Marcus Montana

Marcus Montana was the stage name of Marcus Lagudi, an Australian pop performer from the late 1980s. He was known for his debut single, "Tell Him I'm Your Man" (mid-1989), which was not a commercial hit. However, it has been long remembered in the Sydney area and was extensively covered in the local papers during and long after his debut. His brief music career was the subject of a retrospective by Jack Marx in 2005 for The Sydney Morning Herald. Lagudi is the middle of three sons of Italian-Australian greengrocers; all three had attended a private eastern suburbs school, Waverley College.

Poster campaign

Montana is largely remembered as an early example of viral marketing, the launch of his brief career in mid-1989 was preceded by a poster campaign in Sydney, which covered thousands of walls, billboards, and telephone poles with posters that declared: "Marcus is Coming". As intended the campaign generated discussion on radio, and expectations in the media and community. While the campaign itself was successful in making Montana's debut a talking point, his subsequent music career was a failure. The B-side is "End of the Line". The single peaked at number 146 on the Australian ARIA singles chart in October 1989. During his brief pop career Montana worked with Michael Vidale, the bass guitar player with Jimmy and the Boys, Louis Burdett on drums and guitarist Tim Freedman, who was later the founding mainstay member of the Whitlams.

Appearances

Montana played a series of gigs in Sydney – an outdoor concert at Darling Harbour and a series of performances in Westfield and Roselands shopping centres – but they were noteworthy more for the audience heckling the singer than anything else. Freedman wore a wig, in an attempt to disguise himself, when backing Montana. Another gig was at the popular pub-rock venue, Selinas, in Coogee. Freedman contacted his friend, Steve Pavlovic to book Marcus for his last show, at The Lansdowne Hotel, Broadway on 29 December 1989.

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