’80s revisited:
Dramarama singer makes his peace with fame coming mostly from single ’80s tune
Retro music tour brings together the likes of Wang Chung, Dramarama and A Flock of Seagulls.
Dramarama singer John Easdale remembers the sense of exhilaration he felt when his band scored a breakout hit with its 1985 song “Anything, Anything (I’ll Give You).”
“I was convinced I was Jim Morrison, Lenny Bruce and Alice Cooper all at the same time,” he says of the heady time when his band was getting more requests from fervent radio listeners than the likes of New Order and R.E.M. “I was that guy on the roof at the party screaming, ‘I am a golden god!’ ”
Having spent most of their days until that point playing in the basement of a local record store called Loony Tunez in their hometown of Wayne, N.J., the members of Dramarama were quickly swept up by the success of the first single off their “Cinema Verite” album.
They moved to Los Angeles, immediately scored a gig opening for the Psychedelic Furs at Irvine Meadows amphitheater and wholeheartedly bought into their moment in the sun.
“They would hand me a bottle of whiskey when I woke up and another bottle when that one ran out,” Easdale, 54, says. “I wish I had better memories of that time. People tell me stories.”
While a couple of the band’s other songs, such as “Last Cigarette” and “Haven’t Got a Clue,” briefly picked up some spins on radio and MTV, nothing caught fire like “Anything, Anything (I’ll Give You).” Two years after the song found its way onto the radio, Drama
rama broke up for the first time.
Its reputation as an ’80s one-hit-wonder act was sealed.
“Every quarter, I have to fill out royalty reports for all the songs I have online,” Easdale says. “It’s one song that gets 99.9 percent of the streams. My friend calls it the ‘Louie Louie’ of modern rock.”
Dramarama is currently on the road as part of the Lost 80’s Live package tour, which will be coming to the Somo Village Event Center in Rohnert Park on Friday, Sept. 2, and the Mountain Winery in Saratoga on Saturday, Sept. 3.
With a bill that also features Wang Chung, Cutting Crew, Berlin, Nu Shooz, Tommy Tutone, A Flock of Seagulls and members of Bow Wow Wow and When in Rome, the road show brings together a handful of acts who peaked in the 1980s and offers up each one in a quick succession of mini-sets highlighted by its big hit.
While Easdale has come to terms with Dramarama’s place in pop music history, in doing these retro package tours over the years, he has learned that not everyone is quite as willing to let go of their pride or fading fortunes so easily.
“You’ll see me walking around before and after the show — I’m one of the guys in the audience who’s lucky enough to get up onstage and sing,” he says. “Sometimes, other people will still have entourages and bodyguards. It’s hard for me to get to them, even as another artist on the bill.”
Dramamara is still making music — the band’s most recent album, “Everybody Dies,” came out in 2005, and it frequently does small club tours on its own — but Easdale promises that fans won’t have to hear any of its recent material on this tour.
“No one wants to hear new music from an old band,” he shrugs. “Even Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones have that problem. I just feel fortunate to be able to play a concert because of something I made 30 years ago. A lot of people who come to these shows haven’t been to a concert since the last time Wham played, and we still get a great reaction when we play that song. The recognition factor is amazing.
“If you want to be elitist and say we’re on an oldies tour, that’s fine,” he adds. “I saw people like Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Bo Diddly at oldies shows. Music is music. If people come enjoy it, I’m happy to do my best.” “The Promise” https://youtu.be/ 5HI_xFQWiYU