Belinda Carlisle will start her West Coast “Decades” tour on Friday, Oct. 21 in the Sparks Nugget Ballroom marking her first lengthy string of United States dates since 2019.
Concertgoers can expect to hear her solo hits and some of her Go-Go’s songs, and ,with any luck, maybe a few of those songs never reached the heights of her hits but that have kept Carlisle’s accolades and recognition even with the passage of time.
Carlisle has reinvented her music several times, After living in France, she released an album of French chanteuse music, 2007’s “Voila,” and stemming from her daily practice of Kundalini yoga came 2017’s “Wilder Shores.” Prior to any of her recordings, she was the drummer of 1970’s Hollywood punk band The Germs. Though it was her time as vocalist for The Go-Go’s, followed by her solo musical collaborations with 1980s hitmakers Rick Nowels and Go-Go’s multi-instrumentalist Charlotte Caffey that propelled her into the musical stratosphere.
Songs such as “Heaven Is A Place On Earth,, “Mad About You,” and “I Get Weak” are just the tip of a pop iceberg that now consists of eight solo records – where the less commercially successful records are debatably even better – check out her “Runaway Horses” record, which takes her songs and videos to an over-the-top sound.
These days, the vocalist tends to focus on other priorities – such as family and an animal sanctuary that she co-founded. However, the past few years also have been a crossroads of those past projects re-emerging into the popular vernacular.
The Go-Go’s are the subject of a recent documentary film that pulls back the veil and reveals the punk roots that led to the group’s popular era with songs like “Our Lips Are Sealed” and “We Got The Beat,” which came out a year before the band was inducted to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. A couple of Carlisle’s solo albums have received several recent expanded rereleased editions with extra songs to commemorate 35th anniversary status. In the midst of all this, she continues to tour with the Go-Go’s with a stage energy that defies the length of time she has been performing.
– Shaun Astor
Belinda Carlisle
Where: Sparks Nugget
When: Friday, Oct. 21
Tickets: LINK
Related story: The Go-Go’s rock Reno.
