Red Guitars invite you to our special gig at O’Riley’s, in Hull, on the 24th of June 2023 celebrating 40 years to the day since the release of their debut single and number one indie chart hit ‘Good Technology’.
Ticket link: skiddle.com/e/36300908.
We have good news! The Good Technology 12″ remix is going to be distributed by Cargo and will be released on June 24th 2023. We are awaiting news of when we can take orders for pre-sales. Will keep you posted!
To mark the anniversary we are releasing an extended remix of ‘Good Technology’, which will be available in a limited edition 12″ red vinyl. A remix of ‘Fact’, the second single, is included.
Expect a party! As well as a full set of old favourites, we will unveil some new songs from our forthcoming album set for release in 2024. Terra Fin, who supported us on last year’s reunion tour, will again open the show. Tickets are available from Skiddle, the Red Guitars website and Disc Discovery, Spring Bank, Hull, from March 17th.
The Good Technology release party will be followed by a newly commissioned video and UK tour later in 2023.
Anniversary gig Saturday 24th June at O’Rileys, 83 Beverley Rd, Hull HU3 1XR, doors 7 pm, tickets £17.50 plus bf from March 17th from skiddle.com/e/36300908.
Good Technology 2023 plus Fact (remix) and Good Technology (extended mix) will be available on 12” red vinyl from Red Guitars website and good record stores from June 24th 2023. Released on the band’s own Self Drive Records Catalogue number SCAR 16T, distributed by Cargo. Orders can be taken soon on the Red Guitars shop.
“1983: it was a different world. The world wide web hadn’t been invented yet, Facebook and iPhones were another 20 years away and there were a mere 100 McDonald’s in the UK.
Thatcher had just won her landslide victory and the first cruise missiles were arriving at Greenham Common. Unemployment was over 3 million. A hundred years of industrial might was to be scrapped in favour of the deregulated banking and service industries which would make us all wealthy. The burgeoning new technology promised a brighter future for us all. Life would be easier. Culture Club were at number one.
Some very popular songs fade over time as tastes change but a great song should be able to speak to every new generation that discovers it. At its core there is a truth. Alternative facts don’t exist despite what the New Right would have you believe.
Good Technology is a very simple three chord song based on a hypnotic kick drum and bass that remain constant and unchanging throughout the entire song. In essence it is a call and response song. For each vocal line telling us of the wonderful new things we’ve got, there is a response from the guitars starting with simple harmonics and building slowly and uneasily to a blistering breathless solo before the pay off. Politically it is pin sharp but there is no tub thumping here. A dystopian prophesy of things to come. It’s all there. It uncannily predicts the power of the internet and social media, environmental catastrophe, reality TV, the fast food industry and an ever more grotesque arms industry.
40 years on and the promise, like the country, is broken. Public services have been hollowed out to the barest shells. Levels of poverty are unprecedented since Victorian times.
The new gig economy has left people who are working minimum wage jobs struggling to survive. Today there are more food banks in the UK than McDonald’s.
It seems the right time to rerelease this song to a new audience… JR 2023”
Good Technology was first released on the 24th of June 1983 as a 7″ single with Heartbeat Go! (Love Dub) on the B‐side. It was the inaugural release on Self Drive Records and had the catalogue number SD006. The band played Dingwalls in Hull that evening to launch the single on an unsuspecting world.
The track was re-released in 7″ and 12″ formats in April 1984. The 7″ (SD009) backed with Paris France, the 12″ (SD008) having an extended mix of Paris France and Fact on the B‐side.
