopgap, and it took three years to release a full-length follow-up album, Hysteria. The Jam & Lewis-produced Crash LP (1985) took another two years to release. It did provide an American number one single, "Human", but other singles made smaller chart impact. The group made a surprise comeback in 1994. Dropped by Virgin Records after the failure of their album Romantic? (1989), the group were now signed to EastWest and their line-up included producer Ian Stanley, who helped them to achieve a more modern sound. The album Octopus went silver, and the lead-off single "Tell Me When" was the group's first major hit since "Human". The band again took several years to make their next record. Secrets was released in 2001, and was extremely well-received by critics. Four CDs attribute songs by The Human League under different names: on The Golden Hour Of The Future there are songs credited to The Human League when they were still The Future, on the single "I Don't Depend On You" where they call themselves The Men, on the "Dance Like A Star" EP, there are also songs attributed to The Future and on "Love And Dancing", they pay homage to Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra by calling themselves League Unlimited Orchestra. Recently, the band have joined of a number of '80s revival tours, Oakey now describing this as being in a Human League tribute band. The name "Human League" derived from the game Starforce: Alpha Centauri, which was the second professional published science fiction wargame, by SPI. In the game, the Human League arose in 2415 A.D., and was a frontier-oriented society that desired more independence from Earth and the terraforming of systems not naturally habitable. Human League's catalogue * Early singles: Unofficial releases * 'Human League Cassette' (1978) * "Together In Electric Dreams" was a solo single for Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder rather than the whole League, but has been included on Human League albums as if it were by the whole band.
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