One of the most popular decades for not only music but also fashion and pop culture is the 1980s. That era is the focus of 80s Night Out, which performs May 31 at Beverly Arts Center’s Baffes Theatre in Chicago. “It’s one song after another that the audience knows.
Those songs are like the fabric of our lives. I love them. I love singing them.
The audience loves them,” said Lisa Rock, vocalist for 80s Night Out. “I really feel like I’m just with my friends because everyone knows every single word and is singing them, screaming them. It’s one nonstop party of singing.
” The 80s Night Out set list includes Pat Benatar’s “Love Is a Battlefield,” Irene Cara’s “Flashdance ...
What a Feeling” and Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time.” “(It’s) mostly ′80s ladies and that gives us free rein to do everything so we run the gamut from Pat Benatar to Olivia (Newton-John) to Cyndi Lauper, Whitney (Houston), Tina Turner, everyone,” said Rock, an Ohio native. “The ′80s was the first time women were coming on strongly.
They were letting girls be in the spotlight.” Rock recalled creating fingerless gloves à la Madonna; wearing U.S.
Army jackets; dyeing her hair; donning big, long, feathery earrings; and relating to John Hughes’ films. “I am a child of the ′80s. I was in high school during the ′80s,” said Rock who has lived in Chicagoland since 1999.
Rock and Melissa Minyard of Orlando, Florida, began fronting 80s Night Out in 2018. In 2019.
