Todd In The Shadows Thread

Hendrix himself qualifies except he's, well, Hendrix Clause.

Actually, interesting thought. Does an artist that was a one hit wonder in the UK but didn't have a hit anywhere else count for the show?

Because Todd's twitter reminded me of a song that did manage to break into the top ten over there but only barely made it onto the alternative charts stateside.

I certainly hope it would. I want that Fool's Garden episode some day.

Wait, did Soft Cell have any US hit outside of their cover of Tainted Love? I mean granted, most people know of Tainted Love AS a Soft Cell song than a Gloria Jones song but still.

Edited by PippingFool on Jul 29th 2018 at 5:19:29 AM

If he did a OHW on Kajagoogoo, would he cover Limahl's solo career in the same episode? Neverending Story is a pretty iconic song, so just throwing it into the "did they ever do anything else" section wouldnt quite work.

I keep forgetting that “Tainted Love” is actually a cover, despite the fact that the Gloria Jones original is most excellent.

Kajagoogoo never had a second hit in the States as a band, so they count. Outside of the crummy debut single “Big Apple,” I actually prefer the Nick Beggs-led version of the band (subsequently abbreviated to just Kaja).

On Patreon and coming soon, One Hit Wonderland of "She Blinded Me With Science" by Thomas Dolby.

• I will be very disappointed if the review doesn't mention both Howard the Duck and Ferngully The Last Rainforest.
• Somewhat surprised he was a one-hit wonder, but it turns out "Hyperactive" wasn't as big of a hit as I thought.
• As often as I've noted instances where a OHW episode's subject was parodied or polkaed by "Weird Al" Yankovic, I wondered if this was the first subject that had been style-parodied by him. The answer: no, because he had pastiched Hanson before with "If That Isn't Love", but this is the second one! ("Things just haven't been the same / Since the flying saucers came...")

Edited by FalconPain on Jul 29th 2018 at 2:21:56 AM

Yeah, the original is pretty great.

Kind of a shame that Gloria Jones these days is mostly just known as the girlfriend of glam rock legend Marc Bolan rather than the original singer of Tainted Love, if she's remembered at all. Her career is pretty expansive and interesting

Edited by PippingFool on Jul 30th 2018 at 1:31:42 AM

So I know it wouldn't really count against his one-hit-wonderdom, but Thomas Dolby also played keyboards on a couple little albums from the 80s called Pyromania and Hysteria. I imagine Todd covers this in "Did he do anything else?", but to hear Dolby himself tell it, the conversation circa Pyromania basically went as follows:

Mutt Lange: "Hey Tom, thanks for your help on this album. But you know, you're already an established solo artist, people might get confused seeing you in the credits for this album...how about we call you Booker T Boffin in the liner notes?"

Thomas Dolby: "Sure, why not."

He went on to mention that he actually has Platinum albums for Pyromania credited to "Booker T. Boffin".

Dolby is one of those artists I keep forgetting is technically a one-hit wonder. Mainly because I remember a bunch of other tunes by him airing on early MTV, but none of those charted^* well, the aforementioned “Hyperactive” was a low-ball “outside the top 40” chart hit.

But he was a busy sideman who had already been heard on a bunch of chart hits. Remember Foreigner’s “Waiting for a Girl Like You”? Dolby played the synths on that one. There has also been a Dolby-related song already appearing in a past Todd in the Shadows review: “When Love Breaks Down” by Prefab Sprout. Dolby produced the album that featured it, Steve McQueen^** but not the actual song, which was produced by Phil Thornally. Dolby remixed the album version, though.

Holy SHIT. Thomas Dolby did a LOT.

So all the requests except for this are from the 90's. Feel free to speculate. Meanwhile, I'll just do my job:

Edited by Smasher on Aug 1st 2018 at 8:25:11 AM

Hope one of the next picks is this one, also my choice for probably the most 90's OHW:

Think if one of the requests is "What's Up", he'll do it just to get it done? I just want to know what his whole hate is for that song.

I hope he'll do Counting Blue Cars by Dishwalla.

...Man, the Nineties had a lot of OHW didn't they?

Maybe Todd should do top 10 lists of One Hit Wonders covered on the show that deserved better/didn't deserve better.

You know, I've just had a thought: would Tay Zonday classify as a one-hit wonder?

If Wall of Voodoo and SR-71 do, then he does.

Next Trainwreckords is up on Patreon, and it's one of the really obvious ones. Van Halen III

Yes, I will be a person who noticed that Todd referred to Extreme's style of music as "Bill and Ted rock" without playing a single clip from that song of theirs that was featured in a Bill and Ted movie.

Even though I like a handful of songs on this album (Fire in the Hole, Ballot or the Bullet, and even Without You), I think the main problem with this album is the ultra-sterile production. Outside of Fire in the Hole, the songs all sound like they were recorded in some echo-chamber, as opposed to most rock albums which at least have a "live" feel to them (as in, you could see these songs pulled off in a concert setting).

Nice episode! For some reason, probably the video (And the fact that Madonna had a song of the same name out), I thought that lead single was called "Frozen" for all these years.

I remember reading an interview with Gary Cherone that I sadly can't find now (Though I did find one from Rolling Stone where he seemed to agree they were still writing songs for Sammy's voice) where he basically acknowledged the album was kind of a mess, due to being rushed out before it was really finished. IIRC, he said his whole era would have been better received had they done the tour and then the album.

Refreshingly, he doesn't seem bitter about the experience, so there's that!

All right, we’re going back in time for this, but I thought of Todd first when I found out of its existence, since he ragged on this line in his review so much:

Well, this is hilarious. Barely half an hour, and it already got YouTubed.