It’s a Motown celebration, straight from Australia, mate

By Jerry Fink

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Producer Adam Steck is evacuating Australia one act at a time.

The crown jewel in his Aussie tiara is “Thunder From Down Under,” the male strip show at the Excalibur, which has been tantalizing the ladies in Vegas for a dozen years.

Five years ago he imported “Aussie Angels” — the female answer to “Thunder.”

And now it’s “Human Nature” — Australia’s answer to Motown.

“My partner in Australia sent me a video of the group and said it would be a great act for the States,” says Steck, who was skeptical. “I popped the DVD into the player and wasn’t paying any attention until they came on and I got goose bumps. I immediately placed a conference call and signed them up.”

That was two years ago.

“There weren’t any rooms available on the Strip back then,” he said. “I brought them to the Tropicana in Atlantic City for two months and the reaction was amazing.”

The quartet of clean-cut, energetic singers has been creating hit records in the land of kangaroos and Vegemite for almost 20 years.

Human Nature makes its debut Saturday at the Imperial Palace, filling the hole left when the long-running “Legends in Concert” moved from the IP to the Flamingo.

Four white guys from Australia singing Motown classics may be a stretch for some fans, but not Smokey Robinson, the King of Motown. Robinson attached his name to the production: “Smokey Robinson Presents Australia’s Human Nature — the Ultimate Celebration of Motown,” which is the longest title for a show in Las Vegas.

“Very seldom do I get really excited about something musically,” Robinson said when he recently introduced his newfound Motown singers. “But these guys blew me away. They are singers’ singers. In their area of the world they are the Beatles. They haven’t been exposed in the United States yet, but they’re getting ready to take us by storm.”

During the introduction ceremony, the group members — dressed in tightfitting suits, white shirts and thin ties — demonstrated their considerable choreographic skills, their chilling a cappella harmonizing and their grasp of the Motown sound, singing several of Robinson’s hits, including “Ooh Baby Baby” and “Get Ready.”

“I think Motown could come back again, and these are the guys who can do it,” says Don Marrandino, Imperial Palace’s president, who was looking for someone to replace “Legends in Concert.” “We don’t need another comedian or another magic show or another Cirque show. We were looking for music, dancing and fun. This stuff is so feel-good. The whole generation is feel-good music — and being from Australia, that makes it even cooler. It’s a little riskier, but cooler.”

Human Nature is Toby Allen, Phil Burton and brothers Andrew and Michael Tierney. In 1989 the four formed a doo-wop group called 4Trax when they were high school students in Sydney. Its repertoire included some Motown numbers, and the songs were so well received the group eventually focused on that music.