Alex Cameron, Auckland NZ, 2020

Alex Cameron 

14th March 2020
The Tuning Fork, Auckland, New Zealand.

Review by Sam Smith. Photography by Sarah Kidd.

Last time Alex Cameron came to our shores he played a rollicking show at the Kings Arms just months before the hallowed tavern closed its doors for good. Now, two years on and in the middle of mass cancellations of tours and festivals due to coronavirus, the Aussie troubadour is back, this time at the Tuning Fork to give his faithful fans a night of hearty Aussie rock.

With his “friend and business partner” sax man Roy Molloy in tow, Cameron and his excellent band were promoting his fantastic 2019 album Miami Memory, an album that stylistically is deeply rooted in the golden age of Australian pop and rock music.

When you listen to Cameron’s music, you cannot help but think of the likes of Cold Chisel, Paul Kelly, Men at Work, hey even Nick Cave. This is music to have a good time to, and what was clear from the outset last night at the Tuning Fork was that Cameron, his band, and the audience were here for a good time and nothing but.

But before Cameron took to the stage there was the small matter of Crap Date to warm up the crowd. The Auckland electronic duo of Jamie Lee-Smith and Marcel Bellvé have been dropping singles for the last year or so and their brand of 80s-influenced synth pop was the perfect tonic for the people who got in early.

At one point I even had to question whether I was in 1984 or 2020 given the stage setup of synths and an unbuttoned jacket-wearing drum machine player, it was that authentic and it had the crowd well and truly warmed up by the end of the set.

With the support act done, it was then time for the big show, Alex Cameron and his band. From the first few notes of ‘Bad for the Boys’ it was clear this was going to be one hell of a show. Strutting up and down the stage like Prince and shaking his ass like Elvis, Cameron the character was on full display from the get-go with the crowd fully engaged and in tune with his every move.

Drawing mainly on tracks from his new album Miami Memory, the set was jam-packed with banger after banger, with the crowd in full voice throughout, singing along to every line, of which they impressively seemed to know every single one.

Tracks like ‘Divorce’, ‘Happy Ending’, and ‘Running Out of Luck’ highlighted the interweaving between Cameron and his band, who I might say were more than just his backing, while ‘Miami Memory’ saw the entire audience singing along to one of the lyrics of 2019 in “eating your ass like an oyster”, a set highlight for sure.

I was pleasantly surprised also at how good some of the other new songs sounded live as well, in particular ‘PC with Me’ and ‘Gaslight’, the latter which featured some outstanding harmony vocals from keyboard player Jess Parsons. I was initially worried how these new tracks would work on stage without organ and accordion, but the band pulled it off a treat and the new arrangements worked well.

There was even time for Roy Molloy’s world-famous stool review which he carries out at every show. In what is one of the focal points of any Cameron show, Molloy undertakes a review of the stool he sits on throughout the set. On this occasion, although he found this particular stool “uppity” he managed to give it a three point five out of five, much to the amusement of the crowd.

The songs kept coming and just when you thought Cameron had run out of energy, up popped another bop, with the grand climax a double hit of the wonderful duet ‘Strangers Kiss’ and finally ‘Far From Born Again’ which included the crowd singing as many ooh ooh ooh’s as one could muster.

In an uncertain period for the live music industry due to Covid-19, what last night’s show highlighted was the power of music and the joy it brings people. For ninety minutes everyone at the Tuning Fork forgot what was happening outside and simply zoned in on a group of musicians who put on the best show they could given the circumstances. No one knows what will happen next, or how badly affected the live music scene will be, but one thing is for sure, people who saw Alex Cameron and his band on March 14th will hold that memory dear for a long time.

Were you there at The Tuning Fork for this intimate gig? Or have you seen Alex Cameron perform live somewhere else before? Tell us about it in the comments below! 

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