The eighties are coming back this summer! If you remember MTV hits like “Dance Hall Days,” “Let’s Go” and “Everybody Have Fun Tonight,” you’ll love this visit with Jack Hues of Wang Chung as he tells Nestor about this summer’s tour with Rick Springfield, John Waite and Paul Young that stops at Wolf Trap Filene Center on July 6th. Still cool on craze…
Nestor Aparicio interviews Jack Hues from Wang Chung about their 80s nostalgia tour, performing with Rick Springfield, John Waite, and Paul Young. Jack discusses the enduring popularity of their songs, including “Dance Hall Days” and “To Live and Die in LA,” which have been featured in video games and movies. He also mentions their new retrospective album, which includes hits, rarities, and remixes. Jack reflects on the evolution of their music and the joy of performing live for diverse audiences, including younger fans. Upcoming shows include dates at Wolf Trap, Atlantic City, Newark, and Bethlehem.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Wang Chung, 80s music, Maryland crab cake tour, nostalgia, Dance Hall Days, To Live and Die in LA, Grand Theft Auto, The Walking Dead, I Want My 80s tour, Rick Springfield, John Waite, Paul Young, Wolf Trap, retrospective album, Eric Cupper remix.
SPEAKERS
8
Jack Hues, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
Welcome home. We are W, N, S T, am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We are Baltimore, positive. We are positively out on the road all summer long doing the Maryland crab cake tour. It’s all brought to you by friends at the Maryland lottery. I will have the Back to the Future scratch offs. We have had some rock and rollers on some 80s musicians out on the Maryland crab cake tour last year. My friend Thomas Dolby joined me for some breakfast to talk about his book and an 80s tour last year. And if you remember, follow me on social media, you know, I drove all the way to Cleveland for the last night of what was a tour with modern English and Thomas Dolby and a whole bunch of bands. And Thomas didn’t like hearing this, especially after I carried and muelled all of his equipment back to Baltimore after the show, which was the last night of the tour, I said, Wang Chung, they were fantastic. They were my favorite part of the night. So when I found out that I knew some publicist who knew some publicist, we even knew Judas Priest, and said, Can you get Jack Hughes from Wang Chung, on, he’s like, sure I could do that with you. So from an old 1980s music critic at the Baltimore Sun, we welcome Jack Hughes from Wang. Chung on, you know, I tried to chase you guys down backstage just to get a picture in Cleveland at at that beautiful blossom out in the middle of the woods, and I never saw you. I was so disappointed. But it is a pleasure to have you on, and it’s great to have you guys back at Wolf Trap in a couple of weeks. Yeah,
Jack Hues 01:22
we’re looking forward to that. And it was great that show blossom was great. Such a great venue
Nestor Aparicio 01:27
for you being out on the road at this point, 40 years later, my first question to any musician of the 80s videos, I saw you at Merriweather Post pavilion back in the 1980s with dance all days, and let’s go and those songs just came out all these years later, to be able to go out see crowds, big crowds. You’re out with Rick Springfield, you’re out with John Waite as well as Paul Young, playing the music that you love, and seeing the reaction that you get, not just from people my age that love dance all days and loved all of that stuff 40 years ago, but by people’s children. It’s just such a wide variety of people that the 80s have become nostalgia. I guess the way the 50s were for me as a kid, when Happy Days was on television, but really enjoying your music and exploring your music,
8Jack Hues 02:13
it is a great feeling. You know that young demographic like you say is great to see at the shows, and I think with Wang Chung, obviously, we had all our success in the 80s, but it sort of continued through video games like Grand Theft Auto dance hall days was in that and and then the Walking Dead picked up a song called Space junk that we did in the 90s, that was in the episode one. Season one, episode one, it closed that first episode didn’t and then I think that we’re going to be in a Grand Theft Auto six as well, that the trailers feature everybody anyway. So yeah, it’s great how the music just keeps regenerating. And then, of course, we’ve had some great movie syncs as well. So, you know, great. But the the being out on tour and being able to play these songs to the fans is just fabulous. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 02:59
you story told a little bit last year. And I don’t want to steal your thunder for those who are going to go down to Wolf Trap on the sixth of July and see maybe the Atlantic City you’re playing in Bethlehem, you’re playing a bunch of places in the area, I would send everybody out to the I want my 80s tour, 1980s tour. It’s Rick Springfield, John Wayne, Paul Young, and I’m with Jack Hughes from from Wang Chung as well, to live and die in LA I, you know, I remember renting videos and movies, and how much product placement began in the 80s, and Tom Cruise, with the sunglasses and risky business that soundtrack music, and even, you know, what other bands have done. You know, since then, you were sort of on the front end of, let’s get our let’s make a song for a movie. Let’s be a part of that. And the 80s, it really spawned a lot of bands.
Jack Hues 03:47
That’s true. I think we still live in Diane Lowe in a though it was the fact that we were asked to do the entire score, you know, and to write instrumental music to score the movie, you know, rather than just doing a song. In fact, Bill freakin when he first spoke to me, was quite adamant that he didn’t want a song. He wanted just instrumental stuff, you know, so that’s what we supplied first off. But it was after I saw the movie that I wrote the song. And I say I wrote the song, the song just kind of came out because I was aware that he didn’t want a song. I thought, I’m kind of wasting my time with this, but we demoed it, send it over the placement, I don’t know, with Wang Chung, we weren’t so much into that, but certainly, movies were a huge part of our career success.
Nestor Aparicio 04:28
8Well, you broke up a little bit for me, so I lost the middle bit of that story there, a little bit, but, but you said you had seen the movie, and then the song came out of you to live and die in LA, correct?
Jack Hues 04:40
That’s correct, yeah. So as I said, Bill Friedkin asked us to do instrumental music for the movie based on a song of ours called Wait, which is on points on the curve. And so that’s what we did first. But we didn’t see the movie before we wrote all that stuff. So that kind of opening scene with a money printing and all that which sinks. So amazingly, it’s complete serendipity that it all fitted together in the way that it did, you know. But like I say, he flew us out to LA to see this rough cut of the movie, and I was so blown away by it when I got back to the UK that the song just kind of came out. Sometimes, as a songwriter, you feel like you’re just channeling really, you’re not actually writing so much, you know, and all aspects of that project with just a beautiful sense of being in the right place at the right time.
Nestor Aparicio 05:26
Jack Hughes is our guest from Wang Chung there. Uh, they’re out on tour and making their music and doing their thing. Yeah, it seems to me that everybody I talk to is musician, sort of my age, our age. I grew up with your music, and I think about the pressures of that time in life of having a hit, having an album. I worked in a record store, so I, you know, and trying to sell albums and get radio and get on MTV, and do all that writing a song, like to live and die in LA, trying to, maybe not necessarily, write a hit, but have that in mind that I want to hear this on the radio. Everything that sort of comes in this century is a little bit different. I think as I meet musicians who are older have been doing this their whole lives, it’s like I don’t need to write hit records anymore. I write what I write. But I think it does lend itself to a different kind of art, maybe later in life, and especially once you master your instrument and master your craft, maybe in a way that you didn’t 40 years ago.
Jack Hues 06:18
Well, I agree with that. You know, I’ve been working not for the last well, in 2020 I released a solo album, a double album. 21 I did another one during the pandemic, and I’m about to release a third solo album. So solo albums are a way for me to sort of explore avenues that are sort of beyond Wang Chung, if, if you like, you know it’s more in the realm of progressive rock, I suppose, you know, in the UK, there’s a magazine, Prague magazine, and they follow Me and do articles on me. So that’s kind of nice. I like that. And that’s a refresher to come back to Wang Chung, and deal with more of the sort of nostalgic aspects of Wang Chung,
8Nestor Aparicio 06:54
well, I mean, and Wang Chung, I guess it’s not insulting to call it a nostalgic act or a nostalgic tour, and I think for me, with Thomas last year, because he hadn’t been out in a few years, and he was a bit it was a headliner, and he talked about Sirius XM and host and keeping the music alive and and I hear all of your music everywhere. It’s ubiquitous To me, being a child of that era and growing up in that era. But then I come to an event that’s a festival that where they have running water in bathrooms, unlike the ones on the beaches and some other places where it’s more weather related. Tell me about this tour a little bit. And Rick Springfield and John Wait, I saw John wait maybe two years ago. I’ve seen Rick Springfield on and off, and he pops up and again. And Paul Young, I hear all of your songs, but this is a lovely night, by the way, Wolf Trap, for those who don’t know and have never been the Wolf Trap people to ask me about it, whereas it’s not nearly that far from Baltimore, where we are, but it’s lovely. It’s out in the woods, it’s an it’s in a national park, and it’s a beautiful night of music. But getting there early and having all four or five artists, in the case of last summer, there were eight or nine artists to get there early and really make a whole evening of it. No offense, but three hours of Wang Chung music in a club one night might lend itself to a much smaller audience that it’s just, it’s it’s more festive. And I felt that way about your music, about all of the bands. And this seems to me to be the best way to present it in the summertime, to come out with a bunch of different bands every summer and get a taste of it. And I’m looking forward to it. I’m gonna come down and see you guys at Wolf Trap.
Jack Hues 08:29
That’s cool. I think that does work. You know, previously, I think we’ve been on tours where there are arguably too many bands, you know, so the audience are really watching the changeover. So the nice thing about this tour is there’s four, four bands. We each get a sort of half hour, 35 minutes, which enables like us to be able to play, to live and die in LA, for example, we usually do that most nights, and as well as the well known hits. In fact, everything we play is a hit. You know, we do the sometimes do the stuff from the Breakfast Club and then hypnotize me from inner space. So we mix up our set night by a night, you know, to make it a bearable process. But I think the the experience of seeing Paul Young, you know, he has all these hits. He’s a great guy, you know, a very warm kind of he’s, he’s the glue on this tour in many ways, you know. And I think the audience does feel very relaxed with it. And then we come out and like, bang, it basically, you know, and the audience are on their feet and going pretty crazy. John, wait, I’m in awe. I mean, he’s a rock singer. He’s a rock star, from his head to his toes, you know. And the way he sings, I don’t know how he does it, night after night, you know, because he’s really rips his throat and and then Rick comes out. Rick’s just a total rock star, you know. And so I think people get this really high energy evening. They get enough of the bands to really have a sense of, like, what they are, you know. But you as you say, you get the variety so that you have a, you know, a real 80. Experience
Nestor Aparicio 10:01
Jack. I was 15 years old. Got my first job in the summer of 84 I worked at a record store at East Point mall called sound waves, and I was the youngest person there by a lot. So there’s some older folks there. You know, in their 20s, they were older and and you know, had seen Zeppelin in their prime and things like that. So this is 84 and I fell in love with dance all days, and I spun your album whenever I got to play the album in the store that we got to play on her eight hour shift there on our feet. And you know a saying to people, can I help you find Merle Haggard in the mall, or whatever they were looking for? You know, his albums and and CDs were, there was one little pile in the corner. It was right in the beginning. They only had the cars and Billy Joel and Billy Joel and a couple of other ones at that point on CBS. But I love dance hall days from the beginning, from the and to see you last summer, and I went out to see Thomas, and I saw the other bands, and I’ve always liked your band, whatever, but I I’m with you. People get up and they move and if they haven’t seen you or interacted with your half an hour, 45 minutes of the world during the show. It’s, it was my favorite part of the set. Thomas didn’t want to hear that, but I and it reminded me how much I love your songs. And you wrote some great songs. Man, you really did.
Jack Hues 11:14
8Thank you. Man, yeah. Well, I think, you know, with Wang Chung, we present as a sort of Rock Band we’re playing, you know, I do improvise solos, which some nights come off some nights, don’t, you know, but that’s all part of it. I think, you know. And I know. I mean, Thomas did a great show, I thought, you know, but he is using laptops. And, you know, it’s harder to fathom what’s going on when a guy’s just standing there pressing buttons and stuff. Not that I have a problem with that, but it’s harder to present that as something compelling, you know. So, so I think with Wang, Chung, yeah, certainly, we added a rock and roll boost to that
Nestor Aparicio 11:48
whole tune. Well, Thomas had all of that Live Aid video with Yeah, and I had seen him do that with Todd Rundgren down at RAM said as sort of a one night, he tried it out and made me cry. And I’m sitting at ramset, I’m sobbing, and then he brought it to the big stage, and he kind of told me what he was doing with that, too much. But I just, I think all of you, all of you 80s artists that brought so much joy to all of us in MTV and and whatever nostalgia, I don’t feel bad about it at all. I’m gonna, I’m gonna put some coolies in the in the in the in the trunk, we’re going to come down, we’re going to have a few beers, we’re going to spend the night listening to music. And you know, well, let’s see when i You and everyone we knew could believe, do and share and what was true. So there is some music, some good music. Jack Hughes is here from Wacha. You made some new music as well, and had an album this year. Talk about where the band is right now, above and beyond, just coming to see you that you know, you could buy a t shirt, you can do all of that, but you are an active band.
Jack Hues 12:45
Yeah, we are, yeah, and we have a new album out. It’s a retrospective. So it’s all about the past, in a way, but it’s you can buy it as a double vinyl album or a double CD album. One is the hits from don’t let go, which was our first single in America, through to space junk, which, as I said, was in The Walking Dead in the 2000s and then the second album is some rarities, some tracks that weren’t released for albums at the time. There’s the demo of dance all days, and the demo of to live and die in LA and they’re quite interesting to listen to in a sort of archeological sort of way, you know. And then we finish up that album with a remix of everybody have fun tonight, by Eric cupper, which came out earlier this year.
Nestor Aparicio 13:27
Well, everybody will have fun on July 6. The show is down at Wolf traps at the filing center, one of my favorite venues, certainly one of my favorite venues to drive to. We’re so blessed here with Merriweather. Last week I saw a Simple Minds there. I get to go down to Wolf Trap. It’s July 6. Mark it down. Can’t make it that night. They’re going to be playing up the Hard Rock Hotel in Atlantic City as well. Newark, New Jersey on the 12th. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, at the wind Creek Event Center. I saw the black crows there last year. Beautiful Bethlehem. It’s in the old steel mill there. It’s beautiful. That’s July 13. So a bunch of chances to see Wang Chung, to see Rick Springfield, to see John Wade and Paul Young. And I’ve seen all of these bands at many points, at many times, but Jack Hughes has been kind enough to give me 10 minutes in a hotel room somewhere in the middle of Indiana. And I am, I am grateful, and I’ve always loved your music, and it’s a pleasure to have you
8Jack Hues 14:18
on Well, I really appreciate it. I like your I like where you’re coming from. There
Nestor Aparicio 14:22
you go, man, let’s go back to the eight. You know, my buddy Tommy Conwell, from Tommy come on the young Romans, one of his catch phrases when he’s got his thing, there’s the 80s are coming back, baby. They’re coming back. So they are coming back. That’s why I screw my hair out. You know, take your baby by the wrist, right? There you
Jack Hues 14:38
go. Take your baby by the hair. Hair. There you go. There you go. Here you go.
Nestor Aparicio 14:42
8I am Nestor. We are W and I feel like I’m singing with Wang Chung. This is kind of fun. Karaoke with Jack. Yeah. Back for more of Baltimore positive. Stay with us. You.
