(WILD! tour photo scanned from
Erasure's TINY TOUR book)

----------------------- NEWSDAY'S REVIEW (excerpt) OF THE FEB. 15th 1990 WILD! GIG AT THE NASSAU COLISEUM IN NEW YORK: Midway through Erasure's third song at the Nassau Coliseum, singer Andy Bell took off his jacket, stripping down to just the basics: gold-sequined woman's bathing suit, platform sneakers and big white athletic socks. To the screams of 18,000 men, women, and adolescents, he began to twirl across the stage -shaved head and all- like a ballerina. Then just as suddenly, while his partner Vince Clarke programed the drum machines and and synthesizers into an upbeat, high-energy disco pulse, Bell immersed himself again in Erasure's very languid, almost morose lyrics of love and pain. ...Erasure put on a sublime spectacle. Backup singers dressed as "Star Trek" handmaidens and male dancers flashing their nipples joined Bell and Clarke in a stage decorated as a primadoral bower where outsized flowers looked and moved suspiciously like even more outsized male organs, Bell & Clarke sketched out pristine, melancholy synthesizer pop. The show was also a private code made public - and to a much larger audience than anyone who hasn't been paying attention would have thought possible. Though Erasure receives very little commercial radio play, the Coliseum was nearly sold out, and tickets to the (February 16) show at Madison Square Garden sold out in a few hours. The performance was gay entertainment for the masses. The more flamboyant Bell was, the more the crowd loved it. He was, for an audience that prided itself on its alternative taste in music, a superhero of sexual liberation. He was Mick Jagger in petticoats and a red tiara. And even if Bell wasn't connecting on all circuits, he gave the audience what any crowd of furious dancers wants: an atmosphere of relaxed sexual taboos, an almost religious faith in real love, an asylum where real love seems possible, and a good beat. Boys and girls mouthed his lyrics lovingly to their dates, and identified with Bell's plea to his parents to accept him as he was. And why not? Easily reduced to generalities, Erasure's themes all fit neatly within the standard canon of arena rock. But Bell's language lost something along the way. Once it reaches arena scale, pop speaks above all the language of pop; subtilties of language and address fade, and people hear the homilies they are accustomed to hearing. The spectacle loses its meaning as anything but a spectacle; on a big scale, the audience determines the music's message, not the performers... -John LeLand

1989 - WILD! TOUR

July 18 & 19 - Prince's Trust gig, Birmingham UK (Andy with Level 42)

November 3 - Liseburgshall, Gothenburg SWEDEN

November 4 -Eriksdallshallen, Stockholm SWEDEN

November 6 - Valbyhallen, Copenhagen DENMARK

November 9 - Munsterlandhalle, Munster GERMANY

November 10 - Hanomag, Hanover GERMANY

November 12 - Sportshall, Prague CZECHOSLOVAKIA

November 13 - Inselzt, Vienna AUSTRIA

November 15 - Festhalle, Luzerne SWITZERLAND

November 16 - Circus Krone, Munich GERMANY

November 18 - Osteehalle, Kiel GERMANY

November 19 - Sportshalle Alterdorf, Hamburg GERMANY

November 20 - Eissportshalle, Berlin GERMANY

November 22 - Philipshalle, Dusseldorf GERMANY

November 27 - Stradthalle, Offenbach, GERMANY

November 28 - Mozartsaal, Mannheim GERMANY

November 29 - Liedehalle, Stuttgart GERMANY

December 2 - SE&CC, Glasgow Scotland UK

December 3 - SE&CC, Glasgow Scotland UK

December 4 - Kings Hall, Belfast N. Ireland UK

December 5 - The Point, Dublin IRELAND

December 7 - International Centre, Bournemouth UK

December 8 - Brighton Centre, Brighton UK

December 10 - London Arena, London UK

December 11 - London Arena, London UK

December 12 - International Centre, Bournemouth UK

December 14 - G-Mex, Manchester UK

December 15 - G-Mex, Manchester UK

December 16 - Ice Rink, Whitley Bay UK

December 17 - Pavillion, Shepton Mallet UK

December 20 - NEC, Birmingham UK

December 21 - NEC, Birmingham UK

December 22 - NEC, Birmingham UK

December 23 - NEC, Birmingham UK

(Wild! tour continues in 1990)

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Various setlists for 1989 include:

Piano Song - You Surround Me - Chains of Love - Star - Crown Of Thorns - Supernature -Who Needs Love (Like That) - Stop! - Victim Of Love - La Gloria - Blue Savannah - Sometimes - The Hardest Part - Drama! - A Little Respect

Backing singers for Wild tour were: Valerie Chalmers & Emma (Chalmers) Whittle

Merchandise sold on tour included: program books, tee shirts, enamel pins, posters, baseball caps

The support band for the 1989 UK gigs on the Wild tour was: Ocean