Live Review: Apia Good Times Tour

The Apia Good Times tour has become a regular feature of the Australian live music scene - an annual nostalgia showcase that brings together some of the country's finest music legends from yesteryear. It is like A Day On The Green - except we're not shivering in a paddock and hardly anybody (in the audience at least) has consumed litres of wine during the show. Instead, we sit (Adelaide audiences love to sit) and reminisce about the good times we had when these artists were doing their best work, decades ago.

The format typically has each act do their own half-hour set, performing a mixture of both old material and new, before coming together in an ensemble performance.

Deborah Conway kicked the night off with one of her more recent songs, Everybody's Begging, from 2016's album of the same name, before taking us back nearly 25 years with Alive And Brilliant from 1993's Bitch Epic album (the cover artwork is stuck in our mind all these years later). Her accomplished backing band, on closer inspection, includes The Black Sorrows drummer Tony Floyd (also from Things Of Stone & Wood). Man Overboard, her mid-'80s hit with band Do Re Mi, almost gets the subdued crowd singing along at the key moments.

Next up, Joe Camilleri joined his band The Black Sorrows on stage and turned things up a notch. With 50-plus years of performing under his belt, the charismatic singer has clearly lost none of his energy and enthusiasm - a fantastic showman with a smile plastered on his face the whole time. The Black Sorrows had many hits in their heyday and we were treated to all of them in rapid succession — Hold On To Me, Harley & Rose, Never Let Me Go and Chained To The Wheel — made all the more special by the presence and incredible voices of Vika and Linda Bull. And Camilleri on saxophone, of course.

Colin Hay, performing solo with just an acoustic guitar, needed no introduction (or perhaps they forgot). Aside from being a brilliant musician, he is also a very funny man ("I'll play you some songs from my old band, just so you can say 'ohhhh, it's THAT guy'.") While his gags are just as hilarious as the last time he told them, his singing voice has the ability to transport you back to the early '80s when he and his old band, Men At Work, were selling millions of albums. While he largely performed newer material, which was warmly received (Come Tumblin' Down is gorgeous), it was Down Under and Overkill that left us breathless.

The members of Mental As Anything, Australia's most un-PC band ever, are totally different to those I remember — although it's definitely Greedy Smith out front on keyboards, with a cup of tea (and kettle) at hand. We were saddened to read on the band's website, after the show, that Martin Plaza has been undergoing chemotherapy in recent times, so wish him a speedy recovery.

Smith and band rolled out a litany of Mental's biggest classics — Too Many Times, Live It Up, The Nips Are Getting Bigger, Mr Natural and If You Leave Me Can I Come Too? — and almost had us on our feet. Almost. This is Adelaide.

The encore was of course amazing. All artists returned to the stage and, as one, blasted out some more hits, starting naturally with Conway's It's Only The Beginning. Camilleri brought out the saxophone again for rocking versions of his 1979 classic Shape I'm In and Men At Work's Who Can It Be Now? (highlight of the night).

And yes, we made it to our feet, at last, in true Adelaide style. The title of the tour says it all. A good time was had by all.