OMFG!!!! Return To Eden.

Alwys preferred the pre-Midge Ure period with John Foxx. Truly innovative. Without the first Ultravox album there would have been no Tubeway Army - and probably no early 80's post-punk synth revolution. Loved all three of the first LP's but hated the later stuff. Still - most the world disagreed!!

Have to admit that I've never had much time for the first two albums, although that didn't stop me picking up them up when remastered and re-issued last year. Like the odd track, but on the whole, can't really listen to them that much.

Now Systems of Romance is a different kettle of fish altogether. This album is superb and really did make a difference, although I'm not convinced it made as much of an impact artistically as Bowie's Berlin period. Certainly it made Numan look at a synthesiser, don't really remember anyone else at the time namechecking them, and he took Billy Currie on tour with him and included him on The Pleasure Principle album.

Still believe that the Ure-Vox lineup is the best though...

I agree that Bowie / Eno was a huge influence on the genre though if you listen to the track 'My Sex' off the first Ultravox album you have to concede that the Numanesque 'automotan' sound was born. Having said that, the first two LP's are schizophrenic in that they show a band with one foot in punk and the other edging towards the euro-synth scene. As you rightly say, by 'Systems of Romance' they had found their sound.

I remember John Foxx taking a lot of stick for his first solo LP (Metamatic - with the singles 'Burning Car' and 'Underpass') for copying Numan. Very unfair. Foxx had been pre-occupied by JG Ballards works for some time ...a rich seam of imagery borrowed by Numan and who then made it his own.

I would agree with you and obviously with Eno producing that first album, he may have pushed them in that direction in part as well. There are songs that I like on both albums (My Sex, Hiroshima Mon Amour for example), but they don't do as much for me as complete recordings as SOR onwards, although I only picked that up for the first time after Rage In Eden when someone gave it to me as a discarded birthday present when I was 14.

I missed Foxx initially as I was living in Germany from 76 to 85 so could only really go from Smash Hits, Top Of The Pops and Tommy Vance's Top 40 programme, which I'm sure was a Top 20 at that point. I remember The Sun printing chart listings (again Top 20) every week, but I didn't really have the reference points to recognise a lot of the stuff I was seeing.

Numan also got a lot of stick, for copying Bowie if I remember correctly, but the one thing he's been consistent about is name checking SOR as his biggest influence on his early music. I never really got into Metamatic either, maybe if I'd heard it at the time it would be a different story. Aside from a couple of singles (Underpass and Endlessly), my first album exposure to Foxx was The Golden Section, which I still believe is the finest thing he's done.

I've bought a couple of his latest albums, not really into the ambient Cathedral Oceans series, and a lot of his recent stuff tends to be too long and drawn out techno-esque music at the moment. Which, talking about My Sex, reminds me of when I went to see him on the Crash And Burn tour in Glasgow back in '03 I think.

I was near the front of the stage when Foxx started 'My Sex waits for me...', and a slightly inebriated young lady just behind me yelled 'Never mind my sex, just show us your c*ck!'. Very funny, Louie Gordon almost collapsed behind his keyboard but a few of the black t-shirt gang near me were very disapproving of this uncouth behaviour.