Live Review: Russell Morris, Joe Camilleri, Richard Clapton, Leo Sayer

The Crown Theatre was host to the APIA Good Times Tour on Saturday evening, a national tour returning for its second year showcasing a collective of four veteran rockers, this time Russell Morris, Joe Camilleri, Richard Clapton and Leo Sayer.

The evening kicked off with arguably the most progressive and psychedelic music of the night, courtesy Russell Morris, a distinguished rocker with a career spanning almost 50 years. Morris set the tone by playing a medley of his heyday hits, though his set seemed to inevitably revolve around an eight-minute rendition of The Real Thing – well received by the 500-strong crowd of grey hair and knitted tan sweaters.  
 
Joe Camilleri was up next, a man literally trapped in 1982, dressed in a white Hawaiian shirt and white slacks bursting onto the stage and immediately jumping into country/rock/soul ballad Ain't Love The Strangest Thing. Camilleri is possibly best known for his superb saxophone solos and so a gaily coloured, oversized sax made an appearance for The Black Sorrows' hit, Hold On To Me and their newest cut, 2014's Certified Blue.

After a clearly much-needed toilet break/interval, Richard Clapton took to the stage and brought back a little bit of psychedelic rock and couple of ballads with '70s hits Down In The Lucky Country and Deep Water, a bit of a breather for the audience after Camilleri's boisterous saxophone antics and they seemed to go down rather well, a few of the more serious concert-goers even clapping to the beat (a fleet of wheelchairs constantly on standby in case anyone got a little too into it).

By 10pm, headliner Leo Sayer was out and the tiring crowd seemed to genuinely perk up a bit, some even filing out into the aisles to jam to an upbeat version of Cliff Richard's Dreamin'. Sayer performed a long and diverse set of his favourite disco-funk tracks of the 1970s, his youthful stage presence charming a completely captive audience as he jumped around, no doubt reinforcing the character an over-50s insurance company such as APIA wishes to promote with this extravagant marketing ploy.

To wrap up the night, Sayer welcomed all three artists back onto the stage to play an extended five-song finale of classics including his own You Make Me Feel Like Dancing, Camilleri's Jo Jo Zep-period Shape I'm In and The Sweet's Love Is Like Oxygen, before coming back to play an encore to a cheering crowd. I'm not sold on the premise of the gig, but the rockers seemed to enjoy their time and clearly entertained a packed-out auditorium.