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| - Peel discovered The Human League in 1978, when he was sent a copy of the band's first single, "Being Boiled", by the Fast Product label (also responsible for early releases by The Mekons and Gang Of Four, among others). So impressed was the DJ with the song that he invited the Human League to do what turned out to be their only session for his show. Peel played successive tracks from their studio albums Reproduction (1979) and Travelogue (1980) and The Dignity of Labour and Holiday '80 EPs. He also played both sides of the first post-split single "Boys and Girls" on its release in early 1981 as well as the more successful follow-ups and first chart hits "The Sound of the Crowd" and "Love Action (I Believe In Love)". The more left-field tracks from no.1 album Dare were also featured.
- A synth pop group from Sheffield in the UK. The band originally formed in 1977, from the duo of Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, joined by Adi Newton, and at first operated under the name "The Future", but then shortly changing its name to Human League. At the time, they operated with a single Korg synth and a variety of other instruments, tape loops and noisemakers. The band's eclectic mix of Motown and experimental music drew some interest, but none of the three was a good singer, which limited record company appeal.
- The Human League was a neo-Imperial Corellia-based group active during the decades after the Battle of Endor. Its members were from the Human population, primarily that of the Corellian sector, of whom most were young and male. Female members were not unheard of, however. They were drawn in by a mix of political woes, societal disillusion, and the post-Empire depression that ruined Corellia's economy. Presumably when the Galactic Civil War had ended a year later, the Human League was disbanded by the New Republic.
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| abstract
| - Peel discovered The Human League in 1978, when he was sent a copy of the band's first single, "Being Boiled", by the Fast Product label (also responsible for early releases by The Mekons and Gang Of Four, among others). So impressed was the DJ with the song that he invited the Human League to do what turned out to be their only session for his show. Peel played successive tracks from their studio albums Reproduction (1979) and Travelogue (1980) and The Dignity of Labour and Holiday '80 EPs. He also played both sides of the first post-split single "Boys and Girls" on its release in early 1981 as well as the more successful follow-ups and first chart hits "The Sound of the Crowd" and "Love Action (I Believe In Love)". The more left-field tracks from no.1 album Dare were also featured. The group's debut single "Being Boiled" played by Peel in 1978 eventually went Top 10 in January 1982 on the back of the group's mainstream success with new material. Peel played 'The Dignity of Labour Pt. 1' in February 1982 (after a listener had requested he play the whole EP), commenting that "...having considerably embarrassed Phil Oakey at the National Rock and Pop Awards by going over and telling him how good I thought they (Human League) were and how good my son William thinks they are as well, I thought it was the very least that I could do", adding afterwards "They have come quite a long way since then, haven't they?" He showed no interest in successive output, geared towards chart success, but nonetheless when the band released the single "Louise" (from Hysteria,1984), introducing it on Top Of The Pops from 22 November 1984 (TOTP) Peel called it "one of their best songs, I think". The DJ played Human League's number one single "Don't You Want Me" when standing in for Jackie Brambles on day-time radio on 05 April 1993.
- A synth pop group from Sheffield in the UK. The band originally formed in 1977, from the duo of Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, joined by Adi Newton, and at first operated under the name "The Future", but then shortly changing its name to Human League. At the time, they operated with a single Korg synth and a variety of other instruments, tape loops and noisemakers. The band's eclectic mix of Motown and experimental music drew some interest, but none of the three was a good singer, which limited record company appeal. Newton departed shortly to form Clock DVA. At that point Ware and Marsh decided to hire someone to be the band's singer and frontman; their rather odd choice was Philip Oakey, who had no singing experience but, in Ware's words, "had the right look". It took a while for the new formation to click, but in 1978 they released their first single, "Being Boiled", on a local label. After their first few live performances, Ware and Marsh were concerned that, due to their heavy reliance on sequencers and tape loops at the time, their stage presence was flat and not visually interesting. They agreed to hire a friend of Oakey's, Phillip Adrian Wright, to fill an unusual role in band. Wright, who had a background in visual arts, neither sang nor played an instrument; his function was to add interest to the live show with lighting, projected visuals, and stage props. The band caught Richard Branson's interest, and Branson signed them to his label Virgin Records in 1979. Trouble began almost immediately, though: the band, in exchange for accepting a large advance, had to agree on significant changes to its sound and lineup to sound more like a conventional pop band. Ware insisted that any such material be released under a pseudonym. But after their first single in this style, released under the the name "The Men", flopped, Virgin agreed to give the band more creative control. However, after this, the band's first album, Reproduction, also flopped commercially, leading to further tensions with Virgin. Things came to a head in late 1980. On the eve of a UK tour, Ware and Marsh departed (going on to form the band Heaven 17), leaving Human League with no original members and without anyone who could play an instrument. Scrambling to meet commitments, Oakey hired Ian Burden to play synths on the tour, and Wright was able to cover some keyboard parts and operate tape loops and devices in addition to his visual-display duties. In an off-the-wall maneuver, Oakey hired two teenage girls, Susan Ann Sulley and Joanne Catherall, as vocalists and on-stage dancers, despite the fact that neither had any experience as either singers or performing artists. The tour was rocky but the band did manage to complete it. After the tour, Virgin assignd producer Martin Rushent, who had previously worked with Joy Division, to provide professional production and help bring in more musicians in. Rushent convinced Burden to join as a permananet member, and brought in Jo Callis to play keyboard and guitar parts. The immediate results, starting in 1982, were the album Dare and the singles "Don't You Want Me" and "Fascination", which made the band an international smash. However, creative tensions continued. The album Hysteria did not sell as well, and the band members felt exhausted by the writing and recording process. Virgin replaced Rushent with American hip-hop producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis; the result was the album Crash, on which most of the material was written and performed by Jam and Lewis, and the band had little creative input. By 1990, Burden, Callis and Wright had all departed, and Virgin dropped the band. Oakey, Catherall and Sulley struggled for several years to get another label interested before signing with EastWest Records in 1994. Bringing in ex-Tears for Fears synth player Ian Stanley to produce, and with parts performed by Stanley and a variety of studio musicians, the band released the album Octopus and enjoyed its first commercial success in eight years. This period of creativity lasted until 1998, when EastWest inexplicably dropped them after a management shakeup. Further misfortune occurred in 2001 when their new label, Papillon Records, went bankrupt shortly after the release of Secrets and was unable to ship copies of the album to stores, which killed sales. However, they did have the fortune of working with Neil Sutton, who was brought in as a studio musician and then was asked to join the band full time; he remains with them to this day. The band continues to tour and release new material as of 2016. The standing lineup continues to be Oakey, Catherall, Sulley and Sutton, with a variety of musicians joining at various times for recording and tours.
- The Human League was a neo-Imperial Corellia-based group active during the decades after the Battle of Endor. Its members were from the Human population, primarily that of the Corellian sector, of whom most were young and male. Female members were not unheard of, however. They were drawn in by a mix of political woes, societal disillusion, and the post-Empire depression that ruined Corellia's economy. The ideology of the Human League was mostly derived from that of the New Order, but with greater emphasis on Humanocentrism and, correspondingly, hatred of the Jedi, the New Republic, and Non-Humans. To its members, Palpatine and his minions were heroic visionaries. Nevertheless, their pro-Empire leanings had a limit, and the speciesism they clung to was closer to xenophobia and isolationism. To gain further support, Corellians' stereotype as always being independent-minded was appealed to. The result was a movement that in some ways was quite like Separatists before the Clone Wars. One of the group's passions were public marches and protests. Members were clad in brown-and-black uniforms with armbands that featured the group's emblem, a stylized skull with a dagger in its teeth. The protestors would sing pro-independence songs and shout obscenities towards non-Humans during the marches. These marches often collapsed into riots; citizens of cities such as Coronet learned to take cover when the League neared. The drunkenness of the demonstrators also did little to endear them. For the Human League, terrorism was not beyond their ethics, and outright threats were made against both the New Republic and the Jedi. Public notoriety was gained when five of its members beat two Ithorians to death, and also when it bombed a Republic government building in an attempted coup. In 18 ABY, the Human League was led by would-be Diktat Thrackan Sal-Solo, who used the organization in his bid to become ruler of the Corellian sector. Under his leadership, however, it had been completely subdued to the elusive Sacorrian Triad conspiracy, becoming little more than a puppet of this multi-species power group. It could therefore be argued that the League's speciesism was not so much ideological as cynical. Presumably when the Galactic Civil War had ended a year later, the Human League was disbanded by the New Republic.
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