Trollheart

Ever wondered what happened to that band you used to listen to and haven't heard from since? No? Then **** you. If however this is something that has occasionally occurred to you, this may be the place to find out. I'm going to be looking into the careers of artists who had what are termed one-hit-wonders (which I feel is often very much a misnomer; just because they only hit the chart once doesn't mean they hadn't a successful music career) and also those who may have had one big album and then were no longer heard from again, or who were big in a certain era and then seem to have dropped off the face of the earth. Did they break up/get out of the business? Did they plod along with poorly-selling albums? Did they end up with a big fanbase but no more commercial success? Are they even still alive? Did they find Jesus? He's usually down the side of the sofa or fallen behind the fridge, though often also found in jail.

They are the questions I'll be looking into here. No reviews, as such, and nothing terribly deep, but a basic idea of "where are they now?" as I try to trace the career of each artists and see where, if anywhere, they ended up. If you would like me to trace someone for you, **** off. No seriously: let me know and I'll do my digging. My rates are twenty dollars an hour plus expenses. All right then, ten. With expenses. Without expenses. Oh, all right: I'll do it for free. Cheapskates.

I already have a list of artists I want to find out about myself.
And here it is.

(These may or may not be done in order, depending on how I feel and what other projects attract my hummingbird-like interest. More will almost certainly be added as I think of them.)

Timbuk3
Paul Young
F.R. David
King
Johnny Hates Jazz
M
Icehouse
The Thompson Twins
Howard Jones
Kajagoogoo
John Parr
Climie Fisher
Men at Work
Tanita Tikaram
Jaki Graham
Atlantic Starr
Exile
Plastic Bertrand
Hue and Cry
Curiosity Killed the Cat
Danny Wilson
Imagination
Redbox
Haircut 100
Terence Trent D'Arby
Sade
Landscape
Black
Sigue Sigue Sputnik
Bros
T'Pau
Glenn Medeiros
Billy Ocean
The Bangles
Adam and the Ants
Nena
The Kane Gang
Survivor
John Farnham
Mr. Mister
Phyllis Nelson
Taylor Dayne
Dead or Alive
Odyssey
Cameo
K.C. and the Sunshine Band
Yazz
Alison Moyet
ABC
Wet Wet Wet
Swing Out Sister
Nik Kershaw
Lloyd Cole and the Commotions
Animotion
Visage
The Stars of Heaven

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

rubber soul

Yep, I remember Timbuk3. Actually heard their big hit, The future's so bright, I Gotta wear shades, before it even hit the charts (was a big college rock staple originally.). Curious about M too. Robin Scott just seemed to disappear into the night. I thought Paul Young had more than one hit.

Hey, maybe you could find out what happened to Plastic Bertrand while you're at it.


P.S.: Howard Jones did have more than one hit, at least in the states anyway. What is Love and Things Can Only Get Better. He may have had one or two other minor hits too but I can't think of them off the top of my head.

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GD

Trollheart in the Shadows

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lasty|rate-y music-y

Trollheart

Oh I know: it's not just bands or artists with just one hit or album, though that may probably form the main framework of the thread. It's generally anyone who was once popular - mostly in the charts - and then just seemed to vanish. I'll add Plastic Bertrand for you.
No entender, senor.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

GD

Oh sorry, I was just reminded of Todd in the Shadows who does a similar thing on YouTube


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK6v74hQjvA

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lasty|rate-y music-y

Trollheart

Although I’m only today opening my Music Detective Agency, I’ve been doing this sort of thing on and off for at least the last fifteen years - tracking down artists, finding out about them, how they got started, what their music was like, and in some cases, how they ended up or even broke up. I approached this in a small way when I reviewed the metal compilation albums during one of the Metal Months, between 2013 and 2015. One thing that has always been true, no matter how big or small the case, how complicated or simple, is that the same questions pretty much always arise, and they’re the most simple and basic anyone can ask, but between them they usually yield the bulk of the information I require. These are Who, What, Why, Where and When. So this is how I will approach this project.

Who is pretty self-explanatory.

What will refer to the big hit(s)/album(s), the reason I remember the artist and my starting point for checking them out.

When is also self-explanatory, except that it won’t necessarily refer to when the artist began or when the band was formed, but will instead be the year(s) they were most successful

Where will again need no explanation: where do or did they come from?

Why will explain why I’m interested in what happened to them

Case No: THDAMMXXII-VII-IV/01/01

Client: Classified
Casefile:

Who? Timbuk3
What? “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades”
Where? America (Madison, WI)
When? 1986
Why? They had, to my knowledge, one hit and then seem to have vanished.

If there’s one place that is very conducive to the life of a private eye, it’s Dublin. Talk about your grey streets being pelted by the slanting, driving rain, turning your collar up and trying to cross the road without being drenched by big trucks and buses splashing through the deep puddles of water. I leave my sixth-floor office - hey, the rent is cheap and they don’t even charge me extra for the roaches I share the place with! - and head down the chipped and broken steps, narrowly avoiding plunging down the stairwell as I step on something which I choose to believe is a dried burrito, ignoring the blank faces that pass me as I descend. Somewhere high above a typewriter cackles as the machine no doubt enjoys the joke that someone here actually believes they can make it as a writer in this town, two mangy dogs barrel past me, looking back as if to ask why I’m on their turf, and the man in room 6 exits with yet another of his many “daughters” clinging with much affection to his arm.

I say I ignore all this, but of course I don’t, as I’ve just described it to you. I am a detective, after all: this is my job. So let’s not use the word ignore. Let’s just say… oh, let’s just say I don’t give a ****. The cold July wind batters me in the face as I push the door in the lobby and more or less fall out into the dark evening. Summer in ****ing Dublin, me arse! I heard it once joked that summer is “not available in ROI”, and I can confirm that. Last year we had a summer - think it was a Saturday, Sunday and half of a Monday. Ah, good times. The rain lashes my face like a million tiny needles and tries to dash out my eyes as I put my head down. On the street, rubes are trying to hold up umbrellas, all of which are either being turned inside out and so resemble big, spiky tulips on metal handles, or are gleefully inflating like parachutes, performing the opposite function, and dragging their owners along the path, dangerously close to the traffic which, despite the heavy rain and the poor conditions, has seen no reason to slow down at all.

Tourists. No Irish person would be so naive.

Mercifully, I don’t have too far to go. A few blocks, as you Americans would say, though here we tend to measure distance properly, the traditional way, so it’s about ten minutes down the road, turn here at the Chinese Takeaway, walk past six pubs and swing a hard right at St. Bernadettes’s and there it is, looming like something out of a Stephen King movie, lurking in the misty rain like a giant spider, my destination, the Hall of Musical Records.

I push in the door and the howling wind is cut off. Furious, it batters at the door but it can’t get in. The central heating wafts over me like, well, like central heating I guess, and the chill recedes a little from my bones. I squelch up to the main desk, nod to the receptionist, show my card (it’s a formality - I’m well known here; but rules are rules) and tramp on up the staircase to the ninth floor, where I spend most of my research. Sure, I could take the elevator, but this place is old. The lift shimmers and shakes like an old man with Parkinson’s, and has been known to just stop midway to a floor. I’ll trust my legs thanks, if it’s all the same to you.

The ninth floor is devoted to the 1980s, and I walk past the various doors from 1981 to 1985, until I get to the one I want. Pushing it open, I survey the walls of tapes, compact discs, VHS videotapes and vinyl albums, and find the one I want. I find a desk, zip open my laptop bag, fire the thing up and get to work.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

SGR

Trollheart trying to find the box in his attic that has his old Rusted Root CDs.

Trollheart

It should be understood from the beginning that this is no history of any artist. Unlike a lot of stuff I do, you’ll get no profile here. If you don’t know the artist in question, make that mouse work for ya dude, I got better things to do. This is just an investigation into what happened to the artist after their fame waned, or seemed to. In the case of Timbuk3, it’s always seemed to me that their fleeing popularity was not based on the song being great, but literally on gimmicks, three in number. One: the name of the band, a clear play on the place Timbuktu, which for some reason I’ve never been able to understand was always used in Ireland as a catch-all for a faraway or unlikely place, usually in response to the question “Where are you off to at this time of the night (or similar)?” to be answered “I’m going to Timbuktu!” Or the other idea, you might as well be going to Timbuktu as there! I firmly believe that at this time - 1970s/80s - there weren’t a whole lot of people in Ireland who had the first idea where Timbuktu was. In fact, I thought for a very long time it was a made up place like Narnia or Middle Earth.

Anyway, that’s one. The other gimmick was the cover of the single (and album), which couldn’t help but draw attention. I mean, it’s a friggin’ donkey. With a TV set on its back. If that’s not going to make you stop and look again, well, what can I say? Third then is the title of the single, their only hit. It’s just something that again attracts interest. It’s long, it’s a clever pun and it looks good on the cover. But was it a good song? Meh, it was all right. Have a listen. Nothing special.

It came from the debut album Welcome to Timbuk3 (more clever wordplay there) and was the only single taken from that, giving the band an almost top-twenty hit on both sides of the Atlantic (21 in the UK, 19 in the USA). Apparently the lyric has been misinterpreted, but **** that, not interested. So What happened after that album, which, after the initial success of the single, completely failed to follow its popularity and bombed, just falling outside the top fifty in the UK and barely making it into the top 50 in the US? Well, undaunted, they went on, it seems, releasing no less than six more albums between 1985 and 1997, none of which did anything. Their second, Eden Alley couldn’t even haul itself into the top 100 Stateside and was totally ignored in the UK, while a similar fate befell their next five efforts on both sides of the water.

Singlewise, there was a small bit of movement, with 1987’s “Life is Hard” peeping nervously into the American top 40 before falling back out, making only the number 35 slot, and ignored in the UK, as would every single (sorry) single of theirs be for the next ten years. They may have said “All I Want for Christmas (Is World Peace)” that same year, but unlike John Lennon’s timeless simple classic, nobody in the world was interested and the song made no impression whatever anywhere. The only slight impact they had after that - more a slight indentation than an impact really - was when their ridiculously-titled “Rev Jack and His Roamin’ Cadillac Church” (uh, what?) briefly visited the USA at number 35. The sensible English wanted nothing to do with this American nonsense at all - Cadillacs indeed! Hadn’t that Springsteen fellow sung about those? Twice? No thank you, we’ll stick with our Rovers and our Ford Granadas thank you very much!

Nobody was interested in their “National Holiday” (seriously? For a band who came up with such a cool and hip title for their hit, how had they not the sense to release something with a bit more snap to it?) and when they finally tried one more time, in 1995, declaring “I Wanna Funk with Your Mind”, everyone told them to funk off, except the Australians, who shrugged and allowed the single a tiny foothold at 99, then thought better of it and let it fall into obscurity, where any song with a title like that, not written by a funk or at least black band, deserves to be sent. The idea!

They were nominated as one of several Best New Artists by the Grammys for 1987 (which possibly just goes to show what the Grammys know about music!) along with Simply Red and Glass Tiger, but were beaten to it by Bruce Hornsby and the Range, and for some reason released a greatest hits package in 1992. I mean, come on: they had ONE hit single (and not a huge one - it just barely made top twenty) and that was it. What was on the album? Sixteen remixes of “The Future’s So Bright”? Never understand that. Whatever, that more or less marked the end of their career as a band, but not as musical artists, it would seem.

A two-piece consisting of a husband and wife, Timbuk3 now perform separately, Barbara Kooyman with her own solo albums, of which she has three now, though she says she “also performs the Timbuk3 material.” Again, I say what - that one single? Nobody else seems to know any of the other songs, even on the debut album. I just bet they’re all shouting for “Facts about Cats”, “Friction” or “Shame on You”. Yeah. Right. To be fair to her, Kooyman has also set up a sort of foundation, called Artists for Media Diversity (a4md.org),which she says “exists to restore the purity and power of the spiritual relationship between music and radio. A4MD can help you bring your radio station and your listeners back to the roots of the magic before music became heavily commercialized.” Right. Not quite Save the Children, then.

And what of her ex-hubby? Is he an ex-hubby? Well, yes he is; they're divorced and Pat MacDonald now lives in Spain, apparently, and continues to tour. With what? Well it seems he’s, in the words of the most famous song he and his ex-wife recorded, doing all right, though whether he’s getting good grades or not is another thing. He’s released three solo albums of his own, heavy on the acoustic guitar and with a Middle Eastern vibe (it says here) and recently - well, 2019 - released an album of, um, Depeche Mode covers. Good for him. I guess.

No. I’m not going to say it.

I’m not.

No.

No.

Oh all right then, if you insist.

Enjoy the silence.

Result of Case No. THDAMMXXII-VII-IV/01/01

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Case No: THDAMMXXII-VII-IV-01/02

Client: Classified. No, it’s not Paul King! Well, maybe not.

Casefile:
Who? King
What? “Love and Pride”
Where? UK (Coventry)
When? 1985


Well the last case took me a while to sort out, but I’m making easy money on this one! Despite the fact that Wiki tells me that King had “five top 30 singles in the space of a year”, this does appear to be a loaded statement. The single which made them - and was really their only big hit - the abovementioned “Love and Pride” was released twice, first time doing nothing and then on its re-release going to number 2 in the charts. The other two singles from the debut album Steps in Time completely bombed, and even on re-release only one of them made it into the top 30, missing out on the top 20 by only getting to number 24, while the other, well, they didn’t bother re-releasing that, so they must have known it was ****e.

Originally released in April of 1984, “Love and Pride” struggled to a pathetic number 84 (how appropriate!) but then the band played the song on TV and suddenly everyone liked it, so those canny record execs thought “give it another shot”. They did, and this time it got to number 2, almost making it to number one, but as Buzz Aldrin once sheepishly said, second comes right after first! Yeah. Anyway, the success of the two singles then released from their second album look suspiciously like they depended on the sudden interest in their first, so **** it, it’s raining outside and I’m not ready to leave just yet. Also, I like to give my clients value for money. Besides, this mug of hot tomato soup is just the thing for a ****ty night like this, so let’s check out the circumstances of the so-called “King revival”. Return of the King? Let’s not push it, pal.

Re-released in February of 1985 after their stint on the telly, the next single, also from that album and having done as poorly initially - well, worse; it didn’t even get into the charts - “Won’t You Hold My Hand Now” (I’d rather not if it’s all the same to you, don’t want to think what you might have been doing with it) hit the shelves a mere four weeks later, at the end of March, and
Made a half-decent showing of getting to number 24. The first single then from the new album, their second and last, Bitter Sweet, was released five months later and promptly climbed to number 8. So the accusation must be made that this single capitalised on the resurgence of interest in the band and the second coming, as it were, of their first (and somewhat their second) single. In other words, people suddenly wanted to buy and hear “Love and Pride”, saw there was a new single (and album) out, and bought it. Had “Love and Pride” not been so successful on its second outing, I doubt that “Alone Without You” would have done anything like as well.

The next single, the same: released two months later, got to number 11, then the popularity begins to wane as 1985 gives way to 1986, and their final chart offering, “Torture”, only managed one place more than the re-released “Won’t You Hold My Hand Now”, showing that the gloss was beginning to wear off. By now, people were probably sick of “Love and Pride”, even those who had bought it and sent it to number two, or the chart-buying sheep had moved on to the next shiny thing glittering in the record shops and forgotten all about the crowned ones.

At any rate, tracing their career after that is easy as shooting Republicans in a barrel. With the release of their second and final album in 1986 the band broke up, and as so often happens, the main man went on to… well, nothing really. He tried his hand at a solo career, releasing one album under his own name, banging it out in 1987 probably in the hope that someone out there remembered, or cared, about King the band. Nobody did. It failed to chart at all, and its singles went down like the Hindenburg. Paul thought, sod this for a game of soldiers! I’m a pop star! Someone must want me.

This time he was right. Someone did. First MTV and then VHI, where he still continues to present chart shows and specials. He also did some infomercials for eighties song collections. I guess in the end, it was good to be the King.

The others in his band? Not a clue. Could be on the dole for all I know, or anyone seems to care. Hey, as long as he’s all right, right? Oh and as a postscript, in 1998 we got The Best of King and Paul King - Love and Pride. I wonder if it sold? I wonder if you care?

So there’s another one done.

Result of Case No: THDAMMXXII-VII-IV/01/02

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Case No: THDAMMXXII-VII-V-02/03

Client: None of your beeswax

Casefile:
Who? The Kane Gang
What? Miracle
Where? England (County Durham)
When? 1987
Why? I really enjoyed their album, and would be interested to see if they continued on after it.

Researching King led to my soup going cold, and you know what soup is like when it’s cold, and more to the point, when it goes all solid and you can’t scrape it out of the mug with a chisel. So after a rather longer trip than expected to the canteen here and a lengthy explanation as to what happened, coloured with many expletives (not all from me) I make it back to my borrowed desk, laptop bag hanging from my shoulder like a GI preparing to go into battle, gingerly holding a fresh mug of hot red liquid. Mindful of the warning I received when I passed the librarian for this section, I fish out something to use as a coaster. This old Jedward CD will do; probably the first time one of the albums by the terrible twins has been of use.

It’s so peaceful in here that it’s easy to forget the shrieking wind outside, Irish summer at its best, but the tappa-tappa on the windows behind me is a reminder that the rain is still falling, and is likely to continue on through the night and into the morning. If I’m lucky. If luck is not with me, then it will keep right on going throughout the day. Wouldn’t be the first time, won’t be the last. For now though, I turn my mind from thoughts of the weather and slide back into 1987 as I remember a band few others do, as they could not in any way be said to have had even one major hit. But they had a single at this time; I heard it, liked it and in a fit of ill-advised optimism bought the album.

I really was surprised at how good it was. But what happened to them afterwards? Well, the title of their second album was not prophetic, and Miracle, despite being what I thought was an excellent and overlooked gem of an album, sank without a trace, barely making a mark on the charts, entering at forty-one, spending a mere four weeks on the chart and going no further. Kind of oddly, their previous album, the debut The Bad and Lowdown World of the Kane Gang, had fared much better, getting to 21, and hanging on for eight weeks, so either that album was far superior to this one, or the novelty aspect kicked in, or, you know, people are sheep.

Anyway, the only single from Miracle to do what could reasonably be called any chart business was the rather wonderful “Motortown” (well I thought so) but the best it could manage was 45, a slightly more respectable 36 in the USA, though really strangely one of the other singles, the last, “Don’t Look Any Further”, actually went to number 1 on the US Dance chart, but then, it was a cover, so maybe that factored in to people buying it. Neither album did well at all in the US, with the debut failing to break the Hot 100 while Miracle managed a measly 115, again making the success of “Don’t Look Any Further” logically more linked to its being a cover. And not an old one either; the original had only come out in 1984 and it also went to number 2, though on the US Black Singles chart only.

So what happened to them? Are the Gang all here still? Well, not quite. The band broke up, and vocalist Paul Woods returned to what he had been doing beforehand, journalism, while Martin Brammer, the other vocalist, went into music management. As you might expect, a multi-instrumentalist like Dave Brewis was not likely to give up music, and he didn’t, going on to record various music projects, one of which (the only one I can find, to be fair) is under his own name with an album called Autoleisureland. Why is that important? I’ll tell ya. Let me just take a slug of this soup and… aahhh! That hits the spot. Right, where was I?

Oh yeah. Well, according to an article I read in the Chronicle Live - which appears to be a magazine or newspaper local to the English Tyne-Tees area (that’s basically “oop north”, as they say there: Sunderland, Newcastle, that kind of area) Woods and Brewis are at this moment (June of 2022) working on a new album called Infiniti Drive. Hold that thought: I’ll come back to it in a mo. For now, here’s what Woods had to say about the breakup of the Kane Gang: "It was a really drawn-out, depressing experience. I even remember rats running around outside at one point. What had been something I loved was now a negative influence in my life. And that was it."

He was talking there about the band’s attempts to work on a third Kane Gang album, which of course never materialised. As I say, he went back to being a journalist, while Brewis continued on with his music and released the aforementioned album. But the thing is, the new project that both are now working on is called Autoleisureland, and the album title comes from the title of one of the tracks on that original album, released in 2017. Yeah, not that interesting I know, but hell, I take what I can get in this biz. Anyhoo, their new album is due out later this year, so although Martin Brammer is obviously happy enough doing what he’s doing, it’s nice to see that in a small way The Kane Gang live on, even if the music is completely different. And there’s only two of them. And the band name has been changed. And it’s now thirty-five years later. Hey, can’t have everything!

Result of Case No: THDAMMXXII-VII-V-02/03
Case remains open

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018