Stir Cheat Sheet: 5 retro Summer Night Concerts to catch at the 2024 PNE
Burton Cummings, Daryl Hall, The Commodores, and The Pointer Sisters are some of the nostalgic favourites hitting the Pacific Coliseum in August
Clockwise from left: Burton Cummings, Darryl Hall, and Blue Rodeo.
THE SUMMER NIGHT CONCERTS series at the PNE is a chance to party through the decades, with several retro acts taking to the Pacific Coliseum stage this season. So pull out your bellbottoms, neon blazers, and vintage western shirts for a trip through the hits of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s.
Here’s a glimpse at a few blast-from-the-past highlights, with a little background on their claims to fame:
Burton Cummings
August 17 at 8 pm
Born in Winnipeg, Cummings was the keyboardist and lead singer for Canadian rock superstars The Guess Who and is now a solo artist celebrating a whopping 60 years of making music. Having dropped out of high school to pursue his rock career, Cummings was just 18 when he became the lead singer of The Guess Who. From there, he teamed up with guitarist-singer Randy Bachman to come up with such iconic classics as “These Eyes”, “No Time”, “No Sugar Tonight”, and “American Woman”—that last one the first song by a Canadian band to hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Hits off his self-titled 1976 disc include “Stand Tall”, the album earning Cummings Juno Awards for most promising male vocalist and male vocalist of the year. His 1978 self-produced album Dream of a Child was the best-selling Canadian album in history to that point. In the 1980s, he headlined concerts across Canada and the United States. Fast-forward to 2006, and, despite a lengthy unresolved feud over songwriting royalties, Cummings and Bachman released the Bachman Cummings Songbook, featuring tracks by The Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive. (The latter is also performing at this year’s PNE, on August 20.) Appearing with Cummings on the PNE stage is Canadian blues-rock icon Colin James.
Daryl Hall
August 21 at 8 pm
An inductee in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Daryl Hall is best known for the nonstop feel-good hits he created with Hall & Oates, the duo he formed with John Oates in the 1970s and ’80s; think “Rich Girl”, “Kiss on My List”, “Private Eyes”, “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)”, “Maneater”, “She’s Gone”, and “You Make My Dreams”. Hall has gone on to pursue a successful solo career and launch Daryl’s House, a restaurant/performance venue, which serves as the home base for his webcast show, Live from Daryl’s House. Streaming on Hall’s YouTube channel, the program has featured the likes of Cheap Trick, Kenny Loggins, Wyclef Jean, Smokey Robinson, CeeLo Green, Ben Folds, Fitz and the Tantrums, and more. And though Hall’s ’80s-issue blond mullet is long gone, his music lives on onscreen, his former duo’s earworms making for unforgettable nostalgic movie moments in films from The Wedding Singer to (500) Days of Summer.
The Commodores with The Pointer Sisters
August 27 at 8 pm
There’s no denying the amazingness of The Commodores, one of the greatest Motown and R&B-funk bands of all time. To date, the group has sold more than 75 million albums worldwide. Having formed in 1968, the unit has had five number-one albums, seven number-one singles, and 15 top-10 albums. Its Lionel Richie-helmed “Three Times a Lady” and “Still” became the unforgettable soundtrack to a million 1970s slowdances in high-school gyms. The band was still nabbing Grammy Awards into the 1980s, when Richie departed the band and it released the hit “Nightshift”, a loving tribute to Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson. The Commodores’ members are all inductees in the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. Joining them onstage are The Pointer Sisters, best known for essential good-time 1970s dance hits like “I’m So Excited”, Jump (For My Love)”, “Automatic”, “Neutron Dance”, and “He’s So Shy”.
Blue Rodeo
August 29 at 8 pm
Amid the flash and neon of 1980s New Wave, Blue Rodeo offered something real and different when it debuted its alt-country sounds in 1985 at Toronto’s Rivoli club—reaching its peak in the early 1990s. Today, hits like “Try”, “Til I Am Myself Again”, “Rose-Coloured Glasses”, “Lost Together”, and “5 Days in May” take you instantly back to a time when vintage western shirts and cowboy boots were all the rage. They’re a testament to the solid, timeless songwriting partnership of frontmen Greg Keelor and Jim Cuddy. Of course, the Order of Canada-appointed band has continued to evolve its sound, releasing its 16th album Many A Mile in 2021.
Barenaked Ladies
September 1 at 8 pm
With Ed Robertson on guitar and vocals; Jim Creeggan on bass and vocals; Kevin Hearn on keyboards, guitar, and vocals; and Tyler Stewart on drums and vocals, Barenaked Ladies coined a quirky ’90s college-comedy rock whose lyrics bounced from Yoda, Brian Wilson, and Aquaman to Chinese chicken, Yoko Ono, and Kraft Dinner. Its eternal hit “If I Had $1,000,000”, in fact, inspired fans to throw that Canadian food staple at the band—the Barenakeds later requesting boxes of KD be donated to food banks instead. Together for more than 35 years, the group has sold more than 15 million albums, earned Grammy nominations and won multiple Juno Awards, even writing the theme song for The Big Bang Theory, one of the most successful TV sitcoms of all time. The group’s Vancouver performance is part of a North American tour that also includes stops in Albuquerque, Vail, Nashville, and beyond where they’ll perform tunes such as “You Run Away”, “Boomerang”, “Lovin’ Life”, and “Say What You Want”. 
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