I C E H O U S E Announce Two Extra 40 Years Live! Shows & Commemorate ‘Man Of Colours’ 30th Anniversary

And before the first note gets played, the band have announced two further shows: the first at the refurbished Palais Theatre in Melbourne on 17 November, and the second is a return to the Enmore Theatre in Sydney on16 December for a fifth performance, extending the celebration of the band’s 40 year live career.

The Man of Colours album hits the 30 year milestone in September this year and these two shows will see Iva Davies and the band perform songs from that seminal album as well as their biggest hits including Great Southern Land, No Promises, We Can Get Together, Don’t Believe Anymore, Can’t Help Myselfand many more.

Man of Colours was released on 21 September 1987 and has sold over 10 x Platinum. The album went to No. 1 on the Album Charts (for 11 consecutive weeks) and won two ARIA Awards (Album of the Year, Highest Selling Album). Rarely has an album won the ARIA Award for both critical acclaim by the music industry, and popular acclaim by the public. It was also the first Australian album to spawn 5 Top 30 singles – Electric Blue, Crazy, My Obsession, Man of Colours and Nothing Too Serious.  Electric Blue also went on to win Most Performed Australasian Popular Work at the APRA Music Awards.

In commemoration, a special multi-coloured vinyl will be released in September reprising the very rare original vinyl which blended the colours of all the special editions of Man of Colours that were released.

Iva Davies recalls, “‘Man of Colours’ came about over a two year period in an almost magical way.

“By April of 1985 I had moved into a dilapidated two storey terrace in Erskineville. For the first time, I had a full 24-track recorder, a proper mixing desk, the ever present Fairlight sampler plus other keyboards and effects units I had accumulated. It was like being in a toy shop for me.

“In late 1986, it came time to embark on the recording of a new set of songs. ICEHOUSE guitarist, Bob Kretschmer and I had written and demo taped in that Erskineville writing studio and I had an obvious choice of co-producer because David Lord and I had worked together so successfully on the ‘Measure for Measure’ album. This time David came to Australia, and we recorded ‘Man of Colours’ at Studio 301 in Sydney.

“In many ways, the ‘Measure for Measure’ and ‘Man of Colours’ albums are related through David Lord’s involvement and the fact that Bob and I worked so well as a writing team at that Erskineville house. We knew that we had produced something of quality but we were certainly not prepared for its enormous critical and popular success.”

Yesterday it was announced that the ICEHOUSE classic, Great Southern Land, would be the name of one of Qantas’ new Dreamliner fleet of airplanes, as voted on by the public.

Iva said, “I’d like to thank the people who voted and Qantas for honouring me by naming one of their planes after the song I wrote back in 1981.

“At the time I was attempting to write a new song about the country we love and wanted a new name and new way of describing it. I was aware that early European explorers described it as the “Great South Land” but I wanted something new, something more streamlined and singable. So I created the phrase “Great Southern Land” which became the signature of the song.

“Over 35 years later I find it remarkable how far that phrase has spread and now it seems set to travel even further.”

The 40 Years! Live Tour has been underway since January with the band performing 24 shows to over 230,000 fans.

Tickets are on sale from 9.00am local time on Monday, 26 June. An exclusive presale for ICEHOUSE fan club members will begin at 9.00am today, Thursday 22 June.

Pictures and full bio information can be downloaded from here.  Live footage from the band’s Red Hot Summer headline show is here