081986 Huey Lewis and the News, Moncton, NB

On August 19th, 1986 I saw Huey Lewis and the News at the Moncton Coliseum.  It’s funny to realize that I saw Huey Lewis way back when he was still on top of the charts; at the time I remember thinking I had missed his peak, this being the tour after his huge breakthrough album Sports.  At the time the album he was touring (Fore!) hadn’t yet produced any hits except Hip To Be Square, a song that would require a few decades before it would steep into coolness (Stuck With You had not yet broken out).  

This was in stark contrast to the hit machine that Sports was, but in retrospect I guess the band was still pretty much at the top of their game.

This was the first concert I had seen that had no opening band.  It was just Huey and his Nueys all night long.  The place had sold out quickly and for once I wasn’t on the rail.  No matter how you cut it this was not a rager concert that needed a guy like me in the front row jumping up and down and screaming like a maniac; I watched from the lower bowl, stage left.

Of course the band played a thousand hits, Mr. Lewis showed off his harmonica chops and his dad-like dance moves.  The young drummer looked old dressed in his clichéd boyish outfit while the bass player stood stoic and motionless, that burning cigarette dangling everpresently from his lips.  

For one song the band sung a cappella – sort of – putting down their instruments and gathering at the front of the stage.  I say “sort of” because Huey Lewis announced to the crowd that for this song they would be using their ‘little red wagon’, and they did, pulling out said wagon which held a large drum machine (a fairly newfangled device at the time, and one that was generally frowned upon).  

The crowd actually booed at the sight of the drum machine but we were soon wooed by the oohs of the doo-wop groop that was gathered around the single, olde-school microphone.

In the end it was a really good show despite it being the least rockin’, fist-pumping live music event of my young concert-going career (not counting the Phil Collins show I barely saw the previous summer).  Maybe I was starting to mellow with age.