Air Supply wrote some of the gushiest and over-orchestrated love songs you’d ever wish to hear back in the 70’s and 80’s. Having said that, some of those songs were fantastic examples of the love-gush genre and were so huge that they took the band to the greatest heights of the music charts of the time. We’re not sure what happened to them since the mid-eighties, no doubt playing music somewhere like Las Vegas or Rio to loads of gushy people but we had the pleasure, last Saturday evening, of witnessing them live right in our own backyard, beach amphitheater, the Hard Rock’s Sand Island. The set-up was an amazing spectacle. They built a wooden platform across the swimming pool and had the main body of the crowd in one area in front of the stage. Normally, the crowd is split between the beach and bar area by the pool but this was successfully negated by the platform and gave the show a real concert feel. Even though they say they had a number of problems putting the structure up, we hope they will continue doing it the same in the future.
And the show? It was kind of predictable with lots of tunes known from the past and many I had never heard. One particular omission was Love and Other Bruises which was probably one of their greatest hits but maybe I was in the little room and missed it. They seemed like a couple of lucky, happy chaps going through the motions of a Las Vegas show and after 30 years they would’ve been quite chuffed with the chance to tour the whole globe again.
All in all, it was a very pleasant evening out under the stars with a couple of the most famous performing artists to ever play in Bali.

Highlight 1 – the singer Russell Hitchcock running around the crowd hugging everyone including someone in our party and an un-named local architect.
Highlight 2 – The stage and wooden platform across the pool was spectacular and we hope to see it again.
Highlight 3 – Russell’s voice has not lost an iota of its strength in thirty years. But he has lost the jet-black Afro.