With a brand new tour and the release of The Alarm's new number one album SIGMA
There is no stopping this classic punk band from
across the pond
Legendary frontman of The Alarm Mike Peters, took time out of his busy touring schedule to talk with Rockbandreviews.com in advance of his just-announced stop here on September 7th at Story in Miami. With a new record jusy hitting number one on the charts overseas and a tour that also includes Modern English and Jay Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel, this is turning out to be a great year.
To hear the Mike Peters interview in it's entirety, click on the video player below. Here is a brief history of the band known as The Alarm...
After 21 years in the rock and roll business, the story of The Alarm is a continuing and ever unfolding drama that still commands worldwide attention since being formed in Rhyl, North Wales by lead singer and guitarist Mike Peters.
Although never signed directly to a major label, The Alarm can lay claim to a series of 16 Top 50 singles, seven successful albums and over 5 million sales worldwide where The Alarm’s pioneering use of acoustic guitars brought the band into direct contact with the likes of Bob Dylan, Neil Young and U2, who have all appeared and sung on stage with The Alarm.
In fact the band had its first chart success in the USA with ‘The Stand’, flying back from America to appear on their very first Top Of The Pops, when they scored their first British chart hit with the rousing ’68 Guns, which made the Top 20 in September 1983. ‘Where Were You Hiding When the Storm Broke’ was another chart success before the release of their debut LP, Declaration’, which went Top Five in its first week of release.
The Alarm’s second album, ‘Strength’ (the title track becoming The Alarm’s first U.S. Top 40 hit) was released in 1985 and spawned Mike Peters’ autobiographical ‘Spirit of ’76’. At this time, The Alarm also made history by playing the very first global satellite concert, their own now legendary Spirit of 86′ Concert which was performed to an audience of 26,000 fans at UCLA and screened live around the world by MTV.
Third album, ‘Eye Of The Hurricane’ (1987) sported the hook-laden international hit, ‘Rain In The Summertime’. A series of world tours (including a critically acclaimed two-month US outing with Bob Dylan, during which time The Alarm dueted with Dylan on the encores), solidified The Alarm’s reputation for all-out live shows and culminated in the band’s first ever collection of live songs, the ‘Electric Folklore Live’ EP.
‘Change’, The Alarm’s fourth album, proved to be a hit on both sides of the Atlantic in 1989, with ‘A New South Wales’ reaching the Top 40 in the UK and the bluesy ‘Sold Me Down the River’ becoming a U.S. Number 1 Rock Hit. The touring continued and at a sellout concert in New York City, The Alarm were joined on stage by Neil Young to perform ‘Rockin’ In the Freeworld’.
Following the release of their fifth album ‘Raw’, the original line-up of the band played it’s last show at Brixton Academy in June 1991 and since then the band’s legacy has been continued by Mike Peters alone, utilising a vast array of alternatives to the corporate music industry structure.
The nineties has spearheaded the emergence of Mike Peters solo’ career with his legendary acoustic and electric performances across Europe and the USA .
In 1992 Mike Peters was a solo artist for the first time, with The Alarm becoming one of the first bands to have a dedicated internet site . In that same year, Mike started The Gathering, an ‘Alarm’ event held in North Wales which now attracts music fans from all over the world (currently in it’s 11th year and already completely sold out).
The release of Mike’s second album, ‘Feel Free’ in 1996 was born out of Mike’s personal brush with and eventual recovery from cancer (Lymphoma). The constant global touring, which has followed for Mike and his band, has contributed to the continuing success of the MPO (Mike’s fan base office based in North Wales), which now totals a membership of over 20,000 fans.
m1999 saw the successful release of Mike’s critically acclaimed ‘Rise’ album, which spawned a relationship with Cult guitarist, Billy Duffy, who, after a chance meeting at the Phoenix Festival, UK, agreed to play guitar on two tracks from the Rise album. The collaboration proved to be so successful that the two agreed to make their partnership more permanent and so ‘Coloursound’ was born, also featuring The Mission’s Craig Adams on bass and Stiff Little Fingers’ drummer, Steve Grantley on drum
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Later, in response to a series of ‘signed’ record contracts that were reneged on by some very high profile music business figures, Peters decided to form his own record label ‘The Twenty First Century Recording Company’ and went on to successfully negotiate and obtain the rights to The Alarm’s back catalogue.
And the rest, as they say, is history.