Music

Bros to reignite your 80s teenage crush with Live at the Marquee gig

Bros to reignite your 80s teenage crush with Live at the Marquee gig

Starch those shirt collars, resurrect your Levi 501s and start the search for a red leather bomber jacket with a faint whiff of cigarette smoke and shandy.

Bros, the high-pitched late 80s pop phenomenon, the objects of a zillion teenage crushes, the proof that hype did quite nicely before the social media age, thank you very much and, let's face it, the band voted least likely to succeed beyond a single hit, are back and they're heading for Cork.

Matt and Luke Goss, the twin gods of 1988, will be live at the Marquee for one night this summer. Tickets go on sale next Monday at 9am and the country that gave them their first number one will be asked once more to answer the duo's plaintiff cry of When Will I Be Famous? by assuring them they don't need to ask anymore.

For those too young or too in denial to identify with the term Brosette, Bros were once a trio - Matt the frontman, Luke the drummer and Craig Logan the bass player - but Craig, now a successful record industry executive, left early on after one too many 'three's a crowd' jibes.

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In 1992, two became one as the brothers split acrimoniously and vanished. At least that's how it seemed. Both ended up in the US where Matt found songs that allowed him to sing rather than shriek and reinvented himself as a Las Vegas swing and jazz star - not quite as slick as Sinatra but considerably cooler than Bublé.

Luke took to Los Angeles and acting, playing an assortment of baddies, freaks and action heroes on the big and small screens - not quite Oscar material but not Golden Raspberries either.

In 2017, a form of 'last year before we turn 50' madness hit the brothers and they decided to reform. The madness paid off.

A zillion former teenagers turned their London shows into sell-outs and the movie chronicling their rise, fall and rise again, After The Screaming Stops, brought them a whole new set of fans when it aired late last year.

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Its unintentionally hilarious, warts and all (or rather, botox and all) look at life and strife in an industry that's as unpredictable as it is unforgiving, had viewers arguing over whether it was parody, reality or some deeply tanned, impossibly well-toned mix of the two.

Regardless of who won the row, Bros won the day. Their victory lap takes place on June 26 at the Marquee in Cork where, in the space of 10 days, Kris Kristofferson and Toto will also perform.

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