IN: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) are an English electronic music band formed in Wirral, Merseyside in 1978. Spawned by earlier group The Id, the outfit is composed of co-founders Andy McCluskey (vocals, bass guitar) and Paul Humphreys (keyboards, vocals), along with Martin Cooper (various instruments) and Stuart Kershaw (drums); McCluskey is the only constant member. OMD released their debut single, "Electricity", in 1979, and gained popularity throughout Europe with the 1980 anti-war song "Enola Gay".

Critic Hugo Lindgren wrote that OMD have cultivated a "legacy as musical innovators". In February 2007 a Scotsman journalist said: "If Kraftwerk were the Elvis Presley of synth-pop, then Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark were its Beatles." In 2008, American publication The A.V. Club noted that McCluskey and Humphreys were "often labeled as the 'Lennon-McCartney of synth-pop'." In a 2008 piece on OMD, The Quietus magazine editor John Doran called them "the only Liverpool band to come near to living up to the monolithic standards of productivity and creativity set in place by the Beatles", and asserted: "Orchestral Manouevres in the Dark are not one of the best synth bands ever: they are one of the best bands ever." Veteran BBC DJ Simon Mayo described OMD as "the fathers of electronic music in this country [the UK]."  OMD's experimental brand of synth-pop has garnered limited mainstream attention. The group generally eschew choruses, replacing them with synthesizer lines, and opt for unconventional lyrical subjects such as war and machinery; the BBC wrote that "OMD were always more intellectual" than "contemporaries like Duran Duran and Eurythmics". The band also rejected celebrity status and strove "to have no image". Despite the group's experimentation, they had an established knack for pop hooks; AllMusic critic Mike DeGagne wrote that OMD's music was "a step above other keyboard pop music of the time, thanks to the combination of intelligently crafted hooks and colorful rhythms". DeGagne's colleague Jon O'Brien remarked that the outfit were "ahead of their time".  McCluskey in 2010 opined that OMD had become "the forgotten band" (he had predicted in 1981, at the peak of the group's popularity, that they would soon be forgotten). The band have nonetheless earned a growing cult following. OMD have come to be regarded as one of the great Liverpool acts of the 1980s, and pioneers of the synth-pop genre. Architecture & Morality (1981), regarded as the group's seminal work, had sold more than 4 million copies by early 2007; Sugar Tax (1991), the album that marked a commercial renaissance for the band, had sold more than 3 million by the same time period. The experimental Dazzle Ships (1983), while not as commercially successful, has retrospectively been praised by critics, according to The Oxford Times and Fact. OMD's overall record sales stand in excess of 40 million.  The group regularly features on 1980s compilation albums and box sets; multiple OMD tracks feature on each of the three volumes of Ministry of Sound's Anthems: Electronic 80s series. The band's songs (and samples of their work) have featured in films such as Urgh! A Music War (1982), Weird Science (1985), Pretty in Pink (1986), Arthur 2: On the Rocks (1988) as well as in television shows including Scrum V, Ashes to Ashes, Top Gear, Chuck, Cold Case, Modern Family, The Goldbergs and Castle. Cover versions of "If You Leave" have appeared in the film Not Another Teen Movie (2001) and the TV series The O.C.; a season 6 episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation was named after the track. The 2015 film Ex Machina also incorporated their song Enola Gay. Additionally, every episode of the TV show Hunters is named after an OMD song.
QUESTION: Did they have an album that was very influential?
IN: "Hound Dog" is a twelve-bar blues song written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Recorded originally by Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton on August 13, 1952, in Los Angeles and released by Peacock Records in late February 1953, "Hound Dog" was Thornton's only hit record, selling over 500,000 copies, spending 14 weeks in the R&B charts, including seven weeks at number one. Thornton's recording of "Hound Dog" is listed as one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll", and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in February 2013. "Hound Dog" has been recorded more than 250 times. The best-known version is the July 1956 recording by Elvis Presley, which is ranked number 19 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time; it is also one of the best-selling singles of all time.

"Hound Dog" (G2WW-5935) was initially released as the B-side to the single "Don't Be Cruel" (G2WW-5936) on July 13, 1956. Soon after the single was re-released with "Hound Dog" first and in larger print than "Don't Be Cruel" on the record sleeve. Both sides of the record topped Billboard's Best Sellers in Stores and Most Played in Jukeboxes charts alongside "Don't Be Cruel", while "Hound Dog" on its own merit topped the country & western and rhythm & blues charts and peaked at number two on Billboard's main pop chart, the Top 100. Later reissues of the single by RCA in the 1960s designated the pair as double-A-sided.  While Presley was performing "Hound Dog" on television and his record was scaling the charts, Stoller, who had been on vacation in Europe, was returning on the ill-fated final voyage of the Andrea Doria. On July 26, 1956, Leiber met the just-rescued Stoller on the docks and told him, "We got a smash hit on Hound Dog," Stoller said, "Big Mama's record?" And Leiber replied: '"No. Some white guy named Elvis Presley." Stoller added: "And I heard the record and I was disappointed. It just sounded terribly nervous, too fast, too white. But you know, after it sold seven or eight million records it started to sound better." Leiber and Stoller tired of explaining that Presley had dropped most of their lyrics. For example, Leiber complained about Presley adding the line, "You ain't caught a rabbit, and you ain't no friend of mine", calling it "inane...It doesn't mean anything to me." Forty years later, Leiber told music journalist Rikky Rooksby that Presley had stamped the hit with his own identity: "(A) white singer from Memphis who's a hell of a singer--he does have some black attitudes--takes the song over ... But here's the thing: we didn't make it. His version is like a combination of country and skiffle. It's not black. He sounds like Hank Snow. In most cases where we are attributed with rock and roll, it's misleading, because what we did is usually the original record--which is R&B--and some other producer (and a lot of them are great) covered our original record."  By August 18, 1956, Peacock Records re-released Big Mama Thornton's original recording of "Hound Dog", backing it with "Rock-a-Bye Baby" (Peacock 5-1612), but it failed to chart.
QUESTION:
How did the public receive the song ?