anthonygo.com

I Love The 80s

My wife bought me tickets to see the "Regeneration Tour" at Wolf Trap, which is a collection of 80s bands that are continuing to milk their hits as long as they can for as much money as they can. She bought them under the auspice of "Hey cool, Belinda Carlisle! Anthony would love Belinda Carlisle!" Sadly, she was sooo right.

First up: Naked Eyes

...who had two recognizable hits that they(he?) used to bookend his set. After opening up with "Always Something There To Remind Me", they settled in to play some other random hits and try out some new material for a new album! YAY! That gave me some time to read the playbill to get more info on who these people were. One interesting fact I pulled out about Naked Eyes is that they actually started out as 4 guys in a band and then disbanded. Then two of those guys, Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, went on to form Tears for Fears (!) while the guy last night, Pete Byrne, started Naked Eyes with the last guy, Rob Fisher, who is now deceased. Tears for Fears v. Naked Eyes... Can you say Andrew Ridgely? Back to the show - so two girls in the front are starting to do this weird dance with their arms, very tempted to get up and start dancing. Of course, Mr. Byrne sees this and motions them to stand up, which one of the girls took as "come up on stage". So she bolted up on stage and started doing this weird ballroom solo dancing - the kind of dance that ballroom dancers do on "So You Think You Can Dance". People were laughing but also no one was complaining because she was leggy and was wearing a pretty skimpy skirt, with slits all the way above her thighs. Pretty impressive skirt though because for as much moving as she did, there were no "malfunctions". She even bent over, spun around, tripped on her own high heels, and then turned it into a bow. All in all, pretty impressive. When asked her name, she said it was Lily Batini. Sounds like a stage dancer name to me.  (The YouTube below is not her... but similar odd switch step.)

More songs I didn't know until the final song, which was "Promises, Promises". Good tune, finished it out. Mr. Byrne goes over to shake Lily's hand and thank her for rocking out. She takes his hand and kisses it. Lily is clearly sauced.

Second up: Flock of Seagulls

We walked away from our seats to walk around the Wolf Trap grounds, but from what I heard, I didn't miss anything. Of course, I thought it was ABC since I didn't know any of the songs... until. I Ran. Still sounded great, just like I remember it, but without the OJ Simpson lyrics.

(continued...)

Third up: ABC

Now after FoS, I was not so excited for ABC.  But everyone around me,
many-a bad dancing 80s fools, clearly bought their tickets only for
ABC, because people were immediately out of their seats for songs that
I had never even heard before.  But the band was great and the sound
and songs were actually pretty good too.  Susan said she had heard of Poison Arrow" before and they also played "Be Near Me",
which is the one song I knew. (side note: I came home right after and
looked in my iTunes library, and I actually had 4 songs by ABC, thanks
to an 80s collection I had loaded into iTunes. Who knew?) The lead guy
was also dressed in a pretty dapper suit, which I thought was a nice
touch. I'll also add at this point that there were many things in the
concert to this point that reminded me of Hugh Grant in Music & Lyrics. Take that for what you want.

Fourth up: Belinda Carlisle

SWEET!
Belinda came out, crowd cheers - but oddly again, not as much as they
did for ABC. Belinda Carlisle looked great from the neck up, but she
was wearing this weird Sprockets like outfit. Her pants were not
flattering, kinda like leggings, but rather baggy. And she was wearing
the microphone battery pack in the front, like it was a Blackberry. So
I'm not sure what look she was going for, but it wasn't working at all.
Still she sounded very much like Belinda Carlisle of old. She treated
the crowd to her own hits along with the requisite Go-Go's songs
(weehoo!). Here's the bullet list of songs that I recognized:

• I Get Weak
• Vacation - written in 1977!
• Circle in the Sand - during the chorus, people around me were drawing air circles with their fingers... wow.
• Mad About You
• We Got The Beat
• Heaven Is A Place On Earth

I'll
say, I did enjoy this part of the show. She sounded really good, hit
all the high notes. I'm not sure the band enjoyed it though - as Susan
pointed out, a bunch of rocker-types backing up a bouncy, pop-py 80s
chick - who just turned 50 on August 17! Happy Birthday Belinda! But
yeah, those guys could not have cared less.

Final Band: Human League

Alas,
we had a kid that we had to come home to and he's been waking up at 5
in the morning lately. At this point, it was already 9:30 at the end of
Belinda Carlisle's set so we headed out. Unfortunate since Human League
has many a good hits, but I don't know how danceable they are so I can
just listen to them on my iPod. "Fascination", "Don't You Want Me Baby" and I think I would've loved to hear "Human". Oh well, I'll catch them again when they revive the tour 10 years from now.