Music Monday: Peckham Blancmange

Synth duo Blancmange had a string of early 1980s hits, starting with Living on the Ceiling in 1982. Singer Neil Arthur hailed from Lancashire but at the peak of their success he was living in 'London SE15 in a huge Georgian house. It's not mine I share it with four other people'. (don't know where but Peckham Peculiar has previously mentioned that he used to get his hair cut at Georgiou’s barbers on Atwell Road).

In the same 1983 interview with weekly pop magazine No.1, Arthur tells of his love for Young Marble Giants, seeing the Human League at the Nashville with Bowie in the crowd and of his wish 'that the Conservatives don't get in again' (spoiler: they did).

No.1 magazine, May 21 1983

My personal favourite of their's is their fine 1984 cover of Abba's The Day Before You Came. Of course the original is a synth pop classic in its own right and Abba's best song. Blancmange's video cuts in scenes from Abba's own promotional film for their version, and their Stockholm rail journey is replaced with a London one including going over Hungerford bridge, so presumably on the London Bridge to Charing Cross line. Pop obsessives may spot Blancmange change one line in the song - can you spot it?*

* answer - in the Abba version they sing 'I must have read a while, The latest one by Marilyn French or something in that style'. Blancmange change the author to Barbara Cartland.  I was always thought it was cool that Abba namechecked a feminist writer though.

Update: confirmation on Twitter, that Neil Arthur lived in Choumert Road SE15