Leggings and lycra – a musical flashback to the 80’s

Let me set the record straight before we start. I’m not a spontaneous kind of person – I like a good plan.  The better and more comprehensive the plan is, the more comfortable I am with it.

So, when one evening my partner comes across an advertisement for an 80’s music concert in Durban (and we live in Johannesburg), I’d be the last person you’d expect to suggest travelling 600km’s for one night.  But I did.  You see, in my mind, 80’s music rocks.  Having grown up listening to Wham, Duran Duran, Yazoo and much more, a significant portion of my music collection is dedicated to this unforgettable era.  Unfortunately, some of the fashions were far more forgettable.

Thus, it was a Saturday a few weeks back where Davina and I piled into my car mid-Saturday morning (she had run a half-marathon at 6am that morning) and bombed it down to Durban’s King’s Park Stadium for the biggest 80’s reunion concert you can imagine.  With a line-up including Nik Kershaw, Howard Jones, Go West, The Village People, Marc Almond and Rick Astley, we knew we were going to have our fluorescent socks blown off.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the seats I’d carefully selected were the nose-bleed seats. Worse still, the acoustics were awful.  We had no idea what the artists were saying, and we could just about hear the words to sing along to Nik Kershaw’s (one of my 80’s favourites) “Wouldn’t It Be Good”.  By the time the third artist took to the stage, management had realized that the poor souls in the stands couldn’t hear a thing and they let us down on to the field. With great joy we found ourselves right next to the VIP zone and just 20m from the stage.

Without a doubt, one of the best parts of the concert was seeing the great outfits that people dressed up in.  There was big hair, leg-warmers, fluorescent lycra, Village People characters, a Star Trooper and even Cyndi Lauper and Tina Turner made an appearance.

Each artist took to the stage for approximately 30 minutes, although old favourites like Midge Ure (the lead singer of Ultravox) got a bit of extra air-time – he treated us to classics like “Vienna”, “Dancing with tears in my eyes” and even sang Visage’s “Fade to grey”, a track that he originally penned for them.  Most artists sang original 80’s songs, but a few recent covers were thrown in when Go West pelted out Kings of Leon’s “Sex on Fire” and Spandau Ballet’s Tony Hadley treated the crowd to his rendition of The Killer’s “Somebody told me”.

Marc Almond was suitably flamboyant with his pink pashmina, and when the opening strains of “Tainted Love” filled the stadium, the crowd went wild. The Village People delighted with their popular track “YMCA” (what else?!) but it was Rick Astley, the last act of the night, who surprisingly showed the most character.

“Who bought my first album?” yelled Rick to the crowd. “Thank you very much! You’ve put my daughter through school, bought me a lovely house in London and bought my mum a house too”. Swearing at regular intervals and stopping the music to have beer brought on to stage for the entire band, he had the crowd enthralled. When he left the stage without singing “Never Gonna Give You Up”, you just knew there had to be an encore.  Not disappointing, Rick came back onto stage, having swopped his striped shirt and jacket (not a tie in sight) for a Sharks rugby jersey, he pelted out his classic 1987 hit.

Happy and exhausted, we left the stadium at 10:30pm for a solid night’s sleep before the long drive back to Johannesburg the next day.  Was it worth a 10 hour, 1200km round trip? Absolutely – long live 80’s music!

P.S.  If you’re in the UK and love 80′s music, check out the 80′s Rewind Festivals happening later this year in Scotland (July) and England (August).