Eurogliders on a second wind
NEW wave 1980s pop band Eurogliders have found fans in unlikely places over the years, but now they are vying for some younger listeners.
The indie group behind the hit Heaven Must Be There, which garnered a strong Christian following after the tune was misinterpreted as a religious track, are back on the road with a gig at next weekend’s Motor City Music Festival.
Former husband and wife Lynch and Knight reformed as a duo in 2005 under the classic name, and have some new tracks to bring to the Geelong Racecourse with an album due to drop on the first day of the festival.
“In 2013 I was contacted about getting Eurogliders together again to do a support show for the Boomtown Rats who were coming over from the UK, and so I chatted with Bernie and said ‘let’s do it’,” Knight said.
“It was like getting back on the bike.”
Though poor ticket sales meant the tour fell through, the pair decided to keep going with the reunion and a year later hit the recording studio to work on the new album Don’t Eat the Daisies, which will be released on March 6.
The duo formed the band in Perth in the early ’80s under the name Living Single, along with keyboardist Amanda Vincent and later Crispin Akerman on guitar, Don Meharry on bass and drummer Guy Slingerland.
However it turned out a UK band had already claimed the name and the band was forced to rethink their title but left the fate of the new name to chance.
“We just wrote down and ripped up a collection of words and threw them in,” Knight said.
“We pulled out two pieces, the first was ‘gliders’ and then ‘euro’, and we thought Eurogliders.”
With Lynch’s sociopolitical songwriting and Knight’s “manic ballerina” performance style, the band toured Australia and found success in the US, with MTV picking them to perform at its New Year’s Eve Show in front of 65 million viewers.
The group disbanded in 1989, and Knight and Lynch went their separate ways with successful careers in jazz and theatre production respectively.
Knight said the latest record was their way of “reintroducing ourselves to a younger audience who weren’t around” when Eurogliders was big on the scene.
“Gone are the 1980s synthesisers, it’s a very live, organic sounding album,” she said.
“It has many of our old hits reworked in a festival mode. We chose a lot of hit songs as there was a recognition already with the Australian public.
“But obviously we’re artists and we still write songs, so Bernie had a whole pile of stuff ready to come out.
“We’re getting ready to make another album and this is a taster of what’s to come.”
For the first time in a long time, Eurogliders will visit Geelong with a gig at the second annual Motor City Music Festival which runs over the weekend of March 6-8.
Eurogliders will take to the stage on Sunday in the festival’s family day along with country musicians Doug Bruce and Christie Lamb, blues rocker Gwyn Ashton, JR Reyne — the son of Australian Crawl’s James Reyne — jazz man Pugsley Buzzard and ’90s rocker Jason Singh in one of his last solo gigs before he gets the full Taxiride line-up back together.
Knight praised the line-up, which features acts from across the decades as well as some great emerging talent with the likes of the Bellarine band Tiny Giants, Glitter Gang, the Stackshots in their last ever show, Michael Stangel from The Voice, soloist Tex Miller and Blues Bootcamp’s Wayne Jury.
“It’s a phenomenal bill, it’s incredible the amount of bands, and hats off to Geelong for getting all this together,” she said.
“It would have been a major marathon task and I’m really looking forward to getting up and rocking out.”
Friday and Saturday nights are licensed over-18 events with performances from the Black Sorrows, Chris Wilson band, Phil Para, Painters and Dockers, Lloyd Spiegel, Chubby Rae and the Elevators and Jimi Hocking’s Blues Machine with Lloyd Spiegel, Geoff Achison, Gwyn Ashton and Jesse Valach.
With performances from more than 50 bands over five stages across the three days, there will also be a handful of cover bands paying tribute to Led Zeppelin, Guns N Roses, AC/DC, Fleetwood Mac, Meatloaf, Cash Carter and INXS.
The three-day event will also see bars, food trucks, carnival rides and market stalls line the Geelong Racecourse before a fireworks display on all-ages Sunday at 8.45pm.
“Throughout our career we would have been to Geelong but it would have been a long time ago,” Knight said. “We’re really looking forward to it. Things are pumping for the Eurogliders so come along and feel the love.”