Things Can Only Get Better Tour Review
by Anthony Servante
If you look closely at the small print on the sign for the Howard Jones, Wang Chung, The English Beat, and Modern English concert, you'll see the words, "Featuring Full Performances By". With an all 80s music line-up, and a start-up time of 6:30 p.m., I figured that each band would play a traditional set common to what they performed in their time for the fans that have kept up with them till this day. What a treat.
Instead, we got a typical 80s Pop Band Package concert, that is, 80s bands that tour together for the older nostalgia crowds. Each band does around 3 to 5 of their most popular songs, and the closing band does about a 30 minute set (the headliners tend to have more hits than the openers).
Richard Blade is the host for these Package shows in Los Angeles as it was his radio show on KROQ (pronounced K-Rock) that first introduced these mostly British bands to the California Southland. Blade played snippets from the top five KROQ songs from 1980 through 1989 between sets. The crowd went crazy each time the opening notes of a song started and booed when Blade cut short the snippet. You'd have thought that this was the concert.
But the real concert started with Modern English, who performed a rudimentary set that only hardcore fans would recognize. Their final song, I Melt With You" livened things up a bit, but not much, as the band was happy to let the audience sing the song over their instrumentation. Karaoke 101, I like to call it.
Personally, I always attend these Package shows, even though they are often hit-and-miss. Karaoke 101 is part of the problem. Some bands are strictly there to accommodate the crowd and encourage the crowd to sing along, but at least they sing too. That is what I paid to hear: The band sing the song. (Roger Daltrey of The Who actually stopped singing a song when the crowd joined in; he yelled, This isn't karaoke!, and the sing-along stopped. I've never heard any singer do that before or since. Daltrey was the only one I know of who did it. And good for him). We can do with less K-101.
On the other side of the coin, we have The English Beat (aka, The Beat, All the Young Cannibals, and General Public). They thought it would be a good idea to play all their five songs in Reggae style with a hint of Rap (not Hip-Hop, but old time Rap). Sorry, but I came to hear 80s New Wave. But the crowd outvoted me and danced along to the music. Right, from sing-along to dance-along. I wisely used my time to refill my Pepsi Zero and bought some Truffle Fries, which were soggy like I like them.
Then there's the New Wave bands who have new albums out. Wang Chung was promoting the reissue of Live and Die in L.A. and played songs from it. Great set. That's when 5 songs is too short a set. The band used the two huge screens on either side of the stage to showcase clips from the 80s versions of their set to run along with their live set on-stage. That was a treat. That was a real concert set. Yes, of course they closed their show with "Everybody Have Fun Tonight". This was the winner band of the package.
Howard Jones closed the show. I apololize, but I was unfamiliar with his music. I didn't even know who he was when he played keyboards for the 2001 Ringo Starr's All-Star Band line-up of Roger Hodgson of Supertramp, Ian Hunter of Mott the Hoople, Greg Lake of King Crimson and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, and Sheila E., Pete Escovedo's percussionist daughter. With that strong a line-up for this Prog Man, it's little surprise that Howard Jones was lost in the crowd. A friend of mine who also attended the All-Star concert commented that Jones seemed subdued and didn't play any of his hits. Sadly, I wouldn't have known if he did. The Jones show seemed out of place, you know, like post-Genesis Phil Collins: More syrupy pop than heavy Prog. Still, the crowd liked it. There were singalongs and dance-alongs in his 11 song set.
So, all in all, it was a Wang Chung show for me, with Richard Blade as DJ playing 10 years' worth of 80s New Wave hits, even though they were only snippets. I enjoyed myself. I really loved the crowd-watching. They were consistently entertaining throughout the evening. Folks old enough to be grandparents (I'm one), and kids in their teens. Blade called a young man over to the front of the stage and asked his age. He was 17. Blade pointed out to the crowd that this kid was singing all the words to all the songs that were playing.
Great. Another karaoke generation on the way up.
