I Ran (So Far Away) (Video)

[BootinUp]

[ProfessorGAC]

1. I Thought They'd Be Bigger

Like The Cars & Duran Duran, they remembered rock was about guitars and drums. The guitar parts were prominent even though they used synths heavily, that interplay was there.
The 2 hits they had were cool tines. But, they flamed out much sooner than I expected. Reynolds being pressured to step aside over his drug problems didn't help.

[keep_left]

2. Reynolds is one of my favorite guitarists...

…right up there with Alex Lifeson, Andy Summers, etc. Those carefully orchestrated guitar textures were exactly what I needed to hear just as all the walls of keyboards started to dominate the music world. Reynolds showed us how guitars could go head-to-head with keyboards and stay relevant in the ‘80s (and beyond).

[ProfessorGAC]

4. That Was Our Whole Approach In Reverse

As a multikeyboardist, I considered the other 3 guys the cake; I was just the icing.
Like what you described, I added depth & texture.
Here's an example: the gong, the pads, the wind, the counterrhythm,... Yeah, I play a synth lead here, but it's a call & response with the guitar lead.
This is not our best taped version of this, but it's pretty good. (I don't have the best version rendered to MP4)

?si=3jWKgnUvmLtj9ydp

[keep_left]

5. Holy '80s, Batman! It's really cool to see...

…fellow DU musicians doing their thing. I take it this clip was from the late ‘80s-early ‘90s? Is that an Ensoniq SQ-80 I see?

[ProfessorGAC]

6. In That Video..

...I think I'm using a DX7, an Ensoniq ESQ-2, and in a rack, an Akai S-612 sampler & an Emu Proteus.
Later videos would have the Ensoniq SQ-2, with and ESQ R in tge rack, and an Alesus QS-8.1 (88 key weighted), with a Yamaha TX802, which was a DX7 in a rack.
So, here there are 4 sound generators, but I evolved to 6.
That video is from around 1990, I think.
It was from a TV show in the Chicago area dedicated to showing club acts.
But, a lot of the material was 80s.
Here's a link to all the videos I've posted so far.
https://youtube.com/@gac-rp7tf?si=ArNLROXHCPwaASLG

[keep_left]

7. I still have a couple of those ESQ...

…rackmount things. You can set them up in MIDI overflow mode, so that you have a 16-voice synth instead of two 8-voice ones. It’s quite useful for those really washy pads that use up voices fast, especially with guitar synth (big five and six note chords).

[BootinUp]

3. The guitarist Paul Reynolds was a key ingredient

And he left the band in 1984. There is a wiki page about him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Reynolds_(musician)