Another example of a one-hit wonder in the States while huge in the U.K., paranoid android and Bowie Low cop artist Gary Numan can lay the blame for his lack of U.S. hits solely on his American label, Atco.  After the tremendous success of the iconic New Wave single “Cars,” Atco probably thought it was the right choice to release Numan’s first huge overseas hit (with Tubeway Army) “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” as the follow-up, even though it wasn’t featured on Numan’s then-current The Pleasure Principle LP.  After all, “Are ‘Friends’” was a massive U.K. #1 single, so it only made sense to consolidate his successes to break Numan big in the States.  Problem was, American radio, still in the thrall of the likes of Journey, Boston and Styx, was just not ready for “Are ‘Friends’” (and probably still aren’t), and the single topped out at #105, a pathetic showing for a Top Ten follow-up.

Meanwhile, over in the U.K., the downbeat, moody “Complex” (download) was chosen as The Pleasure Principle’s second single, a bewildering choice.  Almost half the song is a somber, synth instrumental, while the second part is a ballad about disconnection and alienation (on a macro level, you could almost say both halves were ripped off from Low - one moody vocal side, another instrumental).

Numan nearly had carte blanche on the U.K. charts in the early ’80s, so shockingly enough, “Complex” was a Top Ten hit.  However, to this day I can’t imagine why Numan’s record companies on both sides of the Atlantic chose to overlook the obvious choice for a second single, the groove-focused  “Metal,” (download) with its insistent guitar-like synth riff and soaring chords.  Its similarity to “Cars” wouldn’t have hurt its chances either. (more…)

It’s a shame The Lucy Show picked an awful sitcom to name themselves after, since the duo of Mark Bandola and Rob Vandeven had little in common with the strained comedy of an aging TV icon with a scotch-fueled voice and brassy henna rinse mugging with Sammy Davis Jr.  This Lucy Show started out more in a Cure vein, creating darkly melodic pop on their debut album - that all changed when A&M Records dumped them.

Recovering with a new deal with RCA-distributed Big Time Records (Love & Rockets’ original label), The Lucy Show lightened their sound a bit on their second album, Mania.  It paid off, since the group soon found itself the toast of college radio with a new sound that could almost be dubbed “gothic power pop.”  Nowhere is this more evident than on the album’s single, “A Million Things,” (download) which got the band considerable airplay on MTV’s “120 Minutes” with video featuring Bandola’s…energetic lipsyching.

Unfortunately, just as things were looking bright for the Lucy Show, Big Time Records went belly-up and the band was once again left without a record deal.  The duo released a final single on an indie label in 1988, but that didn’t do much good, so the Lucy Show finally got canceled.

I bought Mania back in 1986, solely on the strength of “A Million Things,” but I remember giving the album three or four spins before giving up on it when nothing else jumped out at me.  Seeing as its been recently re-released and remastered with bonus tracks (it’s also now available on iTunes), I have to ask any Lucy Show fans out there - am I missing anything?  Chime in if I am.

“A Million Things” did not chart.

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It’s a shame that U.K. synthpop duo Soft Cell became the epitome of an ’80s one-hit wonder.  While they charted with several singles overseas, “Tainted Love” was their sole American hit, despite releasing several excellent singles and albums.  One of those unfairly ignored singles was actually the follow-up to “Tainted Love,” another Northern Soul remake called “What!” (download)

“What!” came a few months after “Tainted Love” and Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret’s release, a non-LP single to mark time until Soft Cell’s next album.  While non-album single releases were a regular thing in other parts of the world, it was still a relative rarity in the U.S., which may explain why it failed to chart, since record labels tend to ignore songs that don’t promote album sales.  “What!” also had a fun, Pop Art-inspired video that despite being pretty fabulous got scant airplay - that didn’t help matters much.  And yes, New Wave trainspotters, that’s Mari Wilson making a cameo:

An extended version of “What!” (download) finally appeared in album form on the Non-Stop Ecstatic Dancing remix LP a few months later after the single, but by then it was too late to help its charting chances.  That’s a shame - while “What!” may have been too similar to “Tainted Love,” it was still a great little single - much more upbeat than Soft Cell’s normal oeuvre - that deserved more than just a few weeks of bubbling under the charts.  Even sadder, it was the last single to make any noise whatsoever for the duo in the States, cementing Soft Cell’s standing as a classic one-hit wonder.

“What!” peaked at #101 on the Billboard Bubbling Under Chart in 1982.

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There’s never been a musical trend that Cher has been afraid to jump upon.  From watered down hippie-dippy love songs to disco to adult contemporary schlock, the Dark Lady has matched only maybe Bowie in appropriating the current musical climate for her own campy needs.  And New Wave was no exception.

Cher’s flirtation with New Wave started as the ’80s blossomed - she had just released a second, much less successful follow-up to Take Me Home, and the Casablanca disco sound she was currently trading in was on the wane.  Enter Black Rose, a “punk” band that featured Cher on vocals and her then-current boyfriend on guitar.  The idea was that Black Rose was a real band, not a vanity project, so Cher’s image was purposely left off the front album cover art and the press materials downplayed her presence.  The result was a universally ignored album and Black Rose soon withered and died.

Flash forward two years later - Cher signed to Columbia Records for a one-album deal and was teamed with a group of hot writers to record her pop comeback, 1982’s I Paralyze.  Paired with Olivia Newton-John songwriter/producer John Farrar, who was on fire with a streak of hits for John that appropriated New Wave’s synths and drum machines, Cher released the title track (download) as the lead single.  Sounding like an outtake from Physical, “I Paralyze” had all the makings of a sure-fire hit.  However, the single suffered from scant promotion - no video was shot and Cher only made dulsatory appearances on “Solid Gold” and a rapidly aging “American Bandstand” to market it.

Cher’s then-diminished standings in the pop world and the weak promo push resulted in a non-charting lead-off single, not a good sign for the I Paralyze album as a whole.  While most of the world couldn’t hum a bar of the song, it remains a favorite of diva - she even mentions it in her VH1 “Behind the Music” episode as a song she loves and would like to re-record someday. (more…)

Starting out as a trio called the Strutters, singer/songwriter Mark Kjeldsen along with rhythm section Bobby Irwin and Ron François re-branded themselves as the Sinceros, trading in New Wave and melodic power pop.  Epic Records took notice and signed the band in the late ’70s, but not before Irwin and François were tapped to play on Lene Lovich’s New Wave classic, Stateless. After this brief detour, the Sinceros released their debut, The Sound Of Sunbathing in 1979.  A single, “Take Me To Your Leader,” got a little buzz in the U.K., and the band toured heavily there and in the States with a power-pop dream line-up co-featuring 20/20 and Paul Collins’ Beat.

After picking up Don Snow as a keyboardist, the band began work on their second album in 1980, but the obviously titled 2nd Debut was shelved by Epic.  Reworking the existing tracks with Elton John’s super-producer Gus Dudgeon, the redone album was finally released in 1981 as Pet Rock. It’s a lost power-pop classic and the lead single “Disappearing” (download) is one of the greatest should’ve beens of the ’80s - in a perfect world it would have been Top Ten everywhere.  Pet Rock starts off with a powerful one-two punch of “Disappearing” and the album’s second single, “Memory Lane,” (download) a Squeeze-ish number that’s even better than the first single.   Unfortunately, despite plenty of hard touring, Pet Rock failed to break big and the Sinceros quietly faded away.  In fact, both albums have never been released on CD.

While keyboardist Don Snow replaced Paul Carrack in Squeeze (talk about a somewhat lateral promotion!), several internet sites claim that singer/songwriter Kjeldsen ended up driving a cab in the ’90s, before succumbing to AIDS a few years later.  A sad fate for one of power-pop’s great songsmiths, but a fervent underground fan base and several music blogs keep his work alive.

Neither single charted.

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It’s an old pop joke that winning the Grammy for Best New Artist is pretty much the kiss of death for long-term success. See the Starland Vocal Band, Milli Vanilli, and today’s featured combo, Australia’s Men at Work. While not the massive flameout some other Best New Artist winners were, Men at Work had a sadly truncated shelf life that no one really saw coming.

Their first two albums were massive successes, filled with hits. You know ‘em all: “Doctor Heckyll and Mister Jive,” “Be Good Johnny” … okay, I kid. “Who Can It Be Now” and “Down Under” were huge, along with “Overkill” and “It’s a Mistake.” Both albums, Business as Usual (1982) and Cargo (1983), came hot on the heels of each other; combined with the constant touring and promotional schedule for both, the band needed a much deserved break. Two years later, the group was reduced to a trio of singer Colin Hay, saxophonist Greg Ham, and guitarist Ron Strykert. By the time their third album, Two Hearts (1985), hit the streets, the group had been further reduced to a duo — Strykert left during production.

This pretty much made Men at Work “The Colin Hay Show,” and he seemed determined to take Men at Work in a more mature, less novelty-based direction. Gone were the quirky reggae hooks of songs like “It’s a Mistake” and in their place was straight-ahead adult pop-rock like the lead single, “Everything I Need” (download). The new direction wasn’t necessarily bad, just different, but it wouldn’t be unfair to say it wasn’t really Men at Work. (more…)

Here’s an oldie but a goodie, in a whole new style: the classic video for a-ha’s “Take On Me,” redone literally. What does that mean, you ask? Watch and learn, friends. Watch and learn.

It may be the height of over-sharing to admit this, but Revenge of the Nerds was a movie that really spoke to me in high school.  As a computer-loving, comic book-collecting, Dungeons & Dragons-playing sophomore, I certainly related to Lewis and Gilbert and their struggle and desire to fit in.  Maybe I wasn’t as persecuted as they were, but I certainly felt a kinship for being teased for being smart and not athletic (not that I was any sort of genius, mind you).  While the movie was meant to be another Animal House-style comedic romp, the background and weight given to the lead characters led to a few actually somewhat poignant moments.

But for all those thoughtful moments, Revenge of the Nerds was most certainly primarily a comedy, with plenty of classic, repeatable lines (”What the fuck are ‘robster craws?’”) and memorable scenes, such as the infamous panty raid as pretext for hiding cameras in a sorority (talk about predicting the future of the Internet early!).  Also memorable was the movie’s soundtrack, a hodgepodge of minor New Wave also-rans and never-weres, like Gleaming Spires and Bone Symphony.

Gleaming Spires began life as a band called Bates Motel, gigging around Los Angeles in the early ’80s.  It was there they were discovered by Ron and Russell Mael, and Bates Motel became the new backing band for Sparks, playing on Whomp That Sucker, Angst in My Pants and Sparks in Outer Space.  During this period, with an okay from the Maels, the group began recording on their own again under the name Gleaming Spires, releasing a few albums and a novelty New Wave number called “Are You Ready for the Sex Girls,” (download) which got some airplay on KROQ.  A year or so later, it also ended up being used in Nerds during the Lambda Lambda Lambda/Omega Mu bash.  Gleaming Spires recorded one more album after their Nerds exposure, then faded away. (more…)

Y’know, if you name your kid Herbert or Poindexter, you’re just setting that child up for a lifetime of teasing and ridicule.  And if you name your band Kajagoogoo, well, you can expect a certain amount of critical derision.

That’s probably why after the success of the band’s first album, White Feathers, and Top 5 single, “Too Shy,” the group ditched both lead singer Limahl (the story goes Limahl was a Buddhist while the rest of the ‘goos were Christians) and the “googoo” suffix to release their second album, Extra Play, under the new name Kaja.  Except we here in the States are the only ones that got that title and improved moniker - everywhere else in the world Extra Play was known as Islands, the cover art was completely different, and the band remained Kaja with the googoo still intact.

Another difference was the U.S. got a different first single and remix of said song.  “Turn Your Back On Me” (download) kept with Kaja’s new mission as probably New Wave’s first overtly Christian act (unless you’d like to throw U2 in there), as the funky, bass-fueled number featured lyrics with a heavily allegorical Judas/Jesus theme - or maybe it was really supposed to be sung from Limahl’s point of view?  No?  Hrmm.

“Turn Your Back On Me” got a beefier mix for its Stateside release, as well as a different video than overseas, to no avail, since I never saw it on MTV, only once on Nickelodeon when they used to play music videos between programs.  While bassist and new vocalist Nick Beggs probably had a better voice than Limahl, he was lacking the charisma of the exiled Buddhist, and it didn’t help that he resembled ’til tuesday’s Aimee Mann: (more…)

What’s up, every bizzle? It’s Jizzle-ohn in the hizzouse with another Lost in the Izzle.

Before you grab the flaming torches and pitchforks, let me just say that’s my li’l way of introducing you to today’s artist, hip-hop pioneer/legend Frankie Smith, co-author of the classic “Double Dutch Bus” and progenitor of “izzle”-speak. That’s right, Frankie Smith gets all the credit/blame, not Snoop Dogg, who appropriated the izzle to big success a few yizzears ago.

A song about both the jump-rope technique and public transportation in Philly, “Double Dutch Bus” (download) was a nearly instantaneous smash on the R&B charts after its release. Smith wasn’t quite an overnight success, though, having spent some time in the trenches as a writer for acts like the O’Jays, Billy Paul, and other artists in the Philadelphia International Records stable. Smith got the idea for “Double Dutch Bus” after being turned down for a job as a city bus driver. He ended up in the studio at two in the morning, where he recorded a profanity-laced tirade about the bus system that, once cleaned up, became a single.

After massive success on the R&B charts (it spent eight weeks at the top), “Double Dutch Bus” crossed over to the pop side of things, where it had a little more difficult time, peaking at just #30. The chart position belies its importance in hip-hop history, however, since the song has been remade, sampled, stolen, etc., over and over, most recently by Missy Elliott with “Gossip Folks” in 2003, and this year’s travesty, a more straight-ahead remake by former Cosby Show cutie Raven-Symoné.

As for Smith, he had trouble following up, failing to chart any more singles on the pop side of things. Smith went into acting with parts in Beloved (1998) and various B movies. His Wikipedia page claims he currently works as a delivery driver, which I sort of want to believe because it would mean he finally got that dream driving job he always wanted, yet I don’t want to believe it because that’s a little depressing after scoring a gold single. Can you imagine Frankie Smith delivering your package? “Here you gizzo. I just need your sigizznatizzure right hizzere.”

“Double Dutch Bus” peaked at #30 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart and at #1 on the Hot Soul Singles chart in 1980.

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