ONE of the big hitters of the 1980s pop scene, West Belfast’s very own The Adventures, will bring their back catalogue of melodic classics to County Down next weekend as part of the Harmony Live festival.
Fans will be able to hear familiar singles Your Greatest Shade of Blue, Feel the Raindrops and of course 1988’s cracker Broken Land – the ‘most played song on Radio 1’ during that particular year.
In between rehearsals at Springfield Road’s Blackstaff Mill, lead singer Terry Sharpe told the Andersonstown News that the band aren’t going to be stepping away from the stage anytime soon.
“We did a couple of shows at the Empire in January, all the lyrics, the cords, the tunes are hard wired into my brain. It’s like getting a record out again, all you have to do is just dust it down a bit.”
Terry stressed that their Harmony Live performance, along with Irish duo Aslan and The 4 Of Us, definitely won’t be their last following speculation that circulated at the start of 2019.
“We didn’t say anything about final shows, I’ve actually discovered how this happened and it’s usually the venue or the agent who come out with the story. The next thing I was doing a radio interview with Johnny Hero and he was asking ‘is this going to be your last show?’ I said, ‘Johnny I don’t know, it was out of my hands’. Even when you deny it, it appears in the papers as well, but it’s not the case,” he said.
Terry spoke of how nowadays outdoor festival gigs are planned to within an inch of their life – unlike back in the 80’s.
“Back in the day the first thing you did when you arrived at an open air thing, was the itinerary would be on the door, first thing you’d do is take it down as it had no resemblance to reality because everything then would run half an hour, to an hour late.”
With the Spice Girls set to appear at Croke Park this weekend, Elton John taking two years to complete his ‘farewell’ tour and a Let’s Rock 80’s festival set to set out its stall this summer in Boucher Road, Terry spoke of how nostalgia is a “new aspect” of the rock ‘n’ roll industry.
“There is a big nostalgia industry, people who might have bought a record of ours when they were teenagers are now in their 50’s. People want to go out and see what they spent their money on in their youths. Nostalgia is not part of the rock ‘n’ roll business, it’s a new aspect. Now rock ‘n’ roll is old enough to be nostalgic. It’s good for us, it’s good for everybody who was around at that time.”
As the band fine tune their set list, Terry said that he along with songwriter Pat Gribben have been talking about making “another record”.
“We’ll see, if there is a demand there. We have talked about it.”
A limited number of tickets for Harmony Live are still available. Tickets for the Friday May 31 line-up which includes Aslan, The Adventures and The 4 Of Us are priced at £27.50. For more information visit www.harmonyholywood.co.uk