First in a series of interviews with the audience and artists recorded during the Totally 80s tour across Australia in July. Dave Sterry is Real Life who performed Catch Me I’m Falling & Send Me An Angel during the show. He has some great stories to tell. I spoke to him backstage in Perth.
You’ll also hear from perhaps the wildest show of the tour in Sydney, as I braved the overexcited thousands of Totally 80s fans to find out how THEY enjoyed the Enmore Theatre show.
This tour is just getting started….
Dave Sterry & Maynard in the back of the tour bus very early in the morning, leaving a very cold Hobart.
The Totally 80s tour finished after 13 shows across Australia with a lineup you won’t see again in a hurry.
Getting around the country with Martika (so peaceful) Limahl (the New Romantic’s New Romantic) Paul Lekakis (Mr Boom Boom) Katrina (most fun and best drinks rider), Stacey Q (see taught me about Tibetan Buddhism) Wa Wa Nee (Paul Grey was the musical director that held the show together) Men Without Hats (Ivan has a very dry sense of humour) David Sterry of Real Life (great stories of the Australian music industry to tell), Berlin (as wild onstage as ever) plus a very experienced crew and dancers Ashlea McKee & Alison Grant was a unique experience akin to a wacky 80s family on tour.
The Hobart airport morning layover was the one where we stood out the most from the locals, looking forward to returning there as Host and MC on the Vengaboys tour in November.
Thank you to all the audiences across Australia, the best show was a packed Enmore Theatre in Sydney and the strangest show was Canberra, where security spent the night making anyone who stood up to dance, sit down at the Royal Theatre.
I even managed to introduce Limahl to a Kamahl album.
Canberra’s venue has the best sound characteristics so far on the tour. In the Royal Theatre I was able to sit in as Martika and Limahl sound checked before the meet and greet with their fans, which I’ve started hosting as I can record interviews with the fans for Planet Maynard.
I am still having trouble relaxing into being around people that have been just an image on a screen or a song on the radio that formed a soundtrack to part of my life.
One of Berlin’s fans at the fan meet up explained that when Terri Nunn sings “Take My Breath Away”, she is transported instantly back to being in early dating relationships and the emotions attached to those times, not to mention staring at Tom Cruise posters on her bedroom wall.
This is where I’ve always been happy to be unfashionable. A song that is from the Top Gun soundtrack isn’t going to cut it with Radiohead fans, but we all exist in a musical multiverse that isn’t completely of our own making, and why can’t we choose our own musical adventure without someone looking down their nose ring at us?
In Poodle News-
Katrina (from the Waves) has published an alternative guide to London co authored with Peggy Lee her discriminating toy poodle.
Her book has finally made me realise my life is a larger farce than already expected. If you haven’t got a poodle (as indeed Weird Al Yankovic has had) you can’t experience any major city seriously. Peggy Lee, Katrina’s poodle, explores London.
Thank you Enmore Theatre for one of the wildest shows it has been my pleasure to be involved with.
Even before the show, everyone was singing along with every song on the pre show tape.
My job was to come on and name the artists (although Stacey Q was unwell tonight and unable to play Sydney, fans should drop her a line and wish her a speedy recovery) and introduce and back announce them. The Sydney audience made it a pleasure.
The crowd tonight hung on every song of every performer onstage, and when I genuinely thanked them for “actually leaving the house to experience music” they were ready for a huge night.
I popped into the foyer and out the front of the Enmore Theatre with my camera crew (the Skeptic Zone podcast host Richard Saunders) to record some of the punters having a good time for this website and to show the world that shamelessness is no shame.
I especially enjoy the range of reactions Berlin get to their set. Terri Nunn wandering among the crowd singing “Take My Breath Away” is a hi-light of the show. From a performers perspective, seeing 2000 people with their backs to the stage, watching her dance with an unexpecting couple at the very back of the venue is surreal.
After the show Saturday night, Terri Nunn, David Schulz & Chris Olivas asked to have their photo taken with ME.
I was honoured to ham it up with them. I see my job as making their job as performers easier. I’m hope that happened tonight.
As I said “if the Weimar Republic had been anything like (the band we just saw) Berlin, the world would be a better place.”
Roll on to Canberra……
Maynard with Berlin Enmore Theatre, Totally 80s tour
The first night as MC in Melbourne at the very special Palais Theatre was a cavalcade of 80s sights and sounds. Although someone forgot to tell the crew there had been an MC added to the lineup, so sometimes my mic channel wasn’t up on the front of house sound desk. Paul Grey of Wa Wa Nee is a very helpful and gracious Musical Director, who helped me fill the gaps.
But the audience is up for a variety show in the vein of an 1980s Corny Collins of Hairspray. Limahl and Terri Nunn have a great sense of humour and the the tour seems to have an air of fun about it that perhaps a Morrissey tour may not.
Enmore theatre in Sydney and already our two almost biological perfect and indistinguishable dancers have been compared to Kenny Everett’s Hot Gossip dancers in one review. I’m on the right show.
See you tonight Sydney, got to do my eyeliner the way that James Freud taught me. (we used Kohl brand pencil I think)
I join the Totally 80s tour tonight in Melbourne at The Palais, so for the rest of the month it’s the touring life once again. I’ve already met Real Life, Ivan (Men Without Hats), Paul Lekakis (he’s a live wire) and the very versatile backing band.
The dancers have warned me that people jumped onstage on the Gold Coast and caused a moment of unstructured narrative in the show.
Give me a wave, but remember you can’t hear of see a thing from the stage.
Ivan Doroschuk is Men Without Hats who had hits with The Safety Dance in August 1983 & Pop Goes The World in February 1988 in Australia. The Safety Dance was about dancers pogoing in nightclubs, while Pop Goes The World was about the 80s nuclear threat. Ivan Doroschuk is touring Australia for the first time in July with the Totally 80s tour. How does he feel about his song being on The Simpsons so often?
Paul Lekakis had a number one hit in Australia for 5 weeks in 1987 with Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back to My Room). But the hit dance track was recorded much earlier in Italy. Lively Paul Lekakis is a model/dancer/actor/singer that is coming to Australia as part of the Totally 80s tour and he’s never been to Australia before. I ask Paul the important question, what are you going to wear?
