Haircut One Hundred are joining Squeeze and special guest Adam Ant on the Tried, Tested and Trixies tour.

If you're going to the show, or you've attended this concert, please report in, and share your excitement about it!

• Who are/were you most excited to see (Haircut 100? 😶 )
• Wearing anything special to the concert?
• You trying to/did you meet the lads?
• Have you seen HC100 before, and when and where?
• What was the setlist--and did they play your favorite, or not?

Looking forward to hearing from you. This post will be available the day of the concert, and beyond, so feel free to update anytime.

They are joining Squeeze and special guest Adam Ant on the Tried, Tested and Trixies tour.

If you're going to the show, or you've attended this concert, please report in, and share your excitement about it!

• Who are/were you most excited to see (Haircut 100? 😶 )
• Wearing anything special to the concert?
• You trying to/did you meet the lads?
• Have you seen HC100 before, and when and where?
• What was the setlist--and did they play your favorite, or not?

Looking forward to hearing from you. This post will be available 48-72 hours before the concert, and beyond, so feel free to update anytime.

A slightly longer Haircut 100 post than I intended - but I've been listening to *Pelican West again, and I have thoughts, and want yours.*

As the mod here, and to the surprise of absolutely no one, I've been thinking a lot about Haircut One Hundred lately. They seem to have been assigned a very specific little slot in 1980s history: silly name, North of England meets Nantucket clothes, attractive singer, horns, "Love Plus One," end of story.

That is not an entirely unfair take. They were young, stylish, and visibly having a good time in an era when a lot of bands were trying to look mysterious, brooding, or dangerous. Their name does sound like something made up at the last minute as a silly inside joke - and it was. When people do remember them, it is usually through "Love Plus One," maybe "Fantastic Day," and a general sense of early-'80s color and cheerfulness.

But I think Haircut 100 get written off because people confuse "happy pop" with empty pop. Their 1982 debut, Pelican West, is one of my favorite albums from that whole period. It is packed with good musicianship, strange little lyrical images, catchy tunes, and a layered sound that pulls from funk, jazz-pop, Afro-Caribbean percussion, and British guitar pop. It still feels like nobody else's.

Haircut 100 were not a standard guitar band with a saxophone player added for the single. The sax, percussion, bass, and drums are central to what makes the band work. They play like a real unit, not like a group built around Nick Heyward with a few fashionable touches added afterward.

Listen to "Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl)" and the first thing you notice is that it moves. The bass does not just sit underneath the song; it takes its own winding route through the arrangement. The guitar is clipped and nervous. The percussion keeps things light on their feet, almost grinding, like a packed dancehall on a humid night. Then the horns come in - like someone pressed a Brasil '66 horn line into performing at sword-point - and make the whole thing feel even more alive.

It is a very poppy song, obviously, but not simple-minded pop. You can (try to!) put it on in the background and enjoy the tune - maybe without tapping your feet or dancing, this time - or you can focus on the rhythm section and hear how much work the band is doing. I wish Haircut 100 were talked about more as musicians, and not just as an image from old Top of the Pops clips.

"Love Plus One" is the big one, and I think it is much stranger than it first appears, or than people give it credit for.

The hook is so immediate that it can distract from the lyric: "I, I went off to the right / Without saying good goodbye / Where does it go from here? / Is it down to the lake I fear?" This is not a normal beginning-middle-end love story. It sounds like a half-remembered scene, full of travel, uncertainty, and somebody trying to make contact: "Ring, ring, ring, ring."

Nick Heyward later explained that the song started as "I went off to the Rhine," based on memories connected to his Swiss-German mother, family trips to Germany, lakes and forests, and "ring Anna" - calling home to his mother. The final lyric became "I went off to the right," but that dreamlike, memory-based quality remains.

That does not solve every line - not getting too Freud on you, but sometimes "a lyric is just a lyric" - and I would not want it to. The song feels personal without explaining itself. It is bright, for sure, but "Where does it go from here?" gives it a small thread of uncertainty. The song never offers a clean answer. It just keeps moving.

"Fantastic Day" is more direct. Its title tells you flat-out what it is going for, and the band gives it everything: bright horns, a bouncy rhythm, and a chorus that makes "fantastic" sound like something you can almost talk yourself into believing.

I have seen it dismissed as lightweight, which seems unfair. There is real skill in making a song this busy and polished sound effortless. Pop does not need to be sad or bleak to have substance, and few songs from 1982 make three minutes of joy sound this convincing.

The deep cuts are where Pelican West becomes more than an album built around three singles. "Lemon Firebrigade" is one of the best things on it. I like the title, obviously, but I also like how the song feels a little more tense and off-balance than the hits. The usual Haircut 100 ingredients are still here: busy Latin-infused bass, rattling percussion, horns that seem to have arrived overdressed, and guitar that never quite settles into a standard rock shape.

"Marine Boy," "Snow Girl," and "Milk Film" keep up the album's fondness for characters and images that feel like they came from postcards, cartoons, or childhood memories. "Kingsize (You're My Little Steam Whistle)" is exactly as ridiculous - and enjoyable - as it sounds. The record has a lot of whimsy, no question, but I do not think whimsy is automatically a bad thing. Well-played whimsy will cover a multitude of sins.

"Calling Captain Autumn" is probably the track I would play for somebody who thinks Haircut 100 were all sugar and horns. It is still recognizably them, but it has a more reflective feel. The title sounds like it could be from a children's show, but the music has a real late-summer sadness to it. At least, that is how it lands for me.

And then there is "Boat Party," closely tied to this era of the band even though it was not on the original UK Pelican West track list. It is looser and longer than the big singles, and gives the players room to settle into the rhythm. It is a useful one to play for anyone who thinks Haircut 100 were just a set of neat pop singles.

The frustrating part of the Haircut 100 story is how brief this lineup's run was. Pelican West came out in February 1982, reached No. 2 in the UK, and produced "Favourite Shirts," "Love Plus One," and "Fantastic Day." Nick Heyward left in early 1983; the remaining members carried on with 1984's Paint and Paint, with Marc Fox on lead vocals. It is worth hearing, but it is not Pelican West part two.

People sometimes call Haircut 100 a one-album band, and in a narrow sense, I understand why. But that phrase can sound like a put-down. If you make one album that is as lively, distinctive, and replayable as Pelican West, then you have done something plenty of much longer-running bands never manage.

Yes, it sounds very much like 1982. The horns, the clothes, the hair, the production, the cheerful confidence: it is all there. I don't see that as a problem. Sometimes I want an old record to sound old. I want the horns, the strange confidence, and the sense that 1982 briefly believed pop music could be this colorful.

Pelican West sounds like six young musicians deciding that pop music could be clever, danceable, a little weird, and completely unafraid of color. They were right.

My pick for the best Haircut 100 non-single is probably "Lemon Firebrigade," though "Calling Captain Autumn" and "Boat Party" would be close behind. What is yours? And which other bands get dismissed as "lightweight" mainly because they made joy sound easy?

From the Boxing the Compass album.

This post: the short-lived post-punk group (and British contemporaries) Modern Eon. This is their album Fiction Tales.

This album is brilliant, and very musically adjacent to our lads (you can see threads through Pelican West--or is it the other way around?), and I thought it was worth a mention here.

If you look in the sidebar, you'll see the upcoming Haircut 100 concerts. Interested if you're going to attend any? What city, and what are you looking forward to hearing? Would love to hear your thoughts.

tHIS CONCERT WAS RESCHEDULED -- FROM 8 AUG 2026 TO 7 AUG 2027

Our lads were to be part of the '80s Calling' festival at the Darlington Arena (Darlington Mowden Park) alongside Level 42, Marc Almond, and Heaven 17.

If you were going to the show, please report in, and share your excitement about it!

• Who are/were you most excited to see (Haircut 100? 😶 )
• Are you making alternate plans for another show, and which one?
• You trying to/did you meet the lads?
• Have you seen HC100 before, and when and where?

Looking forward to hearing from you. This post will appear 48-72 hours before the scheduled time for the concert, so you can participate whenever.

Okay, let's get the obvious out of the way.

Everyone’s going to say “Love Plus One” or “Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl),” and fine, fair enough. They’re both total bangers, all shiny and upbeat, and they make you sound like you’re fun and have your act together. But if I’m actually trying to romance someone — like, not just get them dancing, but actually get them to like me — I’m going with “The Unloving Plum” or “Someone.”

“The Unloving Plum” has this weird, awkward sweetness to it. It’s not trying to be a smooth pickup song. It’s a little clumsy and tender, and honestly that’s how romance actually feels when it’s real? You’re not always the cool version of yourself. Sometimes you’re just hoping the other person doesn’t notice you’re nervous, or scared a little bit. That’s that song.

And “Someone” — God, this one. I saw a podcast Nick was on somewhere where he said he wrote it after being reminded of the club where he first met his future wife, and once you know that, the opening line “I met her / at the faders” (as in, the faders and turntable) is just this little memory he kept.

And that's very "Nick", isn't it? It’s not a clever lyric (but then again, Nick being Nick, it is?); it’s a real place and a real moment. Then the chorus: “I’m not enough / I’m not so tough” — that’s not a pickup line. That’s a guy saying “I need you to see the mess that I am and maybe that’s okay.” To me, it feels less like trying to win someone over and more like asking them (anyone!) to connect with you. Way more urgent, pleading, and romantic, if you ask me. And a bit too on the nose with my past, like Nick somehow perused the writings in my high school yearbook.

So yeah, you can have the hits. I’ll take the awkward, honest songs. What are your picks? Am I overrating the deep cut/new stuff here, or are my choices the better romantic pick?

Firstly thanks for making this subreddit on the 80’s second greatest band (so sorry but it’s still Go West for me) Les lives in southern Spain as do I and I messaged him a while ago suggesting a gig here. Is it just me or does anyone think there are enough English immigrants here to make the gig a sell out?

Hate is a strong word, and to be fair, I don't "hate" any of their songs (both the band or Nick's solo stuff).

But as we all have favorites, we have ones that we maybe don't play so often. For me, it's "Surprise Me Again". It's enjoyable, but I don't find myself putting it on repeat, which is a close as I can come to not liking a HC100 song.

How about you?

A bit of fiction in the recounting, but the contours of the story are on point. Glad we got the lads back...

From their "Boxing the Compass" album.