On Sunday night Jacobs Pavilion hosted a quartet of ’80s British New Wave stalwarts that took the Gen X crowd back to their halcyon days. Headliner Howard Jones plays Northeast Ohio on a regular basis; he knows that Clevelanders have an affinity for old time synth-n-roll and brought along some of his friends to make a memorable night of music along the way. Jones’ Things Can Only Get Better tour started in mid-July and will wrap up in New York on August 20th. The expected rain came early, driving up the humidity, to which Modern English frontman Robbie Grey commented as “stifling.” But a beautiful mid-August sky and eventual sunset graced the riverside venue as the night commenced.
While the audience tended to skew closer to the AARP demo, a few youngsters hip to the decade of greed, abundance, and Reaganomics peppered the crowd.
K-ROQ disc jockey Richard Blade, a British transplant, emceed the festivities, counting down the decade year-by-year and the top five New Wave hits from each calendar year.
The evening started with a short set from Modern English, perhaps best known for the megahit “Melt With You,” featured not once, but three times in the seminal ’80s romantic comedy Valley Girl, an early vehicle for Nicolas Cage (and the criminally-forgotten Deborah Foreman). I wonder if their royalties are incumbent by how many times a tune was featured in a movie?
Encoring with that seminal tune, they quickly left the stage as Blade continued to count down the hits by playing snippets from each of the tunes.
Up next was The English Beat, simply known as The Beat in the rest of the world.
Next to last was Wang Chung, who charted three huge hits in the ’80s. They were on top of their game as they played a half-dozen tunes, including another title tune from a popular ’80s film, director William Friedkin’s crime drama To Live and Die in L.A.
Frontman Jack Hues (born Jeremy Allan Ryder) sounded great and was joined by other founding member bass player Nick Feldman. In their six-song set, they offered “Dance Hall Days,” “Let’s Go!” and their signature tune “Everybody Have Fun Tonight,” as well as a fun spin on The Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go,” as “Should I Wang or Should I Chung?”
Headliner Jones came out for the longest set: eleven tunes. The majority of his hits were presented towards the end of his performance. He deftly moved from keytar to a stationary set of keys, playing “Everlasting Love,” “Life in One Day,” and “No One is to Blame” before segueing to “What Is Love?” and encoring with “Things Can Only Get Better” to wrap up a night full of nostalgia, memories, and artists whose voices and musicianship are still in fine form.
