Na Na Hey Hey

When it comes to musical entertainment, I’ll be the first to admit that my tastes are dubious. I mean, sure, there are a couple of bands and singers I like who are modestly respectable. No one’s going to object to me liking Kate Bush or collecting the early recordings of David Bowie. Certain artsy types might nod and approve of my fondness for Laurie Anderson, while others of a certain age might approve of my complete set of the albums of Talking Heads.

But then someone looking at my collection would probably notice that while some of the so-called good stuff has been collecting dust, I’ve been wearing grooves into my hard drive from repeated playings of the complete oeuvre of Pepsi & Shirlie. You know. Pepsi & Shirlie. Oh come on. You remember. They were Wham!’s backup singers. Wham!. That group with George Michael and the other one. Yes, their backup singers. Yes, Pepsi & Shirlie had their own album. Two, actually. The second one was a Japanese-only release that no one . . . wait, why’re you looking at me like that?

Yeah, like I said. Dubious. If I were on some kind of reality show, I’d be the contestant that would cause Tim Gunn to clutch the tip of his chin with the crook of his finger, cross his arms, purse his lips, and worriedly say, “I’m just concerned that the judges are going to question your level of taste.”

I probably couldn’t sing to you much of the most popular and well-known hits by Bruce Springsteen, say, but I can discourse at length on the differences and merits between Michael Des Barres and Holly Knight’s original “Obsession” and its subsequent cover by Animotion. I’m perfectly prepared to forsake a much-admired genre like American blues in order to defend my love for Swedish pop music, from ABBA to BWO. In a showdown between divas with major pipes, I’m the guy off in the corner professing my adoration to a little warbler with a dubious sense of pitch. (Hi, Cristina Monet!)

All the preamble is simply to prepare everyone for the fact that one of my all-time favorite musical acts is, not surprisingly, Bananarama. Yes, they’re still together and making music. Shut up.

I mean, Bananarama has that whole vaguely aimless, pretty-much tuneless thing working in their favor for me; we’re talking about a group whose major mission statement for the last thirty years has been We pledge to sing our cheerful songs more or less on pitch in an unsubtle unison. But they were so cheeky, and quavered through their tunes gamely, and never ever seemed to take themselves too seriously and seemed as surprised as their early successes as just about anyone else. How could I resist?

So I was a fan when they were an obscure little new wave girl group no one had heard of in the states who were responsible for “Shy Boy” and “Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye).” I was a fan of “Cruel Summer” when it came out the first time, and then when it hit big on its second release on this side of the Atlantic. I cheered them on during the years they were the jewels in Stock-Aitken-Waterman’s crown. When Siobhan (the Shakespeare’s Sister one) left the group, I adjusted when Sara (the blonde) and Keren (the one romantically involved with the other one from Wham!) invited in some chick named Jacqui for an album. I adjusted again when they kicked her right out again.

I rooted the girls on during the wilderness years, when they were reduced to doing the occasional television show theme song and their France-only CD. (If there’s anything lower than an album marketed only in Japan, it’s a France-only release.) Then I cheered again when they seemed to hit a groove in recent years with a couple of Euro-dance releases, from which Madonna has steadily been lifting lyrically and sonically these last couple of years. I haven’t been a casual fan, I have to confess. I’m not one of those buy-the-greatest-hits-album-and-call-it-done guys. No, I have the albums, including the Francophone one. All the twelve-inch remixes. The really obscure stuff. The remastered CDs. A book of sheet music for Wow! I bought their latest compilation CD last month because it came with a bonus DVD of thirty-six Bananarama videos, thirty-two of which I sat through in one sitting.

(I think I can be excused for swearing off the last four for a few days. The electronic clap machine noise was causing brain deterioration.)

When I read that Sara and Keren would be touring the US this month, I knew I had to go. The last US appearances they made were twenty-four years ago. These chicks are in their early fifties; they’re not going to be getting up on stage and chirping about being guilty of love in the first degree forever. And as nobody wanted to go with me—I got a lot of RSVPs that included the phrase wouldn’t be caught dead, for some reason—I ended up heading to the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square last week all by myself.

In three words: It. Was. Awesome.

I cannot say it was the most high-production show I’ve ever seen. I can’t say the backup dancers were the best, or that the choreography (which, for the girls, was more or less taken right out of their videos). I can’t say it was the best-sung show I’ve seen, or the most emotional, or the most rip-roaring. What it was, though, was sheer and unadulterated fun. In front of a live band and an audience of a couple of hundred gay men—the tour was kicking off the Hard Rock’s campaign for breast cancer awareness, but my guess is that there were maybe all of about eight breasts in the entire hall, and four of them belonged to Bananarama—the pair sang, danced, and giggled their way through a good fifteen or so songs from the Bananarama repertoire, both old and new. The giggling, I have to explain, usually came when they forgot or messed up their choreography.

(There was a lot of giggling.)

The girls sounded as good onstage as they do on their albums. (Interpret that as you will.) But most importantly, they seem to have latched onto a concept that eludes too many self-serious artists past the peaks of their career—that there’s nothing wrong with music that was intended sheerly to be fun. They grinned through the corniest of their lyrics as if to say yes, we’re in on the joke, too. They laughed and interacted with the audience and invited members up on stage to do the silly dance moves from their “Venus” video. Keren and Sara poked fun at each other in a way that only two people who’ve known each other since the age of five can. When Keren casually laid her hand on the shoulder of one of her meth-addict-looking dancers and discovered he was slick with sweat, her expression of mingled surprise and disgust followed by her dissolve into laughter made the audience hoot right along with her. Then, of course, she wiped her hand on Sara’s sequined ass and kept right on singing.

The evening was so good that it has inspired me to parade my Bananarama love out in the open. So ladies—thank you for not only a show that was far, far better than it had any right to be, but one of the best shows I’ve paid to see.