Music Park: Retro Futura Tour (Part 2 of 2) w/ Belinda Carlisle, ABC @ Bergen Performing Arts Center — 7/14/18

Posted on 07/18/2018 by Mickey McCarter in Live Review and tagged ABC, Belinda Carlisle, Bergen Performing Arts Center, England, Los Angeles, Martin Fry, music festival, new romantic, new wave, punk, Retro Futura Tour, Sheffield, sophistipop, The Go-Go's.

Martin Fry fronts ABC during the Retro Futura Tour at the Bergen Performing Arts Center on July 14, 2018. (Photo by Mickey McCarter)

Make no mistake — every act on the mini-music festival known as the Retro Futura Tour is well worth your time and money. Limahl, Tony Lewis, and Modern English are top-notch acts! But you certainly get everything you could want and more during Retro Futura with headliners Belinda Carlisle and ABC starring Martin Fry, and both absolutely stunned in their turns on the tour at the Bergen Performing Arts Center in New Jersey on Saturday.

Don’t Miss: Retro Futura Feat. Belinda Carlisle and ABC @ Bergen Performing Arts Center, 7/14/18

Posted on 07/03/2018 by Mickey McCarter in Live Review and tagged ABC, Annabella Lwin, Belinda Carlisle, Bow Wow Wow, Kajagoogoo, Limahl, Martin Fry, Modern English, new romantic, new wave, post-punk, sophistipop, The Outfield, Tony Lewis.

Belinda Carlisle (Photo courtesy Paradise Artists)

If like me, you miss the days of sitting in front of MTV and soaking up all of the good music that came your way, then Retro Futura has a deal for you.

Retro Futura, the long-running traveling ‘80s music festival, comes around for another summer with the beautiful Belinda Carlisle, ABC (featuring the ever-dashing Martin Fry), post-punk masters Modern English, Tony Lewis of The Outfield, Limahl (of chart-toppers Kajagoogoo), and Annabella Lwin of Bow Wow Wow. Check out tickets for their performance at the Bergen Performing Arts Center in Bergen, New Jersey, on July 14!

Music Park: Parklife DC Top 10 Concerts of 2016 by Mickey

Posted on 12/23/2016 by Mickey McCarter in Live Review and tagged 9:30 Club, Belinda Carlisle, Birchmere Music Center, CHVRCHES, Culture Club, David Bowie, DC9, Dragonette, Duran Duran, Echo and the Bunnymen, Echostage, Gary Numan, glam, Gwenno, High Waisted, Howard Jones, Midge Ure, neo-psychedelia, new wave, OMD, Operators, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Pet Shop Boys, post-punk, Rams Head Live, Savages, Squeeze, Strathmore Music Center, surf rock, Survive, synthpop, The Go-Go's, The Sounds, top 10, Verizon Center, Warner Theatre, Woody Woodmansey's Holy Holy.

Lauren Mayberry of Chvrches sings at Echostage on Oct. 17, 2016. (Photo by Mickey McCarter)

I’ll confess that I’m a man whose taste in music is readily apparent. If you have new wave tunes to play, particularly from 1976-86, I’m going to show up and listen to them. That said, a number of incredible legacy new wave bands happened to travel through the DC metro area over the past year, and I took the opportunity to review them for our humble blog.

That said, a number of younger bands definitely broke through and seized my attention, most notably Canada’s Operators, who were the most exciting new band I’ve seen in some time. As with Operators, many of the best performances I witnessed in 2016 came from bands whose leaders are among the Masters of Synthpop, and so I have dedicated a postscript of really great synthpop shows that may have “missed” the top 10 but otherwise deserve a lot of applause.

Check out my top 10 list of concerts I saw for Parklife DC. (Click on the concert slugline to revisit the full review.)