Men Without Hats frontman talks longevity of ‘Safety Dance,’ return to the village, Niagara Falls show: interview

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — Canadian synth-pop band Men Without Hats still want to dance — and they’ll be bringing their fun energy and electrifying show to Western New York next month.

Frontman Ivan Doroschuck and company will be embarking on a Canadian tour with A Flock of Seagulls, Honeymoon Suite and Spoons this fall, but first, they will be stopping by The Bears Den at Seneca Niagara Resort & Casino for two solo shows on Nov. 1 and 2.

“We’ve played the Bear’s Den before at Seneca and it’s fun — it’s a nice little room,” Doroschuck said. “And we’ll be able to do our full set, so we’re looking forward to it. We did a big American tour this summer — the Totally Tubular Festival — with a bunch of bands and we had a lot of fun, but we had a shorter set. Now we’re getting to do the whole thing, so it’s great.”

The setlist

In addition to a slew of originals like “Pop Goes the World,” “Where Do the Boys Go,” “Antarctica” and obviously “The Safety Dance,” the band’s set typically consists of a few covers from their record “Again (Part 1).” Doroschuck spoke about the album and how the band came to the decision to include the songs they did.

“The Tragically Hip was on there, we had ‘2000 Light Years From Home’ from The Rolling Stones, ‘Satellite of Love’ – Lou Reed, ‘All the Young Dudes’ – Mott The Hoople/David Bowie,” he said. “It was songs that we grew up with in the ’70s. I’m a child of the ’70s, I grew up in one of the greatest musical eras, I consider, of all-time. We just wanted to let people know what music influenced us to make our music.”

Also on a typical Men Without Hats setlist are three versions of “The Safety Dance” — the original, the extended dance version and a ballad version, which was also included on “Again (Part 1).”

‘The Safety Dance’

Doroschuck laughed at the expression that picking a favorite version of a song for artists is like picking between their children.

“Picking my favorite kid is easy for me cause I only have one,” he said, then discussing his favorite version of the band’s biggest hit. “Although I do like the original version and I do like the dance version, the last version we recorded, I hate to say, ‘It moves me.’ It’s a slow ballad-y version.”

Doroschuck said after 40 years since the release of “The Safety Dance,” the ballad version, titled “No Friends of Mine” allows him to reminisce, take it slow and take it easy.

The next generation

Since the band’s debut in 1977, Men Without Hats has seen a slew of different lineups onstage. Last year, they added Doroschuck’s niece, Sahara Sloan to the band. Sloan, the daughter of Men Without Hats’ own Colin Doroschuck, grew up in the band’s rehearsal space and traveled on the road with them in the ’80s and ’90s.

“She’s not only an amazing singer, she’s a trained opera singer,” Ivan Doroschuck said. “So it’s great to have somebody who actually really knows how to sing in the band.”

He said her addition to the band “closes the circle,” and when he introduces her at shows, he starts by saying, “I used to carry her around on my back.”

“I was there when she was born and babysat her a lot,” Doroschuck recalled.

Not only is the on-stage presence of Men Without Hats seeing an evolution through generations, but the band’s fans as well.

“When we do shows now, we play for our original fans, and they bring their kids and sometimes they bring their grandkids, even,” Doroschuck said. “So it’s great to see the cross-generation thing going on, it’s really fun.”

What’s helped bridge that generation gap has been the resilience of “The Safety Dance” and its ability to appeal to all.

…if you want to

“I think some people still need to hear that message: that they can dance if they want to,” Doroschuck said. “It just touched a chord back then, and it still does.”

He said people were surprised by the video, because they were expecting him “to have spiked hair and zipper clothes and pointy shoes” doing “some kind of dance,” but the video went another direction.

“It was this medieval thing that’s kind of timeless,” he said. “You look at the video now and you’ve got the sound down, you can’t really tell when it was done. It’s kind of like a western or something like that, you can’t really pinpoint it in time, whereas a lot of other ’80s videos, you kind of sit back and chuckle and sort of point at the clothes and the hairdos and whatnot.”

Additionally, Doroschuck credited the simplicity and accessibility of the song’s corresponding dance move for its continued success, mentioning the humor he sees in the song’s lasting power coming from the general lack of an actual safety dance.

“There was no real dance, it was just the ‘S’ movement,” he said. “That was available to anybody. There was no dress code, there was no dance move, it sort of appealed right across the board, which is why we still have fans who like punk rock, who like jazz, who like all kinds of music. They kind of come together with ‘Safety Dance.'”

He concluded the idea with the song’s thesis statement:

“You could dress how you want to, you could dance how you want to, you could dance if you want to and it didn’t really matter and it was easy. So I think that’s what gave it the lasting power.”

What’s next

As far as the famed music video goes, Doroschuck said he still keeps in touch with the farmer who owned the land it was filmed on.

“We talk on Facebook,” he said. “A lot of people knock it, but it’s a good tool sometimes to keep in touch with people that you wouldn’t be in touch with otherwise.”

Doroschuck also said the band is hoping to do another video on the farm as a sort of a ‘return to the village’ for an upcoming music video. He said it’s been discussed, but “it’s still in the works.”

In terms of more immediate plans, Doroschuck said he’s excited to get back to Niagara Falls for the show less than a month from now.

“We’re looking forward to seeing people in Niagara Falls, I love that area of the country,” Doroschuck said. “I’m always happy when I go back there. We had a great time this summer, so I’m expecting another great time when we hit the Bear’s Den.”

Tickets to Men Without Hats’ Niagara Falls shows can be purchased at this link.

Adam Duke is a digital contributor who joined WIVB in 2021. See more of his work here.

Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to News 4 Buffalo.