Shades Of Yesteryear Lure Wok 'n' Roll Stars

ERIC ELLIS, Hong Kong

11/08/1995

THE young Hong Kong taxi driver dressed in streetwise clothes and Ray-Ban sunglasses looks the epitome of cool. But the dated music pumping from his stereo would bring a grin to Australia's new wave of entrepreneurs.

"Very nice music, very nice," he says in halting English while singing along to Air Supply's "latest" hit I'm All Out Of Love. The driver is just the latest passenger picked up by our aggressive impresarios who have carved out $US500 million ($650 million) in new Asian markets thirsting for Western pop culture.

Running the gauntlet of organised crime syndicates which bottle up the local music industries of many Asian countries, entrepreneurs such as Harvey Medcalf's Duet Productions, the Paul Dainty Corporation, Michael Chugg's Frontier Touring Company and hardware-provider Showtravel are recycling old acts and launching new ones to voracious Asian audiences.

They are also relaunching a few aging pop stars on unsuspecting ticket-buyers as well.

Witness the recent tour of Vietnam by big-haired 70s icon Leo "Just A Boy" Sayer, now a Saigon karaoke favourite. Australians promoted that one.

Or the appearance in Beijing of saccharine Swedish group Roxette. Aussies were behind that one, too.

Or the once-a-year cult tours to Japan by 1960s favourites The Shadows and The Ventures. Scratch the surface of those entourages and Australians are among them.

Sydney-born Deborah Biber of Hong Kong-based promotions outfit Blue Moon says Australian companies have a solid base from which to branch out.

"Australia has the advantage of having the most mature rock and pop music infrastructure in the region," she notes.

"It's natural we should take it offshore. We've been doing it for years and we are very good at it."

For Western pop and rock artists, Asian capitals used to be places that former music impresario Paul Keating once described as somewhere one flew over en route to somewhere else.

Indeed, an oft-quoted remark about why Asia wouldn't buy Western music is the legendary losses made by The Beatles when they played Hong Kong in 1964.

That has changed, or rather, is changing.

Hong Kong-based Midas Promotions, part-owned by Australian Dale Rennie, recently brought Roxette, Wet, Wet, Wet and The Gypsy Kings to Asia.

Medcalf's Duet has promoted Elton John, Santana, Richard Marx, Michael Bolton, Harry Connick Jnr and last month a line-up of Australian acts led by Christine Anu. Frontier is arranging Tom Jones's upcoming tour.

Harvey Medcalf sees Asia as an extension of his business in Australia and New Zealand.

"The Australian concert market is the most competitive in the world and Asia was for me a way of improving the service," he says.

"I can now offer to my contacts in Europe dates in Kuala Lumpur or Hong Kong instead of just Australia or New Zealand."

Medcalf reckons he is "only scratching the surface" of the potential regional market, citing places like India and China as coming attractions.

"It's not a problem of money. Asians will happily pay some of the world's highest ticket prices," he says. "It's a matter of venues and comprehension of what an act is."

Hong Kong promoter Anders Nelson says entrepreneurs also have to face the political, ethnic or religious sensibilities of the region.

"Some regimes like China see rock as a threat to their rule, as something that incites rebellion," he says.

Harvey Medcalf said a three-month effort to persuade the Chinese to accept Barry Humphries failed because "they couldn't understand how a man dressing as a woman could be funny".