You remember these guys, right? Okay, maybe you don’t. But I sure do.

Not that they’re not a great band, but the reason that it’d be easy enough to forget the Pursuit of Happiness (henceforth to be referred to as TPOH) is because Chrysalis Records seemed to want to focus almost exclusively on making the smart-ass “I’m an Adult Now” into their signature song rather than trumpeting the way more important fact — at least to music geeks, anyway — that their debut album, Love Junk, had been produced by Todd Rundgren. It’s not that “I’m an Adult Now” isn’t a funny song; it’s just that the older you get, the less often you find yourself interested in spinning it, as opposed to the follow-up single, “She’s So Young,” which has all the harmonic hallmarks of a Rundgren production to provide a lifetime of listening enjoyment. Of course, that really just means that it sounds like something from one of Rundgren’s own albums, but it’s not like that’s a bad thing. After all, if you give me the choice between listening to “I’m an Adult Now” and “She’s So Young,” I’ll go with the latter every single time.

Unfortunately, when Todd turned up to produce the band’s sophomore effort, One-Sided Story, Chrysalis pulled the same stunt again, opting for the awkwardly catchy “Two Girls in One” as the first single rather than the way more obvious (and way more Rundgren-esque) “New Language.” The result: the novelty angle didn’t work the second time around, the album died a quick death, and TPOH found themselves without a label.

Enter Mercury Records, who presented the band’s next record, The Downward Road, in 1993. Rundgren wasn’t producing this time around — that honor went to Ed Stasium — but he did schedule time to provide a guitar solo for “Love Theme for TPOH.” Also in tow for a song was Jules Shear, who wrote the lyrics and cowrote the music for “A Villa in Portugal.” Alas, despite the first single, “Cigarette Dangles,” getting a bit of love, The Downward Road continued the downward commercial spiral for the band and served as the swan song for their major-label career. And that’s where I lost pursuit of the band, as did most of America.

I’ve since gotten the impression that their 1995 indie album, Where’s the Bone, only picked up a tiny bit of steam because of the novelty hit “Gretzky Rocks.” As for me, I didn’t even know it existed until well after 2000, when I eventually stumbled upon it in a used bin; I discovered the 1996 follow-up, The Wonderful World Of…, first, and that’s only because the group’s label at the time, Iron Music, spontaneously sent it to the magazine I was writing for.

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