The Alarm to end the working week – recorded February 28, 1986 by the CBC in Toronto for their Thursday Night Live series.
With the sad news of the passing of Mike Peters on April 25th after a long bout of Cancer, it only seemed fitting to offer this concert as a reminder of who we lost and an introduction in case you missed them the first time around.
The Alarm formed in Rhyl, Wales in 1981. Initially formed as a punk band, the Toilets in 1977, under lead vocalist Mike Peters, the band soon embraced arena rock and included marked influences from Welsh language and culture. By opening for acts such as U2 and Bob Dylan, they became a popular new wave pop band of the 1980s.
The Alarm’s highest-charting single in Britain is 1983’s “Sixty Eight Guns”, which reached number 17 on the UK Singles Chart. Their 1984 album Declaration, which contained “Sixty Eight Guns”, peaked at number six on the UK Albums Chart.
The band toured extensively through the United States and Europe through the 1980s into 1991. They gained much popularity in 1983 when they were the opening act for U2, a band to whom they often were compared musically. On 13 March 1988, the Alarm performed at The Fillmore in San Francisco with The 77s and House of Freaks.
1989’s Change was an homage to the group’s native Wales, and was accompanied by an alternate Welsh-language version Newid. Produced by Tony Visconti, Change spawned the group’s biggest Modern Rock hit in America, “Sold Me Down the River”, which also put them in the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 Top 50 for the first and only time. “Devolution Working Man Blues” and “Love Don’t Come Easy” also earned radio airplay, and the track “A New South Wales” had an appearance by the Welsh Symphony Orchestra and the Morriston Orpheus Male Voice Choir. Although it was popular in Wales, it did not sell as well as the group’s earlier works, and internal band dissension, exacerbated by deaths in both Peters’ and Twist’s families, made 1991’s Raw the original Alarm’s final effort.
After the release of Raw in 1991, despite their success and relative longevity, Peters announced on stage at the Brixton Academy that he was leaving the band.
“We’ve shared some great moments in time over the last ten years and tonight I would like to thank all the people who have supported me from the beginning to the end. Tonight this is my last moment with the Alarm, I’m going out in a Blaze of Glory – my hands are held up high”. This came as much of a shock to his colleagues as to the audience. Following this show Peters signed his legal right to one quarter of the Alarm name and logo over to the other three. Peters and Sharp both embarked on solo careers.
The Alarm appeared together for a one-off show on the VH1 television show Bands Reunited in 2005 and performed live in London with a subsequent expanded DVD/CD release of the episode.
In 2005, Peters discovered that he was suffering from chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. At this time, he started a cancer foundation called Love Hope Strength to help with the fight against cancer. In October 2007, Peters, along with 38 other musicians, cancer survivors and supporters, made a 14-day trek to the base camp at Mount Everest to perform the highest concert on land to raise awareness and money to fight cancer. Other musicians included Cy Curnin and Jamie West-Oram of The Fixx, Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze, Slim Jim Phantom of The Stray Cats and Nick Harper. Peters is the co-founder of The Love Hope and Strength Foundation with fellow leukemia survivor James Chippendale, CEO of Ascend Insurance Brokerage in Austin, Texas.
So now you know if you didn’t before – and if you know, you skipped all the above anyway, so crank it up and celebrate the end of another insane week and the passing of yet another legend.
