The Kids From "Fame" Live on Tour in Israel

Kids from Fame concert Special on Tour in Israel. Debbie Allen, Lee Curreri, Erica Gimpel, Carlo Imperato, Valerie Landsburg, Gene Anthony Ray, The Waters and The Fame Dancers, take their very successful tour to Tel Aviv, Israel to celebrate it's 35th Birthday.

 The Kids perform some of the songs from the show as well as some cover versions. Also we see the cast sight seeing in Israel and commenting on their thoughts and feelings.

This episode was never shown in the U.K. during the original BBC broadcasts and ar that time I didn’t know it even existed. When the show was broadcast again on the Children’s Channel in the early 90s I was so excited to see something I hadn’t seen before.

When the cast toured the U.K. for the second time I wasn’t allowed to go as it was a school night and there was only an evening performance, where I lived.

The show was very similar to the first tour although they changed some of the songs and most of those different songs were shown in this episode, so I finally got to see “Higher Ground”, “Murphy’s Blues”, “Memory” etc.. 10 years later. 

The cast performed 7 sell out shows in Tel Aviv to over 48000 people.

I particularly like the narrations between the songs as the kids explore Israel and help celebrate the Countries 35th Birthday.

Also it was interesting to here Gene talk, he states he’s 20 but in the series he always seemed so much older, to me. Just the way he’s talking here makes me realize how young they were and how much pressure the cast was under, so I’m not surprised some of them had their problems later on. Gene did perform “Lay Back And Be Cool” during the original U.K. concerts but for whatever reason this was cut out of the televised version and from the video so it’s nice to see it here.

The Israeli Concert Programme lists the cast as: Debbie, Valerie, Gene, Carlo, Lee and Lori however we get Erica instead of Lori. This concert takes place after the 2nd U.K. tour which Erica left after her fights with Debbie but she’s back in the show now so presumably they patched up their differences. Lori left the U.K. tour to fly back to America to start work on Footloose. 

It is so good to see Val perform live and she chose probably the best song she sang in Season 2 “Just When I Really Needed You”. Although to me it looks like she messes her little speech up and quickly goes into the song.

The start of “Friday Night” sounds different here than in the U.K. concert and don’t get me started on Carlo’s moustache! What was he thinking?

I’m not really keen on Debbie’s version of “Memory”, I’m not convinced it’s in the right key for her and it sounds a little screechy. Debbie's hair looks so much different during the concert to the scenes in Israel, where her curls seem so much tighter and her hair shorter.

“Starmaker”, again is excellent, although at the beginning Val and Erica seem to sing the same line. I don’t know if that was Erica being confused because she’d sung that line when Val wasn’t there or if they in fact decided to have both of them sing it.

The ballad medley as always is lovely and it’s nice to hear the variation of it which now includes “Beautiful Dreamer” for Val, although I so wish she’d have done “I was Only Trying To Help” instead as that is a much better song. I believe Eartha sang Erica’s part on “I Still Believe in Me” during the U.K. leg of the tour when Erica wasn’t there although I’ve never actually heard that but would be very interested to.

Then at the end while “Fame” is playing Gene has stripped down to his animal print underwear! That boy loves to take his clothes off!

While looking through an old copy of the Fame magazine I re-read a review of the second tour. In addition to what I've already written there are some performances that we've never seen in the specials.

When Debbie introduced the Waters backing singers they performed "Step Up To The Mike".

In act 2 Carlo sang a song called "Sail Away" and Debbie and the dancers performed "It's Raining Men".

I wished they'd have put these performances into this episode instead of repeating "Starmaker", "Friday Night" and the instrumental dance routine that they'd already broadcast in the U.K. concerts.

Michael Hoey states in his behind the scenes book that this episode hadn't been as successful as the other concert specials and states that a local crew were used to film it and general opinion was that this didn't have the same production values as the other shows.

Original  air date in U.S.A  05th November 1983

Original  air date  in U.K. The Children's Channel  Autumn 1992

Original air date in The Netherlands  03rd March 1984

Original air date in Italy 21st August 1986

Original air date in Belgium  28th  April 1988     

Original  air date in France 25th January 1989