I could hardly wait to attend the stop of the Lost 80s Live Tour in Cary, North Carolina last Sunday. Against incredible odds, we would be seeing Peter Godwin, one of our favorite artists who we’ve collected for 43 years. My homeburn CD-R project of his non-LP tracks across two CDs is my most listened to project I’ve ever made. I re-compiled it four times over the years to make it as current as possible. It’s not that I had given up hope of seeing him perform. I never had any to begin with! Peter lives in Nice and hardly undertakes extensive touring, to put it mildly. His appearances worldwide seemed rare enough! Setlist.fm lists the Sanremo Festival in Italy in 1983, Numbers Night Club in Houston in 2012, and the W-Festival in Belgium in 2018. And then the veritable avalanche of dates in this years’ Lost 80s Live tour. My jaw is still scraping the ground over his appearance only hours from where I live. But that was not the whole of it.

The year after I first found out about Godwin, I heard Liverpool’s China Crisis and it was love at first note. I wasted no time in delving backward with them even as I’ve ridden their bus for 42 years and a dozen albums [including Gary Daly solo projects and various live editions] now. With nearly 50 titles by the group in the Record Cell, I made them the focus of one of my Boxed Sets Of God, complete with DVD, as detailed here. They have never played within my state before, but in 2022 I see they played the City Winery in Nashville, Tennessee. The same venue where I last saw Midge Ure, only five hours away! Maybe Midge Ure has “no regrets,” but right now I’ve got a big one. Had I only known. Ay-yi-yi.

I arrived at the venue with two friends in tow, both figure in the comments here. The RAHB from 45 years of friendship and Todd Lewis of Fluid Japan; a much newer friend who melted in the sun with us last summer during the Totally Tubular Festival in Raleigh last year. But that was at the Red Hat Amphitheater; a concrete slab in the middle of Raleigh. We were thrilled to see that this show was in a picture perfect setting; nestled lakeside in a glade of trees and with a minimum of concrete. Only the grounds directly in front of the stage were concrete. The bulk of the venue was grass for lawn chairs! I made sure to bring ours along for the show, but Todd opted to rent one instead.

While he did that I hit the merch table and bought China Crisis and Peter Godwin T-shirts! I know I own too many, but I was not going to pass these up! When trying to rent his chair, Todd found out that we were actually in the seated section in front of the stage and clued the rest of us in. I had bought our tickets so long ago that I had forgotten that we had fifth row, stage left seats! Well, it was for Peter Godwin! We weren’t going to let this show slide for cheap seats!

JOSIE COTTON

As soon as we sat down the PA was serenading us with about ten minutes of New Wave classics. I think I only ever heard “Fade To Grey” in public this single time in my life! Then the show began with the MC, Richard Blade onstage to introduce the first act. Blade was the right man for the job of MC at a show like this. He’s New Wave royalty from his days at KROQ-FM and he knows all of the talent like the back of his hand. Who better to fill the space between acts than a DJ? First up was Josie Cotton. She had a live guitarist and bass player who performed BVs with her with the drums and keys being programmed. Josie opened with her keen Pop tune, “He Could Be The One” given her New Wave Girl Group treatment from her debut album, “Convertible Music.” Then she sang a deep cut I’d not heard before from the same album, “Systematic Way.”

Next she sang a pair of songs from her sophomore album, “From The Hip,” but neither of them were the single I was familiar with, “Jimmy Loves Maryann.” We got “License To Dance” and “School Is In,” instead. With her fifth and final song, naturally we heard the famous “Johnny Are You Queer?” I marveled at how the song incorporated a word that wasn’t a slur 40+ years later but instead had been adopted fully by the LGTBQ+ community in the intervening years. Her set all done, Ms. Cotton and band took their leave of the stage while roadies made slight adjustments for the second act.

The wisdom of having Richard Blade add his long history with most of these bands to the show was a great decision, for the most part. The roadies were able to quickly transition sets equipment and remove anything no longer needed after it had been used by a band now offstage. Meanwhile, Blade would talk about the group or their music, and connect with the audience. Taking questions from the audience and doing his best to break down any perceived barriers. The only time it went off rails was when he was talking about his ill-started romance with Berlin’s Teri Nunn we had a situation where the bands were all ready to go and were waiting for Richard to wrap it up. Ouch.

BELOUIS SOME

Next came a band that I had seen on their debut US tour in 1985, opening up for the one real Frankie Goes To Hollywood US tour! Neville Keighley was better known as Belouis Some, and his Mid-80s Pop was the next stab at something big by the Berrow Brothers, who’d managed to ride Duran Duran to the top. Belouis Some also copped the Duran Duran move of having an “R-rated” video salted with nudity for the single “Imagination” which insured that I saw it played in clubs for nearly a decade past its issue date.

But the set today began with the upbeat Pop of the single “Some People,” which I’d had on 12” back in the day. This was a joyful song that made for a top set opener and an earworm of delight. It was his first single to scale the UK Top 30. Of all the songs I’d hear this evening, this was the one in my skull on “replay” the next morning. Then he followed that with the two songs of his I could name; “Round And Round” from the “Pretty In Pink” soundtrack and finally, the Bowie-esque “Imagination.” Surprisingly, the sleazy sax solos of “Imagination” were from playback, in spite of the live band handling everything else. With several sax players in the pool of talent, I was surprised that they couldn’t make it happen live. Other than that little lapse, a real change of pace from the previous act; which we’d see plenty of this evening.

Next: …Making A Deal With God[win]