Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

The 80s were a decade of contrasting emotions and feelings, in one corner the excess of the decade, its reliance on greed and almost feelings of dishonest pursuit were enough to make any sane person feel ill under the weight of decadence and obtuseness, it was the going against the grind in which to be different was sneered up from upon high, to want social justice had you tarnished as not being with the so called programme and woe-betide if you fell into any category in which to be against the Government had you marked down as a misfit…times don’t seem to have changed much in that regard.

Alternatively it was also a time, like the 60s and the decade in which we find ourselves in now to which music dominated the minds, the huge input of creative endeavour overflowing with possibilities and talent, music was all that everything else distrusted and for that it was a great time to be alive; it was a wonderful time to be immersed within its soul and for Curiosity Killed The Cat it was a time of quick burst energy and punchy streetwise cool.

The 80s might be looked upon with a darker sense of proportion now that history has had its chance to be objective but when it comes to the music, it might seem like marmite, the love it or hate it brigade in full temperamental swing, and as Curiosity Killed The Cat’s Ben Volpeliere came on stage to relive the brief but sensational magic that his band showered within, the 80s were returned to the audience and the cheering and hollering of a past age was felt rumbling in the aisles and seats of the Philharmonic Hall.

The crowd were treated to a brief reminder of what Curiosity Killed The Cat such hot property at the time, after all it’s not every band that got to work with the great Andy Warhol in his lifetime. It was a memory that brought a smile and a voice to the crowd still suffering with the fallout of the Winter Blues and as the songs Misfit, Ordinary Day, Name and Number, Hang On In There Baby and Down To Earth rang out, the smile a generation who arguably had forgotten how good musically they had it at the time, returned to the faces and expectation from a good crowd pleasing start to the 80s Invasion brimmed with possibilities.

The 80s may be remembered for many things, some of note, some that should remind us to hang our collective heads in shame but musically it was a time in which music from the U.K. ruled the world, Curiosity Killed The Cat almost 30 years later was a brief, but cool reminder of that.

Ian D. Hall