It may come as a surprise, but after getting her start as Australia’s golden girl on Young Talent Time, Tina Arena earned her chops the old-fashioned way by gigging at pubs around Melbourne.
As News Corp note in their review of her recent gig at Melbourne’s Corner Hotel, in the ’80s you could see the ‘Chains’ hit-maker playing the likes of the Grainstore Tavern, belting out covers of Van Halen.
So her performance at one of Richmond’s finest live music venues was really a return to her roots and you could certainly tell that she learnt how to handle crowds by coming up in the Melbourne pub circuit.
According to News Corp’s Cameron Adams, after she came out on stage to see a sea of mobile phones, Arena told the crowd, “You’re going to look at your shithouse footage in the morning — and it will be shithouse.”
After telling the crowd she would’ve happily performed in her pyjamas, she dedicated her 1995 hit ‘Heaven Help My Heart’ to all the bogans in the crowd, saying, “This is for all the bogans out there — show us your true colours kids.”
[include_post id=”465391”]
“I never wanted to be left singing some golden oldies,” Arena later told the crowd. “I’d rather live in chicken shit” before explaining how happy she is to “still be making original music in your late 40s.”
Of course, we already knew Arena was a total badass thanks to her speech at the ARIAs late last year. After being inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame, Arena took the opportunity to call out the music industry.
”I want to still acknowledge that ladies over 40 are still in the game,” she said, name-checking Kylie, Madonna, J-Lo, and Annie Lennox. “Keep doing what you’re doing, ladies, because we will decide when it’s time for us to stop.”
Check out some of the “shithouse” footage below.
Photo via Twitter
