By Doug Deutsch
On Saturday night, Hard Rock’s Sound Waves Theatre in Atlantic City became a dance club, where a “Back to the 80’s” show featured a triple-bill of A Flock of Seagulls, Missing Persons, and Stacey Q.
People wanted to dance from the very beginning, and if anyone epitomized Back to the 80’s it was Stacey Q, the dance-pop vocalist known primarily for her 1986 hit, “Two of Hearts.” Dressed Madonna-esque in a short skirt and black fishnet stockings, she didn’t look too bad for 64 – her songs, other than “Two…”, though, would probably not top today’s charts. “She reminds me of Madonna, but without the hits,” I told my girlfriend Pam. Still, I was glad to see her performing (I had worked with Stacey for a short while with her then-label, Los Angeles-based Thump Records, back in the early nineties). After a brief intermission, longtime UK group A Flock of Seagulls took the stage. (Missing Persons, we later found out, had been cancelled). AFOS, for this show, were a two-piece: founding members, vocalist-keyboardist Mike Score and guitarist-vocalist Mike Reynolds. Their hits still sound good (“I Ran (So Far Away),” “Space Age Love Song,” “Wishing (If I Had A Photograph Of You”), “Telecommunication”), and got the expected positive response from the audience. Missing Persons performing would have made the night more fun, but “Back To The ‘80’s’ was still was a good blast from the past for those who attended.
