Vengaboys - 11 January 2012, The HiFi

w/ The Herbs, DJ Sammy Rowland

This must be the year of the 90s Revival. Vengaboys are touring Australia currently, and Aqua has announced that they are touring the country in March. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t expecting a spectacular show from the Vengaboys in their opening night of the tour at The Hi-Fi, and you know what? It was so bad it was good! If you’d come expecting quality and a serious musical performance, you were destined to be disappointed, but if you took it for what it was, you were blow away with awesomeness.

Let me start from the beginning. Upon entering The Hi-Fi, DJ Sammy Rowland was pumping out the 90s hits and creating one hell of a nostalgic dance party. Think Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls, Blue, N*Sync, and pretty much any cliché 90’s hit you can think of. She made me chuckle quite a bit. Every time she got a hit the crowd loved she grinned like a small child.

After a brief close of the curtains (with the 90s dance party continuing with some Spice Girls hits), The Herbs took to the stage in their sequin-y glory. To say that it was a mood killer would be an understatement. The Herbs, for those who don’t know (don’t worry, I hadn’t heard of them either), are a Spice Girls tribute/re-interpretation band. This was Spice Girls as you’ve never heard before. Indie-synth-pop “goodness”. If you had heard this band in a setting outside a Vengaboys support slot, you would have thought “what the…” And as I looked around, there were still a lot of people thinking this. But I think they went with it the same way I did. They’re a support for the Vengaboys! They have to be ok, right? Right? For me though, it really didn’t suit the mood that the DJ had created and that the Vengaboys soon created.

Ten years out of the game is quite a long time, and to be able to come back form that is certainly an achievement. And for a band that built their career on less than ten hits, it makes it an even greater achievement. Picture this: Elton John, and the entire cast of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, covered it with sequins and glitter and throw it into the middle of Mardi Gras, and you know what? It still wouldn’t be as camp as this. My one issue with the set was the fact that they played for 35 minutes, and for their one encore song, they played “Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom” a song they’d already played in their main set. There were also a lot of their main songs missing from the set, and it would have been awesome to hear one of those songs instead of repeating something. Also, between songs, in their obligatory crowd banter, while it was friendly, it seemed very scripted, and a tiny bit insincere.

But really, who cares about all of this! It’s the Vengaboys!