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Cherry Red, longtime home for Howard Jones’ catalogue, will release an unheard set from the beginning of his career this month. Live At The Marquee, available January 30, finds the inimitable singer/songwriter/keyboardist wowing a crowd at the late London venue just before his commercial breakthrough in 1983. The wholly unreleased show, available on CD and yellow vinyl, was unearthed from master tapes when the label began compiling bonus material for reissues of his former Warner catalogue in 2018, and remixed by Jones himself for this release. (It appears from the metadata that three of these Marquee tracks were originally released as B-sides to early singles.) The packaging includes rare and unreleased photos of Jones from the period.

When the then-28-year-old Jones took the stage of the Marquee Club on September 20 of that year, he was a near-unknown: a resident of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, working in a factory by day and offering an unusual club act at night, accompanied by Jed Hoile, a mime who improvised dance moves onstage while Jones performed. But he’d recently released just one single on the WEA label: an irresistible number called “New Song” that he wrote as a self-described manifesto to making music without fear. The track was hanging around the lower rungs of the U.K. chart at the gig, but Jones was only two days from lip-syncing the song on the BBC’s Top of the Pops, which earned him greater exposure. Exactly a month from that TOTP performance, “New Song” would peak at No. 3 in England, and it wasn’t long before work began on Jones’ debut LP Human’s Lib, released in the spring of 1984. (Nine of the songs from the set would feature on the album, including future singles “What is Love?” and “Pearl in the Shell.”)

Jones was a constant chart presence through the ’80s on both sides of the Atlantic, and remains an exciting performer with a healthy touring schedule and an exciting body of work offering both synthesizer-led and introspective acoustic piano performance. He’ll open for Rod Stewart on several American dates of his farewell tour before working on a long-promised new album, Global Citizen, later this year. Live At The Marquee will be available January 30 and can be ordered below. (As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases.)

Live At The Marquee (Cherry Red PCDBRED937 (U.K.), 2026)

CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
2LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada

1. Tao Te Ching
2. Bounce Right Back
3. What Can I Say?
4. Natural
5. Hunt the Self
6. Pearl in the Shell
7. Change the Man
8. Equality
9. What is Love?
10. Dreams of a Better Place
11. New Song
12. Conditioning
13. Human’s Lib

All tracks recorded live at The Marquee Club, London, England – 9/20/1983. Original mixes of Tracks 2-3 released on 7″ with select copies of “What is Love?” U.K. 12″ – WEA HOW 2T, 1983. Original mix of Track 5 released on “What is Love?” U.K. 12″ as noted above. All other tracks previously unreleased