Midge Ure

Way back in the autumn of 2025 (that’s around March to you northern hemisphere types) I bought tickets to see Midge Ure later in that year, in spring. I was looking forward to it.

In the winter, I received an email from Ticketek, telling me that Midge had suffered an unspecified medical condition, and that the tour was being postponed for a year. A year!!! I was offered a refund or to accept the rescheduled date. Well, I still wanted to see him, so I wished him a speedy recovery and changed the date in the calendar.

OK, it’s a year later now. And Midge is better! The venue is Meow Nui, and again we wondered whether in deference to his likely audience he’d be providing seats. Nothing of the sort! This is another, proper, stand-up gig. 

First up, we went to Cuba St Tavern, which is becoming a fast favourite for us for pre-theatre and gig dinners. The last couple of times we’ve been there I’ve been disappointed by the lack of oysters, despite them being on the menu: they’d already been scoffed by greedy, unthinking other diners before we got there. Anyway, this  time I reserved half a dozen on the “any other information:” box on the reservation form, and lo! Behold! Six juicy, plump oysters were mine! We also ate some other stuff.

When we got to Meow Nui the queue was down the street, round the block, and up a side street. People must’ve been wondering what all the olds were queueing for on a Friday night (we were about the median age of those in the queue). We’d engaged in some chat with our servers at CST, neither of whom had a clue who or what an Ultravox was, or had heard of Midge Ure. Young people today!

Inside, we established a spot near to the stage, and bumped into Emma, one of my fellow Toastmasters, so we chatted a bit about forthcoming gigs – there’s a veritable summer of Eighties music coming up!

The support act came on and introduced himself as Cole Stacey. He said “you're expecting to see synthpop and guitar hero Midge Ure, and instead you’ve got a hairy guy from Devon playing the mandolin”, which is what he did, for the obligatory half-dozen songs, some of which were completely unaccompanied. As he finished his set he left us with the words “right, I’m off to change my shirt and learn some Ultravox songs”. Ha ha, I thought. Very funny.

 Half an hour later, and Midge takes the stage with his band, Electronica. Boom! It was no joke! There’s Cole again, bass guitar in hand! Yes, he’s in the band as well!

Midge kicked off with Dear God, then followed with a mix of songs from Ultravox, Visage, and solo works including No Regrets and If I Was. In between there was the usual banter, starting with an apology for turning up so late. There was a good mixture, including quite a lot from the Long Ago – five (count’em!) from seminal album Vienna, including the title track, which of course means nothing to me. He got us involved in the obligatory sing-a-long on The Voice, and we generally had a good time. I knew pretty much all the songs, and reminded myself how good some of those album tracks had been…including the notorious Astradyne, a six-minute electronic instrumental from Vienna, which he was once asked to play when he was touring solo with just a guitar.

The show wrapped up after a very short encore (one song – Hymn), possibly due to curfew rules on the venue? It was, after all, past eleven o’clock! On the other hand, it may just be that it was past Midge’s bedtime, because, would you believe, he’s 73! 

I’d say “catch him if you can” but other than tonight’s show in Auckland, that about wraps up his Australasian tour. He is touring the UK towards the end of the year as well. That full setlist is here (or will be when the site updates).

 

After God

Nicola was on ushering duty again at Circa Theatre, this time for After God. What’s that about? Sounds a bit God-y to me…

We had dinner at ChouChou again. They do seem to be improving after the initial hiccups and less-than-perfect experiences we’ve had with them. I had fish & chips, Nicola had the burger…both competent enough, but it’s still pub grub. Lowering expectations seems to be the way to go.

After God is described by the author as a “verbatim play”. This means that the dialogue is exactly as spoken by the characters, most of whom are real people (spoiler alert: God makes an appearance, and he’s not real). It’s mainly about the author’s (Stuart McKenzie – an “everyman” played by different actors for different parts of the play) conversations about god, God, religion, theology and related subjects. Some of his conversers are ordinary people, others are highbrow theologists, professors, and religious types.

The beauty of taking real dialogue as the premise for your play is that it allows you to shape it, give it a narrative, split the scenes up so it doesn’t follow necessarily how or when it was originally said, and to juxtapose it with others from different times and places. Now, call, me old-fashioned, but I’d’ve liked it if he actually did that. Instead, it’s a mishmash of incoherent ideas, some ramblings, cute aphorisms that fall apart on a moment’s thought, and general mumbo-jumbo. Much like religion, in other words. I don’t know if that’s the author’s intent, or not. The most significant moment towards the end comes when there is a death, but I can’t help but get the feeling that it’s thrown in for dramatic effect. It added nothing to the rest of the play, but he wants you to feel dramatised and traumatised.

So yeah, a bit of a mixed bag. I give it 2/5.

 

Razorlight

The summer* of gigs has started, with Suzanne Vega a couple of weeks ago, and now Noughties almost-legends, indie rockers Razorlight. Remember them? They had a string of hits around 20 or so years ago, culminating in the No. 1 smash, America. They released three albums in that time before splitting up. Artistic differences? I think it was mainly that the singer, Johnny Borrell, was a bit of an arsehole. And by a bit, I mean a lot.

Anyway, that’s all in the past, they’ve reconciled their differences and are now doing America: 20^th Anniversary Tour. And they’re coming to New Zealand!

But first, of course, dinner. I booked Kisa as it’s handily placed, just up the road on Ghuznee Street, not far from the venue, Meow Nui. For once we dispensed with bread and dips, as these tend to fill you up with bread and dips, and dived straight into a selection of mixed mezze – kebabs, turşu, böreks, and cured fish. Yum! Once again, the Mosaic Group (of which they are part) are doing their passport promotion, so we’ll probably visit some of their other locations over the next few months.

Then on to Meow Nui. We’ve been there before, most recently to see Bret McKenzie. But what’s this? No seats? Yes, this is a proper, old-fashioned gig where you have to stand around waiting for the band to come on. Fortunately, there’s a bar. There was also a merch stand, but I didn’t fancy the design of any of the t-shirts so I skipped that one.

First up was local band Dropper, who came on for the traditional half-hour warm-up set. They’ve released an album on CD (yes, actual physical medium!) so I’ve ordered that.

Then on came Razorlight. They played a mix of songs, old and new, as they reformed in 2018 and have since released two albums, bringing their total to…five. Way to go, fellas! All the hits (they didn’t have enough to afford the luxury of leaving any out) interspersed with other songs, old and new material. Borrell isn’t much one for the bants between songs, they just got down and did it. He does have a lot of front-man energy, though, and loves showing of his ripped abs.

After an hour they left the stage before returning for a five-song encore, finishing up, inevitably, with America. A jolly good night out with proper rock’n’roll music. From here they’re going to Australia, then onwards to Europe and the UK. Catch them if you can!