Live Review: Boney M

Almost 40 years on, Australia has not lost its appetite for disco - this is Boney M featuring Maizie Williams’ fourth Australian tour in about as many years. 

This time they’re calling it a “greatest hits” tour, which is a tautology given that Williams’ Boney M show is a textbook nostalgia act. There’s never anything but hits. Nobody turns up expecting to hear deep cuts like, say, their 1980 cover version of Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. 

The band hasn’t changed since last year’s visit; nor has Williams’ dazzling skin-tight, silver-sequined playsuit. It’s still a high-energy show packed with hits: Sunny, Daddy Cool, Hooray! Hooray! It’s A Holi-Holiday and Ma Baker. The arrangements were familiar and faithful, and slow-ish numbers like No Woman No Cry became jubilant singalongs. Williams took lead vocals on Holiday and the relatively obscure Malaika (that one didn’t chart in Australia) but her pitch was a little off. As always, the bulk of the show’s vocals were handled by her talented ‘backup’ singers.

That’s a reminder of how thoroughly ironic this act is: Williams’ did not sing in the original Boney M. The Montserrat-born model was hired for her striking looks, just as her late bandmate Bobby Farrell got the gig for his exuberant dancing. But few in the audience would know (or care) about Boney M’s patchy, fabricated and litigious history, and those who do aren’t letting it get in the way of a damn good party. Producer Frank Farian struck gold with his Caribbean-via-Germany disco concoction, and so the hits keep coming: Belfast, Gotta Go Home, and of course Rivers Of Babylon and its B-side Brown Girl In The Ring. 

Williams’ disco-funk backing band was impressively tight. Her drummer was rock solid yet creative, and the bass was smooth despite lacking somewhat in the low frequencies. Of course, The Gov audience was unconcerned with such details, instead firmly focused on reliving its flared-polyester childhood and throwing outrageously bad shapes on the dance floor.

Boney M is more a brand than a band. Farian (who also invented La Bouche and Milli Vanilli) lounges on piles of money somewhere in Ibiza while several “Boney M” iterations peddle his wares with various degrees of authenticity. Genuine lead singer Liz Mitchell visited Adelaide some years ago, and despite her rich, sugary (and instantly recognisable) voice, her show was a complete letdown, reliant on a tacky backing track and two dancers. Williams instead brings an uninhibited disco party. She might have been more seen than heard back in the 1970s, but in the 21st century, her version of Boney M is absolutely the one to see.