Hurrah! - Way Ahead

live at the emassy club, London. 19th april 1985
It really was like this.
You just couldn't escape the pure irony of it that night what with all of us THERE in that ridiculous nightclub for Hurrah!...for the gifted penniless poets who chose to drive down from Newcastle to perform for love not money just so that everyone who knew what was what could get in free and the following night some of the same faces together again in more familiar surrounds to catch a Jasmine Minks set of blazing creativity and there too stressing solidarity with us Hurrah! so coolly seizing an opportunity to deliver an impromptu high-octane flare of a set that affected us all deeply.

Hurrah! then...way ahead! this you can feel is pure...extraordinary pop...the way it should be. Four individuals intent on extreme personal expression who just had to play together like this. What you hear HERE is a direct result of the collective attitude/stance...wrought from very personal experience. Pure emotion...Pure expression...Soul...giving the impression of a desperate need to communicate and touching upon the sense of struggle and all the frustration and everything that tends to be part of trying to get through and did they connect or what?

Hurrah! then left us craving to just get up and do and be something extreme and consequential...and they never seemed too bothered about making friends. Just gifted troubled proud stubborn men being themselves...with guitars held high and tight and a drummers regal poise...they looked the part...because they had to...itÕs all part of having/being IT!...do you know what I mean? The IT! that only the few besides DexyÕs/Subway Sect have ever had/been...THAT which can never be aquired but can be so easily lost...I wonder if Hurrah! ever realised?

You don't know what this all means to me. So I do not want to risk being misunderstood. The point is that in its way this record is intended as a protest...do you see? You ought to. Maybe this PROTEST! wonÕt change much per se...I expect cowards will continue to succumb and play along with corrupt customs and practices when the mighty Pop-Combine offers the chance to improve their standard of living...I expect that many we trust will compromise to please the many momentarily and sterilised stupidity will still sell...and yet! The pure sense and sensibility of all this does suggest that there are still ways...ways of getting to be FURTHER AHEAD!

Kevin Pearce
August 1987