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Spandau Ballet: Unlikeliest Band on the Bill at SXSW

Spandau Ballet, of all people, have just revealed that they’re due to play their first stateside show since 1985 this year at SXSW on March 12th. Not only that, but they’re also planning on premiering their film Soul Boys of the Western World. We have a winner for weirdest story of 2014 so far, folks.

The show will be at Vulcan Gas Co in Austin after the film plays the Paramount Theater. The band reunited in the UK four years ago for a tour and a new album and got the idea to do a film a couple of years ago, enlisting the help of George Hencken to make the film a reality.

“We had the idea because we have a good story and the story has a real arc,” says Gary Kemp, Spandau Ballet’s chief songwriter and guitarist. “It’s about friendship, kids who come from the shadows of the second World War growing up in the ‘60s and ‘70s, a period of great rock music from David Bowie and glam rock. They go through the whole punk experience and then had the experience of the whole New Romantic scene of working class kids dressing up and doing things that were outrageous against a recession.”

The film tracks the band’s rise to success, as well as their breakup in 1990, a court battle between Kemp and his bandmates, and the band’s eventual reunion. In the last quarter of the movie, which is made up of archival footage and voice overs, Kemp says, “we’re quite hateful toward each other, but there’s redemption so the film ends on a good note.”

“We’re hoping for theatrical release and we hope to be announcing a tour with the U.S. late this year or early in 2015,” Kemp says. “We want to do everything this time.”

Read our review of Macklemore, Icona Pop and Action Bronson at the Belmont during last year’s SXSW festival

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