October 19, 2021 • 42 mins
Big dreams require big swings. Dave talks to an unexpected voice about the bold action that changed her life forever. Meanwhile, 1991 Dave Holmes and Karen Kilgariff are leading parallel lives 2,000 miles apart. Dave Coulier is involved. And we are one step closer to finding Sudden Impact.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
So I was in college, but it was the summer
of my sophomore year or freshman year, and I had
gone to a BBD concert and met Jeff Dyson, who
was one of the new editions. He had long time
been a new addition bodyguard. He was on the road
with BBD.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Last time on waiting for Impact. My friend Scott and
I found out we were one degree of separation closer
to sudden impact than we ever knew we were. We
have a friend who was a recording artist in Michael Bivens'
East Coast family and you know her too. It's twenty
twenty one Emmy nominee if that's Nicole Brown.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
And I told him, I say, I want to sing
for Michael bibbns. Can you please let me backstage?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Like me in nineteen ninety one, if that had big dreams,
but unlike me, she knew how to manifest them.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
And he was like, I cannot let you backstage, but
I can tell you that they're staying at the Sheridan
in Cauiahaga Falls. So if you happen to show up,
you know at the Sheridan. You didn't hear it from me.
To this day, I know Jeff. Now you know Jeff
and our friends now. And to this day he says
he doesn't know why he did it. He was just like,
I don't know something about you. Just felt like I was
(01:10):
supposed to help you.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Evett loved Michael Biffins, She loved New Addition, she loved
Belle Bivdevaux, and she loved to sing. So she found
Michael Bivens and she sang.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
And so I went to that hotel, stayed in the
lobby until four o'clock in the morning when BBD came
to the hotel and I followed Michael Bibbins around and
I was like, mister Bifman's massing for you, mister Biman's
massing for you, mister Bimin's messing for you.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
And then finally he was like, oh gosh, like just sing.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
He was mad.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I was mad, like it had been at an opus
to get to this moment.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
That's the thing about taking big swings. Sometimes they're mortifying,
but sometimes they actually work.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
He finally let me sing for him and asked for
my number, and then called me the next day and
invited me to be a part of the East Closet family.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
We're going to talk to a vete, Nicole Brown, about
her time in the Coast Family, about what it was
like to wait for your moment in the spotlight as
a singer, and about what you do when it never comes,
And we're going to find out what she knows about
sudden Impact.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
Also, we'll talk to Karen Kilgareth. She and I were
leading more or less the.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Same life back in nineteen ninety one, So we're going
to talk about what she learned that got her to
where she is now. And we're going to talk about
another big thing we have in common, a pivotal career
moment that involves losing a big contest on national TV.
This is Waiting for Impact, a Dave Holmes passion project.
(02:47):
So here's where we left off. As I began my
search for Sudden Impact, my friend and fellow pop culture
obsessive Scott Gimple, found a nineteen ninety two music video
from the East Coast Family, a group of pop, R
and B and hip hop artists signed by Michael Bivens
to his record label biv ten, a subsidiary of Motown.
The song and video are called one four All four
to one. By the way, the title of that song
(03:09):
never gets any easier to say. You always have to
kind of prepare your mouth, but it is what we
would now call a posse track. There are rap moments
from Mark Finesse, from two young kids called ten ten
who have their suspenders on backwards a little like the
other young rap duo of the time, Chris Cross, probably
(03:31):
a coincidence, and from mc brains who would go on
to have a top forty hit later in nineteen ninety
two called Uchi Couci. There are moments that are sung
by a big frat boy looking guy named Hayden with
a sport coat slung over his shoulder, and by a
group called White Guys whytgi Ze who look a little
like Sudden Impact. And then there's a young woman with
(03:54):
a clear and beautiful voice and a warm and familiar smile.
She goes by the single name Yvette Vete Nicole Brown Sunday.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
I can't stress you just how my job just dropped.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
My friend Scott, who we met in the last episode,
is the chief content officer for the Walking Dead universe,
and a Vett is a Walking Dead super fan. Vette
and Scott, as we learned, are real friends in real life.
But this is a part of her story that he
didn't know anything about. And we now have the connection
to the East Coast family and maybe sudden impact that
(04:31):
we've been looking for a backstage pass, if you will.
So I asked Scott to reach out to a vet
to see if she'd be interested in opening up about
her life in the East Coast family. And while we
waited for an answer, I wanted to go a little
bit deeper into the early nineties and what life was
like for a young dreamer back then. And I know
someone who I bet has some very good insights. What
was Karen's nineteen ninety one esthetic talk?
Speaker 5 (04:53):
What's you wearing.
Speaker 6 (04:54):
At Jesus H, I'll tell you, I'll tell you it's
not good news.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
That is Karen Kilgareff. She's a comedian, a writer, the
co host of My Favorite Murder, and the co founder
of Exactly Right, the network i'm doing this podcast on.
In nineteen ninety one, Karen was working a look.
Speaker 6 (05:11):
Because I was out of the house and I could so.
First of all, I died my hair black, like the
second I got a chance to. That was incredibly like invigorating,
and like, you know, I know what I want.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
I dyed my hair black. I was pale as a ghost.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Karen's a friend of mine now, but in nineteen ninety
one we were strangers leading very similar lives.
Speaker 6 (05:33):
I started working at the Gap, and that really, that
felt bad, That felt real goad.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
Again, we're on parallel tracks.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
Did you work at that?
Speaker 5 (05:43):
I did? I ever the winner of Navy and White Cap?
I was there. What is white cap? I asked, I
said white. It's just a different word for white.
Speaker 6 (05:54):
It's a way to say white and really set yourself apart.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
In nineteen ninety one, in separate malls, in separate cities,
two thousand miles away from each other, Karen and I
were doing the same thing, suffering through eight hour shifts,
pushing pocket t shirts and high waisted jeans, listening to
four or five spins per day of that corporate mixtape,
dreaming about the lives and careers we would have someday,
lives and careers we couldn't even picture because they didn't
(06:18):
even really exist yet. Back then, we were on the outside,
with our noses pressed up against the glass. Right now,
Karen is a big deal, like few other people I know.
She went out and got her life. But in nineteen
ninety one. We were both very busy daydreaming about what
our lives in the future could look like, and we
were both hard at work fucking up our lives in
the present.
Speaker 5 (06:39):
Who was Karen Kilgareth in the summer of nineteen ninety.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
One, Oh god, well, I just turned twenty one.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
Oh boy.
Speaker 6 (06:49):
I was living in Sacramento at the time. I had
flunked out of Sacramento State University.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
Congratulations, thank you so much. Not easy to do.
Speaker 6 (06:59):
Took medication, and it took a real know how and perseverance.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
To be asked to leave a state school.
Speaker 6 (07:09):
That was basically took all comers and didn't give a shit.
Speaker 5 (07:14):
Now, once again Karen and I were leading parallel lives there.
We'll get into that shortly.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
But in order to give her life some direction and
stop feeling bad about failing out of school, Karen tried
something new.
Speaker 6 (07:25):
The good part about this era was just before it,
when I was twenty, I started doing stand up comedy
as a desperate move to stop being such a loser
who had flugged out of school and just had and
basically was kind of going nowhere in the Central Valley.
So I think by the time my twenty first birthday
(07:47):
rolled around, I had felt that I had actually begun
on my path toward my dream, which was always kind
of a secret, Like I really knew I wanted to
be a stand up comedian for a long time, but
I I just didn't believe I would ever do it.
And then this kind of amazing combination of good and
bad things happened, and then I.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
Got to start.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Karen transferred to Sacramento City College, where she met some
cool artsy kids from the theater department. Can't you just
see them? Her new friends were more edgy and mature.
It was a new, better support system and like any
good nineties arty kids, we have to imagine them smoking
clothes at night.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
She's beginning to do stand up, but in the daytime
it's the gap.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
There is an oppressive feeling.
Speaker 6 (08:32):
I used to get in the middle of like an
eight hour shift, you know, the mixtape that would play
and it would be on like the fourth cycle, where
I You'd just be going a little bit crazy and
I would be standing there kind of staring at like
the fluorescent lights, going how much longer are you going
to do this?
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Like?
Speaker 4 (08:51):
Is this going to be the rest of your.
Speaker 6 (08:53):
Life, because because there's part of you that was at
least brave enough to get on that stage until of
what are now some of the worst jokes of all time.
But you know, like I did have that leg up
that that I had done. So there was a little
bit in me that was like, but I think I
(09:13):
can do something. I don't think I should have to
work at the gap for the rest of my life.
But then there was parts of some of the time
when I was there where I was just like, I
can't breathe, and I'm going to be here forever.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I know that, feeling extremely well, and I remember that
what I wanted from life back then was vague. I
wanted to express myself, make a mark on the world somehow.
I wonder what did she want back then?
Speaker 6 (09:38):
I think fame the idea, the made up childhood idea
of what fame is and what and what all that
kind of glory would be.
Speaker 5 (09:46):
What is that child version of fame.
Speaker 6 (09:49):
I think it's like it's like entering anywhere through double
doors and like putting your hands out in front of
me is literally like the It's kind of that kind
of like as if you'd go into restaurants that only
had double doors and do like hello everyone.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
There was just here.
Speaker 6 (10:08):
Oh h yes, it's me, I'm here waving as you
eat dinner kind of idea. I think that was that
was part of it, but I do think it was
holding my own with men who do comedy.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Karen was learning stand up, finding her place in the
Bay Area comedy scene, looking for clues.
Speaker 6 (10:27):
The improv was my first one where I got on stage,
so it was kind of like the closest one to
my heart, and it felt so because it was one
of those clubs that was downstairs, so it was really
like cellar feeling, which the you know, all the walls
were painted black.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
You could only I could see one top.
Speaker 6 (10:43):
Matt, the bartender, was really tall and he had like
bleach blonde hair, so I would focus on watching his
head move during my sets to know whether or not
I was doing good. So if he was like doing
head bobbing, like laughing, I was like, all right, so
I'm fine. Like you know, there's there's all these kind
of images in my brain that are seared there forever
(11:04):
of how I'm going to do this thing that's really
hard and incredibly frightening and make it work. So those
magical things are happening to me at night, and then
at eleven am, I'd have to show up and fold
down a sweater wall or whatever and go back to
just being the person that's trying to sell you socks
along with your three T shirts. And it was just
(11:26):
I was very indignant about the fact that I had
to work there, but that also it was such a
corporate It was so easy to do things wrong at
the Gap. I was wrong all the time. I was
always doing it wrong.
Speaker 5 (11:39):
You know there is one way to fold a pocket too.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
For real. Yeah, they'll check it.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
And then a big moment happened on TV. America's Funniest
People comes caught.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
How dare you.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
Talk about it if you don't want to?
Speaker 4 (11:56):
Did you do research?
Speaker 5 (12:00):
I saw it?
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Let me set the scene. Karen had been getting better
at stand up. She had been coming up with a
group of friends, Andy Kindler, Vernon Chapman, Brian Possain maybe
you've heard of him. She entered a comedy contest at
a club in Sacramento, and she made it to the finals.
Speaker 6 (12:17):
And then and at some point they're the manager of
that comedy club was like, hey, America's Funnies people's in
town come to Old Sac and they just you're basically
just do some jokes on camera.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
And so one of my.
Speaker 6 (12:30):
Bits was I was at it was it was my
impression of a cheerleader auditioning for a Shakespeare play. So
essentially it's a classic fucking hacky stand up thing where
you recite something impressive in a different voice. So I
was just doing a valley girl voice.
Speaker 5 (12:48):
Of Richard, I I.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
I exactly.
Speaker 6 (12:52):
So yeah, so that's what ended up on America's Funnies People.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
So I mean the answer is, yes, we are going
to listen to some of Karen Kilgarriff on America's Funniest People.
Speaker 7 (13:03):
I'm presenting my version of a cheerleader auditioning for Shakespeare play. Okay,
So like I'm auditioning for this or whatever, and I'm
gonna be doing a monologue from like Richard I I I,
And like what it is is, I'm lady Annette and
like this guy totally killed my husband, Richard, and so
he comes to the funeral just to make problems, just
like Rick bar did that time of that party when
he's gonna throw the keg through the window. Do you
remember that? Well, anyway, so like, he totally shows up
(13:25):
and I totally get mad and I totally say this
to him. I go like, I go like, foul devil
for God's sake, Hence in trouble us, not for that's
made the happy Earth. Eigeh Hell filled it with cursing
cries and deep exclaims. It's not the like to view
thy heinous deeds. Behold the pattern.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
Of your butcheries.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Not what she would do now, probably, but it's funny.
Her perspective is very clear. If you want to see more,
it is on YouTube and it's worth watching. It's like
a muppet baby's version of the Karen Kilgarriff We know now.
Speaker 6 (13:55):
And then I got called by the producers saying do
you want to come down to Burbank because you made
it to the final three? So all of a sudden,
you know, and that I recorded it well in Sacramento
and then got into a car accident. My mom's like,
that's it, You're moving home. You're just up there fucking around.
I moved home and got the call like from my parents' house.
(14:17):
So again, basically, after having flunked out, I floated for
a little while in this comedy thing that was happening.
And then I was like back, moved back in with
my parents, so almost like a new low. Then the
America's funniest people called, So now I'm back up and
like show biz time, and I flew down to that show,
(14:40):
sat in the audience was, you know, like the drum
roll with the Dave Coolier was one of the hosts.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
It was like the whole.
Speaker 5 (14:48):
Thing TV's Calliope.
Speaker 6 (14:50):
Calliope from Days of Our Lives. It was a dream
come true.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
In the video, Karen is right there in that studio audience,
in that very chic Jet Black nineteen ninety one one
hair and Karen does not win.
Speaker 6 (15:03):
I won third prize. A four year old girl beat
me and a man. She said a joke. She was
what did the farmer say when he lost his tractor?
Where's my tractor?
Speaker 5 (15:18):
Fun?
Speaker 6 (15:19):
That was?
Speaker 4 (15:19):
I know. No, she's talented, she was good. She was
she deserved it as ten and the man probably. I
bet we could track her down to who it is. No,
and that girl is Ariana Grande.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
The guy who won the big prize was a seventy
year old guy dressed like a miner from old cowboy movies.
He did a strip tease to mc hammers, you can't
touch this, and he won ten thousand dollars, but Karen
didn't walk away empty handed.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
I think I got four thousand dollars before taxes.
Speaker 5 (15:53):
But I mean that's early nineties money. That's not bad.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
It was, you know what it is.
Speaker 6 (15:57):
It got me out of my parents' house and into
my apartment to moved to San Francisco to work at
the Gap and start stand up again with a It
basically relaunched my barely having begun stand up career.
Speaker 5 (16:10):
Where did you see yourself as an adult in that situation?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Like?
Speaker 4 (16:14):
What did I think I was going to do?
Speaker 5 (16:16):
Yeah? Where would you have imagined you'd be?
Speaker 6 (16:19):
Now? Honestly, I kind of like this is the dream.
I'm doing it and I'm thrilled and thrilled every day
about it.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
And has a career in comedy looked the way that
you imagined it would in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 6 (16:32):
The thing that I didn't understand is that everybody that
moves to Los Angeles is baseline talented at least one thing.
But there is a ton of people here who are
insanely talented at like four things. And that I think
I had that was the part that I was the
(16:53):
most wrong about was Oh, like, I'm super funny, and
I know a bunch of really super funny comics, and
we're like the funniest people, and it's like, no, no, no,
there's actors.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
Who also are from Broadway who are ten times funnier
than you.
Speaker 6 (17:06):
Like those those lessons as I lived in Los Angeles
and became intensely bewildered at the level of true talent
that comes to this town and tries to make it.
I just wanted it to be like, no, I'm a
natural and you know I'm the best or whatever.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
But it was like quickly learning that, like you.
Speaker 6 (17:26):
Want to tell yourself that, like those pretty hot girls
that are going in just for the ingreen new roles
aren't funny, they fucking are. They're funny. They can tap
dance and their models, So go fuck yourself, Karen from Petaluma,
because your shit ain't flying. You know. There was that
lots of adjustments like that that were really bewildering. But
(17:50):
then I think, thank God, somewhere along the line that
idea came to me is like, if I want to
be in this business, I should learn the business so
that I know what I'm doing and not just be
standing out here trying to be like an actor or
a comic, because those people have the least amount of
power or control. And that's what led me into writing,
(18:10):
and that's what led me into being behind the scenes
and learning how it actually works and what the real
business is.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Yeah, and you've been I mean you've had many, many
ups and downs, Like there were things that you know,
they're America's funniest people. I mean, it launched a career,
but it was you know, you weren't flucked immediately from
that to super stardom. So how did you keep What
(18:36):
did you tell yourself to keep going?
Speaker 6 (18:40):
I told myself I was funnier than that four year
old girl every goddamn day.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
I want to get back to something Karen said at
the beginning of our conversation. Karen flunked out of college.
So did I. I left for college in nineteen eighty
nine a place called Holy Cross in Massachusetts. I'd been
on the waiting list, and I think that is why
I was so determined to go there.
Speaker 5 (19:01):
You don't like me perfect, let me chase you.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
I got there, I was surrounded by people who looked
like they had it together, which I very much did not.
Speaker 5 (19:09):
People who were good at being normal, which I very
much was not.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
A lot of kids from New England, where making fun
of you is how they show affection, but it's also
how they make fun of you. Holy Cross is a
great place. I did not fit in there. This is
the thing I would find out later. Early in the
first semester of my freshman year, a bunch of the
guys on my hall apparently had a big conversation in
the common area about whether I was gay, which I
(19:33):
very much was and still am, and at the time
I was very much not ready to deal with it.
In this conversation, a classmate from my hometown apparently confirmed
that yes, the general.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
Word on the street was that I was very gay.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
That kid apparently called another kid from my high school
who double confirmed it. And if you've worked in journalism,
you know a fact is not considered credible unless it
can be double verified.
Speaker 5 (19:56):
So I was out. I was out. Heead now.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
I was not in the common area on my hall
the day this conversation took place. I wasn't on campus
at all because I had gone to the local mall
to go to a record store called Sam Goody to
pick up a cassette that had just been released and
was sitting on my desk later that day when my
roommates and some of the guys from the hall gathered
to go get dinner, and that tape was the album
(20:20):
Results by E Liza Minelli, which was produced by the
Pet Shop Boys and has a Sondheim song on it.
Speaker 5 (20:27):
So my gainness was now a triple sourced story.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Anyway, the guys on my hall, who I thought I'd
been doing okay with, suddenly.
Speaker 5 (20:35):
Began to keep their distance. That's what life was like.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
In nineteen eighty nine at a Catholic school, and that's
probably why this Catholic school in nineteen eighty nine had
zero out gay students. I was having trouble making friends
for the first time in my life. What middle aged
Dave can see very clearly is what I should have done,
which to just say, yes, yeah, I'm gay, do you.
Speaker 5 (20:56):
Have any questions?
Speaker 2 (20:58):
But I didn't. What I did but instead was spiral.
I was out every night, drinking like a maniac. I
skipped class on the regular. I was crying for help
and pretending everything was great all at the same time.
It was exhausting I didn't do well. A couple weeks
into the summer of nineteen ninety, after I had finished
(21:18):
freshman year, I was at my parents' house in Saint Louis.
I went to check the mailbox and there was a
certified mail notice oh one six one Oho the zip
code of holy Cross, and I just knew I had
never failed at anything in my life, and suddenly there
it was a massive, humiliating public failure.
Speaker 5 (21:38):
Karen puts the feeling into words better than I can.
Did it feel like flung it out of college? Which
I also did? Oh d oh yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
After my freshman year Holy Cross in Massachusetts, very conservative
Catholic place where I did not fit in at all,
and they vomited me out very quickly. However, it was
actually it was like a one year suspension, and so
I did, like go and get my grades up, and
then I went because I felt like I have to
finish what I've started.
Speaker 5 (22:05):
I went back, which was a mistake, and.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
I delayed my actual maturity by many, many years, and
it was for me very difficult to scrub off the
scent of failure.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
Yeah, is that does that resonate with you at all?
Speaker 6 (22:23):
A thousand percent yeah, I never saw myself when I
was a child. I was smart and good at school,
always liked it, And that lasted right until seventh grade,
and then it all changed, and along with like puberty
and adolescence came this kind of like I don't I'm
not the smartest one in the class, therefore none of
(22:45):
this is worth my time, or like I can't stand
out and I'm not standing out in the smart way.
I'm not standing out in like the pretty way. I'm
trying to be loud and funny, but that isn't very
appealing to anyone anymore. Like it was one of those
kinds of things where I just didn't I just didn't
know what I was doing really or how to do anything.
(23:06):
So I didn't see myself as the kind of person
who would like flunk or fail or disappoint her parents.
Same when it started happening, it really did feel like
I'm sliding backwards down a mountain and I can't stop
myself and I can't do anything about it, so I
might as well just stay in bed, drink some beer,
you know what I mean, Like, just dig all the
way into this failure act.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
If I'm going to fail.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
I definitely got lost in a loser moment for a while.
After this happened, I was able to pull myself out
of the downward spiral eventually, but still, more than three
decades later, the sense of failure is still something I
catch on myself.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
It's still my reflex.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
To think of myself as a failure, to focus on
the things I haven't succeeded at instead of the things
I have Now, thanks to therapy and the wisdom of age,
I can shake it off when I feel it on me,
but it gets on me still, and I can't help
but notice something when I look at ut an impact.
Even though that moment in that Motown, Philly video is
all I ever saw them do, I don't think of
(24:05):
them as failures. What I see is a big launch
that didn't pan out. What I see is some guys
who had a plan and it didn't happen, and now
I just want to know what they're doing. I see
them as people who might have succeeded in a way
that I couldn't see, and I want to know what
that way is. I have a certain amount of curiosity
and goodwill for them and for their story that I
(24:26):
can't muster for me or for mine. Maybe that's why
I'm so obsessed.
Speaker 5 (24:30):
I want to play something for you.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Okay, it's not America's funniest Thank god, here there they are.
Speaker 5 (24:41):
Yes, sudden Impact, Yes, just yeah. Do you remember this
video at all?
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Yes?
Speaker 6 (24:46):
I do, the Motown Philly video where it's everybody they
go through and it's like a yeah.
Speaker 5 (24:51):
It's the East Coast family.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
It's perhaps even though they get it to BBC.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
Yeah, I don't know the exact part.
Speaker 5 (24:59):
That's the one.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, it's this sudden impact. We are we are tracking
them down. Do you have a favorite?
Speaker 6 (25:05):
I mean, if I had to pick, and I love
first of all, this has always lifelong been my favorite
thing of picking a favorite guy in a band. Yes,
and and people fighting about it or discussing it or whatever.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Where I remember I would do like for Duran.
Speaker 6 (25:19):
Duran Obviously John Taylor the guitarist was the hottest and
the one I liked, but that's the one everyone picked.
So I was like, I like Roger the drummer because
I Dave we are so Nate.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Absolute so much.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
I yeah, no, absolutely from the jump it was Roger.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Some people divide the world up into astrological signs I
do it by who's your favorite member of Duran Durant?
And I knew Karen was a Roger. All the best
people are Rogers.
Speaker 5 (25:51):
Yep.
Speaker 6 (25:51):
I was just like, sure, it's a given you're gonna
like John Taylor. He looks like almost like a big girl,
which everybody loves in rock and roll, Like there's something
about that that's so soothing to a young girl's soul.
But what's this Italian doing over here? What's this little
guy that's that's holding down a rhythm section.
Speaker 5 (26:10):
Who looks a little out of place and uncomfortable.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
He looks like he hates it, which I love it.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Yes, And it's so when he becomes the first to leave,
it's not surprising at all.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
No, I was proud of him.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Yeah, goes and lives on a farm, and it's just like,
I don't guy's cocaine is bad.
Speaker 5 (26:28):
Let's not do it anymore.
Speaker 6 (26:29):
Guys, you're doing much and you all you now look
like middle aged women.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Okay, so wait, let me look at this.
Speaker 5 (26:36):
Yeah, so I can really see for sure. Yeah, and
you're gonna want to look close.
Speaker 6 (26:40):
But did these guys release a video or like, is
there a reference of any kind of me knowing them
that would Okay.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
That's the whole thing, is that this is what they did.
Oh so my understanding is that they have continued to
make music in some way or another, but I don't
know where they are. And this was such a massive
like platform to be given really before you've done anything.
Speaker 5 (27:09):
And then kind of nothing happened, which is fascinating to me.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
And then we get to the points of this show,
which is the point in the Motown Philly video which
I never get.
Speaker 5 (27:19):
Tired of looking at.
Speaker 6 (27:21):
I got to pick the guy in the center with
the bow tie, which makes me think he's somehow the
lead made something made or he or he is smart
enough to notice set himself apart.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
Yeah, Barber streisandstyle.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
And it is a tuxedo shirt if you look closely, Okay,
it is a tuxedo shirt. And it's it's definitely it's
an Italian restaurant waiter.
Speaker 6 (27:42):
Yeah. I was gonna say, did he have to pick
up a couple tables after this shoot?
Speaker 4 (27:45):
And he had to go straight to his dad's restaurant
And it's.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
That might have been the take, you know, that might
have been the only take. You know, they're young they're
full of promise. It's nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 5 (27:55):
What advice do you have for Sudden Impact about a
life in the arts.
Speaker 6 (28:00):
You know, don't be afraid of a safety net if
you have if you have an accounting degree, that's great.
If you don't put all your eggs in one Sudden
Impact basket, which hopefully they didn't. But like that was
the thing that I did, really did learn coming to
Los Angeles as a stand up comedian, that I better
(28:21):
get some other skills going very quickly, like learn learn things.
Have someone teach you how to write sketches, how to
write scripts, how to be an assistant, something else. But
like flexibility, I guess resilience, adaptability would be.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
My advice. That's the key.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
So maybe the boys of Sudden Impact did just take
a more practical path. Maybe they went back to school,
or maybe they're still grinding.
Speaker 5 (28:48):
It out now. I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
But at long last, after three decades, I know someone
who might well Sudden Impact have existed in my mind
as a symbol, a moment from a music video, a
mystery I've never known how to solve for a vet
(29:14):
Nicole Brown. They're friends co workers East Coast family, siblings.
You know, a Vet from community, from Drake and Josh,
from generally being the best thing about whatever she's in.
But she's also a singer. She was a part of
Michael Bivens's East Coast Family with Sudden Impact. My friend
Scott put me in touch with Evet. And what's fascinating
is that she got her dream life and then got
(29:36):
a new dream life.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
Because she walked up and asked for it.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Karen and I were dreaming and folding denim in nineteen
ninety one, Vet was manifesting.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
Did you did you just always want to sing?
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Gosh, you couldn't tell me I wasn't going to be
a singer. I oh, I mean I grew up loving
Michael Jackson and Jackson five, and I.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Was I'm not that old.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Ever I found them they were already grown and as
they were the Jacksons by the time I was born
and realized what the Jackson five was and how amazing
it was. And I listened to just a lot of
old R and B. Like, well, it's old now, but
it was like eighties R and B when I was
a kid, and I just loved music and I loved
singing and I thought I was going to be and
(30:21):
one of my favorite groups was New Addition, and my
thought was, if I'm going to marry one of them,
I need to be on tour with them, and so
the only way I could ensure that is for me
to sing.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
So that was one of the other.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Reasons why I wanted to be a singer, because I
wanted to marry somebody. A New Audition, So there you go,
there's my secret.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
New Edition were the biggest boy band since the Jackson five.
They were so big when they fired their manager, he
went out and started a new boy band just out
of spite, and that boy band was New Kids on
the Block.
Speaker 5 (30:49):
More on that.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Later, but New Addition were huge in nineteen eighty four.
And like with Duran Duran, you had to have a favorite.
So now it can be told, like who in New
Edition I loved?
Speaker 1 (31:00):
I loved Ralph and I loved Michael. Those were my
two favorites. I love them all, But if I was
gonna marry someone, who would have been those two?
Speaker 5 (31:06):
Okay, so you had a double bias.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Yeah, I mean, I mean Ralph was first and Mike
was second. And Michael knows this, so I'm not telling
tales out of school. I'm not he's not finding out
here that he wasn't.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
My favorite.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
New Edition had been put together by music producer Maurice Starr,
who got them in a recording studio, released their debut album,
Candy Girl, and when a couple of the singles started
selling well in Europe, sent them off on a world tour.
They came back from that tour and Star mailed them
a check for their year plus of hard work. That
check was for one dollar and eighty seven cents, not
(31:37):
five checks. One check for them all to split. I
know that doesn't sound like a lot, but adjusted for inflation,
that is.
Speaker 5 (31:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
No, that's still some bullshit. So they fired Maurice Starr.
They moved to MCA Records. They released the album New Edition,
which went double platinum in the States. They released five
more hit albums, and then they took a break. In
the late eighties, the individual New Edition guys began to
go their separate ways. When Bobby Brown went solo, then
his replacement Johnny Gil did the same, then lead singer
(32:07):
Ralph Tresvant. That left the other three Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins,
and Ronnie de Vaux to form Bell biv Davoux, who
blew up in nineteen ninety with the album Poison and Listen.
I tried a lot of things when I was trying
to break into this business, but there is one thing
I never thought of doing, and it's just going up
to my hero and demanding a job. Ivette sang for
(32:28):
Michael Bivins in a hotel lobby and then he called
her up and signed her to his label.
Speaker 5 (32:33):
So tell me where you're feeling that in your body
when you get the call.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
I mean, it's you know, my whole whole everything just
like lights up at the thought of that. Because one
thing I didn't tell you about meeting him that Kaihaga
fall Sheridan was one of those atrium hotels, so like
the center of the hotel, you can look all the
way up and see all the floor, so it's like
a big square and you can look up right. So
every time I asked Mike to sing for me, I
(32:57):
asked when he walked in the door, when he was
getting his key from the front desk, as he went
to the elevator, he said no to me like three times.
So he got on the elevator and went up to
like the six or seventh floor, and as he gets
off the elevator, I hear singing coming from the six
or seventh floor and I look up and there's Michael
Bibbin's letting somebody sing for So I get on.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
The elevator and I punched it.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
I get off the floor and he's just finishing up
listening to someone that said, you just really messed up
that I've been asking you, and I really would like
to sing for.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
You, sir, and let me, sir.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
He was like, he's a kid too, I'm like, sir,
and so he said, well, just go on and sing then,
and so I sang angrily.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
He listened angrily.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
He took my number angrily like it was a really
like contentious, you know situation. But he was like, I
gotta get her number because she actually can sing, like
and he was looking for talent.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
What's truly wild about this story is if that's absolute
certainty about it, not just now, but then it's not
like she went to apply for a job.
Speaker 5 (33:53):
The job was hers and she knew it. She just
went to pick it up.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
There's one other thing about it.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Dave the fall whatever year, I think it was a
freshman year, sophomore year of college is the same year
that Michael discovered Boys to Men. And Michael was on
BT with Boys to Men introducing them to the world.
And I was in college watching BT and I said
to my roommate, my friend Nikki, I said, he's going
(34:18):
to manage me. I'm like, I'm I'm Michael's going to
manage me.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
And she was like sure. I felt in my heart,
I'm like, he's going to manage me. Like I just knew.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
I didn't know how it was going to happen. I
just knew that he was part of my destiny. Like
whatever I was going to be in entertainment, that Michael
Bibbins was part of it.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
I can just feel it.
Speaker 5 (34:35):
Yeah, I can just feel it. And you manifested it.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Yeah, or God knew what was going to happen and
put it in my mind.
Speaker 5 (34:42):
So you get signed to Motif ten MM, and then
then what happens.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
We do a video, We do a song, and we
do a video and that's where we worked with Well,
they were they were the white guys by the time
I did the video.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
They started a sudden impact.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Yeah, I knew sudden impact became white guys and now
I have a thousand more questions for Sudden Impact, Slash White.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Guys another Bad Creatures, so many great talented people.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
We did our.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Video Bivin's put a Vette Hayden and another singer into
a vocal group together.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
We were putting a group called Different and we were
brought out my my junior year, I think, yeah, the
summer of my junior year of college, we were brought
out to California school.
Speaker 5 (35:28):
Yep in school.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
We were brought out to California to record.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
And so I spent the summer of my junior year
out here and we were like just hanging out around
the pool and going to parties, like we hadn't recorded yet.
And it was coming up on the middle of August
and I said to Mike, I said, you know, I
got one more year school, like I'm almost almost have
my degree, like I need to. I hate to go
back and do this. And so he was like, we'll
go home, finish your degree. You can come back and
(35:54):
we'll do it, you know after, And then of course
by then, you know, the music industry change.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
As the early nineties became the mid nineties, popular music
got a little dirtier. I love your Smile by Shenise
became freakd Like Me by Adina Howard mc hammer, whose
nineteen ninety song you Can't Touch This was so wholesome
it won a seventy year old guy ten thousand dollars
on America's Funny As People. By nineteen ninety four, was
doing a song called Pumps on a Bump with a
(36:21):
video that features him in a speedo. The videos on
YouTube watch at your own risk. Sexy Jams was just
not a direction if that wanted to go in. She
wanted to do uplifting, almost gospel style R and B music,
So her time as a singer never really came. Are
you frustrated during this time, like while you're signed?
Speaker 1 (36:40):
And you know, I wasn't frustrated, but I'm someone that
likes to be efficient, and I just felt, like, you know,
laying out by the pool is fun, and going to
these parties is fun, and it's great to be around
Michael and stuff. But my dream, or my mother's dream,
even more than mine, was for me to graduate from college.
And I wanted that for myself. I wanted that for her,
(37:03):
and I had put in three good years and I
had scholarships and pill grants, and you know, I really
worked hard. I had work study all through college, so
I earned, you know.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
The right to be there.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
And I felt like, though it was fun to be
out in LA, if we're not recording, I don't need
to be here.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
I need to be recording.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
So it was the frustration of it not being an
efficient amount of time spent.
Speaker 5 (37:30):
So at what point did you say music is not happening.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
I've always felt like, you know, you race towards the
thing that's racing towards you, and so music just didn't
like me that much.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
It just wasn't you know.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
It thought I was cute, Yeah, but it didn't like
me like that, right where acting loves me, like acting
things I'm great. And so when I started auditioning for
commercials and that started to take off, I was like, well,
this is what it should be.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
The dream of singing receded into the background while the
dream of acting took over. But singing never completely disappeared.
And this is the funny thing, Dave.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
I sing on just about every show I get, every
show that I've been a series regular on, I've sung
on every single whie. So the gift is still being
used and I do a lot of cartoons, a lot
of kids shows, a lot of cartoons, and I've been
singing on all of those as well. So it's not
like it's gone. It just didn't manifest in the way
(38:32):
that I thought it would.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
If that is at peace with the way her career
turned out. She didn't get to be a big famous singer,
but it's not because of anything she did or Michael
Bivens did. The world was just a different place back then.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
We were very young and naive and didn't understand what
it was. And I don't know that I don't know
that any of us back then had the killer instinct
you would need the killer instinct that performers now are
like born with. We didn't have a social media. All
the meeting is that they had to read. They could
(39:05):
read up on anybody they wanted, They could find out
about anything, they could put out their own music, like
the world was wide open for that generation, and so
I feel like those of us back in the East
Coast family, we didn't have those those opportunities to figure
it out. So that's why some of us made it,
and some of us are still trying to get to
(39:26):
whatever place we wanted to get to because it's just
not laid out. There was no blueprint back then, like
it was a record label and that's it. So many
ways to make it now. Yeah, if some an impact
was out right now, they would be they would you know,
be streaming, they'd be on YouTube, they'd be doing TikTok
videos like we wouldn't know them.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
They'd be super duper famous as a.
Speaker 5 (39:45):
Boy band right now, right right.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
They just didn't get their shot, right, they get their shot,
you know. Yeah, Hayden didn't either. Hayden Heide was such
a great You need to talk to Hayden.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
If you watch that one for all for one video,
you remember Hayden. He sticks out like a sore thumb,
looks like a frat boy on your college rugby team.
Speaker 5 (40:05):
But that voice. How was this guy not a star? Yeah?
I would love to talk to Hayden. Do you know how?
Speaker 3 (40:12):
I sure know how to get you in contact with Hayden?
Speaker 5 (40:14):
Not sure would be fantasy?
Speaker 3 (40:16):
Yeah, no, that would be No.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
You got to talk to Hayden because he's he's first
of all, he's that's someone I hope puts out an album.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
Yeah, his voice is he was like a white one.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Yeah, incredible voice. I mean, all I've heard is is
you know from No He.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Had a whole He had a whole album on Motown.
It never got released. He remade PEG Yes beautiful, Yes,
amazing version of PEG never came out. It was something
that something happened with the label. I can't remember. But
there's a whole album of music that is done. Hayden's
album not being released is a tragedy. It's a tragedy
for music that blue eyed soul. He would have really
(40:52):
yeah he did. That's a loss for all of us.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
We are one step closer to meeting Sudden Impact. If
that's gonna hook me up with Hayden, another act from
Michael Bivens' East Coast family who could have been huge.
Speaker 5 (41:04):
I want to know his.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Story, and not for nothing. He might still be in
touch with Sudden Impact or White Guy's or whatever their
name is. Now we'll talk to him, and we'll take
a deep dive into the pop landscape of nineteen ninety
one and how one procedural change in the way charts
were compiled changed what the entire world listened to with
pop chart columnist.
Speaker 5 (41:23):
Chris malanfe That's Next Time on.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Waiting for Impact, a Dave Holmes passion project. This has
been an exactly Right production written by Me Dave Hormelson,
produced by Hannah Kyle Crichton, recorded, mixed and sound designed
by Andrew Epen. Additional engineering and assembly by Annalise Nelson.
(41:50):
Music by Ben Wise, artwork by Garrett Ross. Executive produced
by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hart Stark and Danielle Kramer. Follow
the show on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at exactly right
and follow me at Dave Holmes. For more information, go
to Exactlyrightmedia dot com. Binge the show ad free on
(42:13):
Stitcher Premium for a free month. Head to Stitcherpremium dot
com slash Impact and enter promo code Impact when you
select a monthly plan, listen, subscribe, and leave us a
review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your
podcasts
So I was in college, but it was the summer
of my sophomore year or freshman year, and I had
gone to a BBD concert and met Jeff Dyson, who
was one of the new editions. He had long time
been a new addition bodyguard. He was on the road
with BBD.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Last time on waiting for Impact. My friend Scott and
I found out we were one degree of separation closer
to sudden impact than we ever knew we were. We
have a friend who was a recording artist in Michael Bivens'
East Coast family and you know her too. It's twenty
twenty one Emmy nominee if that's Nicole Brown.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
And I told him, I say, I want to sing
for Michael bibbns. Can you please let me backstage?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Like me in nineteen ninety one, if that had big dreams,
but unlike me, she knew how to manifest them.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
And he was like, I cannot let you backstage, but
I can tell you that they're staying at the Sheridan
in Cauiahaga Falls. So if you happen to show up,
you know at the Sheridan. You didn't hear it from me.
To this day, I know Jeff. Now you know Jeff
and our friends now. And to this day he says
he doesn't know why he did it. He was just like,
I don't know something about you. Just felt like I was
(01:10):
supposed to help you.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Evett loved Michael Biffins, She loved New Addition, she loved
Belle Bivdevaux, and she loved to sing. So she found
Michael Bivens and she sang.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
And so I went to that hotel, stayed in the
lobby until four o'clock in the morning when BBD came
to the hotel and I followed Michael Bibbins around and
I was like, mister Bifman's massing for you, mister Biman's
massing for you, mister Bimin's messing for you.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
And then finally he was like, oh gosh, like just sing.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
He was mad.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I was mad, like it had been at an opus
to get to this moment.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
That's the thing about taking big swings. Sometimes they're mortifying,
but sometimes they actually work.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
He finally let me sing for him and asked for
my number, and then called me the next day and
invited me to be a part of the East Closet family.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
We're going to talk to a vete, Nicole Brown, about
her time in the Coast Family, about what it was
like to wait for your moment in the spotlight as
a singer, and about what you do when it never comes,
And we're going to find out what she knows about
sudden Impact.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
Also, we'll talk to Karen Kilgareth. She and I were
leading more or less the.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Same life back in nineteen ninety one, So we're going
to talk about what she learned that got her to
where she is now. And we're going to talk about
another big thing we have in common, a pivotal career
moment that involves losing a big contest on national TV.
This is Waiting for Impact, a Dave Holmes passion project.
(02:47):
So here's where we left off. As I began my
search for Sudden Impact, my friend and fellow pop culture
obsessive Scott Gimple, found a nineteen ninety two music video
from the East Coast Family, a group of pop, R
and B and hip hop artists signed by Michael Bivens
to his record label biv ten, a subsidiary of Motown.
The song and video are called one four All four
to one. By the way, the title of that song
(03:09):
never gets any easier to say. You always have to
kind of prepare your mouth, but it is what we
would now call a posse track. There are rap moments
from Mark Finesse, from two young kids called ten ten
who have their suspenders on backwards a little like the
other young rap duo of the time, Chris Cross, probably
(03:31):
a coincidence, and from mc brains who would go on
to have a top forty hit later in nineteen ninety
two called Uchi Couci. There are moments that are sung
by a big frat boy looking guy named Hayden with
a sport coat slung over his shoulder, and by a
group called White Guys whytgi Ze who look a little
like Sudden Impact. And then there's a young woman with
(03:54):
a clear and beautiful voice and a warm and familiar smile.
She goes by the single name Yvette Vete Nicole Brown Sunday.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
I can't stress you just how my job just dropped.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
My friend Scott, who we met in the last episode,
is the chief content officer for the Walking Dead universe,
and a Vett is a Walking Dead super fan. Vette
and Scott, as we learned, are real friends in real life.
But this is a part of her story that he
didn't know anything about. And we now have the connection
to the East Coast family and maybe sudden impact that
(04:31):
we've been looking for a backstage pass, if you will.
So I asked Scott to reach out to a vet
to see if she'd be interested in opening up about
her life in the East Coast family. And while we
waited for an answer, I wanted to go a little
bit deeper into the early nineties and what life was
like for a young dreamer back then. And I know
someone who I bet has some very good insights. What
was Karen's nineteen ninety one esthetic talk?
Speaker 5 (04:53):
What's you wearing.
Speaker 6 (04:54):
At Jesus H, I'll tell you, I'll tell you it's
not good news.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
That is Karen Kilgareff. She's a comedian, a writer, the
co host of My Favorite Murder, and the co founder
of Exactly Right, the network i'm doing this podcast on.
In nineteen ninety one, Karen was working a look.
Speaker 6 (05:11):
Because I was out of the house and I could so.
First of all, I died my hair black, like the
second I got a chance to. That was incredibly like invigorating,
and like, you know, I know what I want.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
I dyed my hair black. I was pale as a ghost.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Karen's a friend of mine now, but in nineteen ninety
one we were strangers leading very similar lives.
Speaker 6 (05:33):
I started working at the Gap, and that really, that
felt bad, That felt real goad.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
Again, we're on parallel tracks.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
Did you work at that?
Speaker 5 (05:43):
I did? I ever the winner of Navy and White Cap?
I was there. What is white cap? I asked, I
said white. It's just a different word for white.
Speaker 6 (05:54):
It's a way to say white and really set yourself apart.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
In nineteen ninety one, in separate malls, in separate cities,
two thousand miles away from each other, Karen and I
were doing the same thing, suffering through eight hour shifts,
pushing pocket t shirts and high waisted jeans, listening to
four or five spins per day of that corporate mixtape,
dreaming about the lives and careers we would have someday,
lives and careers we couldn't even picture because they didn't
(06:18):
even really exist yet. Back then, we were on the outside,
with our noses pressed up against the glass. Right now,
Karen is a big deal, like few other people I know.
She went out and got her life. But in nineteen
ninety one. We were both very busy daydreaming about what
our lives in the future could look like, and we
were both hard at work fucking up our lives in
the present.
Speaker 5 (06:39):
Who was Karen Kilgareth in the summer of nineteen ninety.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
One, Oh god, well, I just turned twenty one.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
Oh boy.
Speaker 6 (06:49):
I was living in Sacramento at the time. I had
flunked out of Sacramento State University.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
Congratulations, thank you so much. Not easy to do.
Speaker 6 (06:59):
Took medication, and it took a real know how and perseverance.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
To be asked to leave a state school.
Speaker 6 (07:09):
That was basically took all comers and didn't give a shit.
Speaker 5 (07:14):
Now, once again Karen and I were leading parallel lives there.
We'll get into that shortly.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
But in order to give her life some direction and
stop feeling bad about failing out of school, Karen tried
something new.
Speaker 6 (07:25):
The good part about this era was just before it,
when I was twenty, I started doing stand up comedy
as a desperate move to stop being such a loser
who had flugged out of school and just had and
basically was kind of going nowhere in the Central Valley.
So I think by the time my twenty first birthday
(07:47):
rolled around, I had felt that I had actually begun
on my path toward my dream, which was always kind
of a secret, Like I really knew I wanted to
be a stand up comedian for a long time, but
I I just didn't believe I would ever do it.
And then this kind of amazing combination of good and
bad things happened, and then I.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
Got to start.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Karen transferred to Sacramento City College, where she met some
cool artsy kids from the theater department. Can't you just
see them? Her new friends were more edgy and mature.
It was a new, better support system and like any
good nineties arty kids, we have to imagine them smoking
clothes at night.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
She's beginning to do stand up, but in the daytime
it's the gap.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
There is an oppressive feeling.
Speaker 6 (08:32):
I used to get in the middle of like an
eight hour shift, you know, the mixtape that would play
and it would be on like the fourth cycle, where
I You'd just be going a little bit crazy and
I would be standing there kind of staring at like
the fluorescent lights, going how much longer are you going
to do this?
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Like?
Speaker 4 (08:51):
Is this going to be the rest of your.
Speaker 6 (08:53):
Life, because because there's part of you that was at
least brave enough to get on that stage until of
what are now some of the worst jokes of all time.
But you know, like I did have that leg up
that that I had done. So there was a little
bit in me that was like, but I think I
(09:13):
can do something. I don't think I should have to
work at the gap for the rest of my life.
But then there was parts of some of the time
when I was there where I was just like, I
can't breathe, and I'm going to be here forever.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I know that, feeling extremely well, and I remember that
what I wanted from life back then was vague. I
wanted to express myself, make a mark on the world somehow.
I wonder what did she want back then?
Speaker 6 (09:38):
I think fame the idea, the made up childhood idea
of what fame is and what and what all that
kind of glory would be.
Speaker 5 (09:46):
What is that child version of fame.
Speaker 6 (09:49):
I think it's like it's like entering anywhere through double
doors and like putting your hands out in front of
me is literally like the It's kind of that kind
of like as if you'd go into restaurants that only
had double doors and do like hello everyone.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
There was just here.
Speaker 6 (10:08):
Oh h yes, it's me, I'm here waving as you
eat dinner kind of idea. I think that was that
was part of it, but I do think it was
holding my own with men who do comedy.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Karen was learning stand up, finding her place in the
Bay Area comedy scene, looking for clues.
Speaker 6 (10:27):
The improv was my first one where I got on stage,
so it was kind of like the closest one to
my heart, and it felt so because it was one
of those clubs that was downstairs, so it was really
like cellar feeling, which the you know, all the walls
were painted black.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
You could only I could see one top.
Speaker 6 (10:43):
Matt, the bartender, was really tall and he had like
bleach blonde hair, so I would focus on watching his
head move during my sets to know whether or not
I was doing good. So if he was like doing
head bobbing, like laughing, I was like, all right, so
I'm fine. Like you know, there's there's all these kind
of images in my brain that are seared there forever
(11:04):
of how I'm going to do this thing that's really
hard and incredibly frightening and make it work. So those
magical things are happening to me at night, and then
at eleven am, I'd have to show up and fold
down a sweater wall or whatever and go back to
just being the person that's trying to sell you socks
along with your three T shirts. And it was just
(11:26):
I was very indignant about the fact that I had
to work there, but that also it was such a
corporate It was so easy to do things wrong at
the Gap. I was wrong all the time. I was
always doing it wrong.
Speaker 5 (11:39):
You know there is one way to fold a pocket too.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
For real. Yeah, they'll check it.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
And then a big moment happened on TV. America's Funniest
People comes caught.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
How dare you.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
Talk about it if you don't want to?
Speaker 4 (11:56):
Did you do research?
Speaker 5 (12:00):
I saw it?
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Let me set the scene. Karen had been getting better
at stand up. She had been coming up with a
group of friends, Andy Kindler, Vernon Chapman, Brian Possain maybe
you've heard of him. She entered a comedy contest at
a club in Sacramento, and she made it to the finals.
Speaker 6 (12:17):
And then and at some point they're the manager of
that comedy club was like, hey, America's Funnies people's in
town come to Old Sac and they just you're basically
just do some jokes on camera.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
And so one of my.
Speaker 6 (12:30):
Bits was I was at it was it was my
impression of a cheerleader auditioning for a Shakespeare play. So
essentially it's a classic fucking hacky stand up thing where
you recite something impressive in a different voice. So I
was just doing a valley girl voice.
Speaker 5 (12:48):
Of Richard, I I.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
I exactly.
Speaker 6 (12:52):
So yeah, so that's what ended up on America's Funnies People.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
So I mean the answer is, yes, we are going
to listen to some of Karen Kilgarriff on America's Funniest People.
Speaker 7 (13:03):
I'm presenting my version of a cheerleader auditioning for Shakespeare play. Okay,
So like I'm auditioning for this or whatever, and I'm
gonna be doing a monologue from like Richard I I I,
And like what it is is, I'm lady Annette and
like this guy totally killed my husband, Richard, and so
he comes to the funeral just to make problems, just
like Rick bar did that time of that party when
he's gonna throw the keg through the window. Do you
remember that? Well, anyway, so like, he totally shows up
(13:25):
and I totally get mad and I totally say this
to him. I go like, I go like, foul devil
for God's sake, Hence in trouble us, not for that's
made the happy Earth. Eigeh Hell filled it with cursing
cries and deep exclaims. It's not the like to view
thy heinous deeds. Behold the pattern.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
Of your butcheries.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Not what she would do now, probably, but it's funny.
Her perspective is very clear. If you want to see more,
it is on YouTube and it's worth watching. It's like
a muppet baby's version of the Karen Kilgarriff We know now.
Speaker 6 (13:55):
And then I got called by the producers saying do
you want to come down to Burbank because you made
it to the final three? So all of a sudden,
you know, and that I recorded it well in Sacramento
and then got into a car accident. My mom's like,
that's it, You're moving home. You're just up there fucking around.
I moved home and got the call like from my parents' house.
(14:17):
So again, basically, after having flunked out, I floated for
a little while in this comedy thing that was happening.
And then I was like back, moved back in with
my parents, so almost like a new low. Then the
America's funniest people called, So now I'm back up and
like show biz time, and I flew down to that show,
(14:40):
sat in the audience was, you know, like the drum
roll with the Dave Coolier was one of the hosts.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
It was like the whole.
Speaker 5 (14:48):
Thing TV's Calliope.
Speaker 6 (14:50):
Calliope from Days of Our Lives. It was a dream
come true.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
In the video, Karen is right there in that studio audience,
in that very chic Jet Black nineteen ninety one one
hair and Karen does not win.
Speaker 6 (15:03):
I won third prize. A four year old girl beat
me and a man. She said a joke. She was
what did the farmer say when he lost his tractor?
Where's my tractor?
Speaker 5 (15:18):
Fun?
Speaker 6 (15:19):
That was?
Speaker 4 (15:19):
I know. No, she's talented, she was good. She was
she deserved it as ten and the man probably. I
bet we could track her down to who it is. No,
and that girl is Ariana Grande.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
The guy who won the big prize was a seventy
year old guy dressed like a miner from old cowboy movies.
He did a strip tease to mc hammers, you can't
touch this, and he won ten thousand dollars, but Karen
didn't walk away empty handed.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
I think I got four thousand dollars before taxes.
Speaker 5 (15:53):
But I mean that's early nineties money. That's not bad.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
It was, you know what it is.
Speaker 6 (15:57):
It got me out of my parents' house and into
my apartment to moved to San Francisco to work at
the Gap and start stand up again with a It
basically relaunched my barely having begun stand up career.
Speaker 5 (16:10):
Where did you see yourself as an adult in that situation?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Like?
Speaker 4 (16:14):
What did I think I was going to do?
Speaker 5 (16:16):
Yeah? Where would you have imagined you'd be?
Speaker 6 (16:19):
Now? Honestly, I kind of like this is the dream.
I'm doing it and I'm thrilled and thrilled every day
about it.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
And has a career in comedy looked the way that
you imagined it would in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 6 (16:32):
The thing that I didn't understand is that everybody that
moves to Los Angeles is baseline talented at least one thing.
But there is a ton of people here who are
insanely talented at like four things. And that I think
I had that was the part that I was the
(16:53):
most wrong about was Oh, like, I'm super funny, and
I know a bunch of really super funny comics, and
we're like the funniest people, and it's like, no, no, no,
there's actors.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
Who also are from Broadway who are ten times funnier
than you.
Speaker 6 (17:06):
Like those those lessons as I lived in Los Angeles
and became intensely bewildered at the level of true talent
that comes to this town and tries to make it.
I just wanted it to be like, no, I'm a
natural and you know I'm the best or whatever.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
But it was like quickly learning that, like you.
Speaker 6 (17:26):
Want to tell yourself that, like those pretty hot girls
that are going in just for the ingreen new roles
aren't funny, they fucking are. They're funny. They can tap
dance and their models, So go fuck yourself, Karen from Petaluma,
because your shit ain't flying. You know. There was that
lots of adjustments like that that were really bewildering. But
(17:50):
then I think, thank God, somewhere along the line that
idea came to me is like, if I want to
be in this business, I should learn the business so
that I know what I'm doing and not just be
standing out here trying to be like an actor or
a comic, because those people have the least amount of
power or control. And that's what led me into writing,
(18:10):
and that's what led me into being behind the scenes
and learning how it actually works and what the real
business is.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Yeah, and you've been I mean you've had many, many
ups and downs, Like there were things that you know,
they're America's funniest people. I mean, it launched a career,
but it was you know, you weren't flucked immediately from
that to super stardom. So how did you keep What
(18:36):
did you tell yourself to keep going?
Speaker 6 (18:40):
I told myself I was funnier than that four year
old girl every goddamn day.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
I want to get back to something Karen said at
the beginning of our conversation. Karen flunked out of college.
So did I. I left for college in nineteen eighty
nine a place called Holy Cross in Massachusetts. I'd been
on the waiting list, and I think that is why
I was so determined to go there.
Speaker 5 (19:01):
You don't like me perfect, let me chase you.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
I got there, I was surrounded by people who looked
like they had it together, which I very much did not.
Speaker 5 (19:09):
People who were good at being normal, which I very
much was not.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
A lot of kids from New England, where making fun
of you is how they show affection, but it's also
how they make fun of you. Holy Cross is a
great place. I did not fit in there. This is
the thing I would find out later. Early in the
first semester of my freshman year, a bunch of the
guys on my hall apparently had a big conversation in
the common area about whether I was gay, which I
(19:33):
very much was and still am, and at the time
I was very much not ready to deal with it.
In this conversation, a classmate from my hometown apparently confirmed
that yes, the general.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
Word on the street was that I was very gay.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
That kid apparently called another kid from my high school
who double confirmed it. And if you've worked in journalism,
you know a fact is not considered credible unless it
can be double verified.
Speaker 5 (19:56):
So I was out. I was out. Heead now.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
I was not in the common area on my hall
the day this conversation took place. I wasn't on campus
at all because I had gone to the local mall
to go to a record store called Sam Goody to
pick up a cassette that had just been released and
was sitting on my desk later that day when my
roommates and some of the guys from the hall gathered
to go get dinner, and that tape was the album
(20:20):
Results by E Liza Minelli, which was produced by the
Pet Shop Boys and has a Sondheim song on it.
Speaker 5 (20:27):
So my gainness was now a triple sourced story.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Anyway, the guys on my hall, who I thought I'd
been doing okay with, suddenly.
Speaker 5 (20:35):
Began to keep their distance. That's what life was like.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
In nineteen eighty nine at a Catholic school, and that's
probably why this Catholic school in nineteen eighty nine had
zero out gay students. I was having trouble making friends
for the first time in my life. What middle aged
Dave can see very clearly is what I should have done,
which to just say, yes, yeah, I'm gay, do you.
Speaker 5 (20:56):
Have any questions?
Speaker 2 (20:58):
But I didn't. What I did but instead was spiral.
I was out every night, drinking like a maniac. I
skipped class on the regular. I was crying for help
and pretending everything was great all at the same time.
It was exhausting I didn't do well. A couple weeks
into the summer of nineteen ninety, after I had finished
(21:18):
freshman year, I was at my parents' house in Saint Louis.
I went to check the mailbox and there was a
certified mail notice oh one six one Oho the zip
code of holy Cross, and I just knew I had
never failed at anything in my life, and suddenly there
it was a massive, humiliating public failure.
Speaker 5 (21:38):
Karen puts the feeling into words better than I can.
Did it feel like flung it out of college? Which
I also did? Oh d oh yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
After my freshman year Holy Cross in Massachusetts, very conservative
Catholic place where I did not fit in at all,
and they vomited me out very quickly. However, it was
actually it was like a one year suspension, and so
I did, like go and get my grades up, and
then I went because I felt like I have to
finish what I've started.
Speaker 5 (22:05):
I went back, which was a mistake, and.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
I delayed my actual maturity by many, many years, and
it was for me very difficult to scrub off the
scent of failure.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
Yeah, is that does that resonate with you at all?
Speaker 6 (22:23):
A thousand percent yeah, I never saw myself when I
was a child. I was smart and good at school,
always liked it, And that lasted right until seventh grade,
and then it all changed, and along with like puberty
and adolescence came this kind of like I don't I'm
not the smartest one in the class, therefore none of
(22:45):
this is worth my time, or like I can't stand
out and I'm not standing out in the smart way.
I'm not standing out in like the pretty way. I'm
trying to be loud and funny, but that isn't very
appealing to anyone anymore. Like it was one of those
kinds of things where I just didn't I just didn't
know what I was doing really or how to do anything.
(23:06):
So I didn't see myself as the kind of person
who would like flunk or fail or disappoint her parents.
Same when it started happening, it really did feel like
I'm sliding backwards down a mountain and I can't stop
myself and I can't do anything about it, so I
might as well just stay in bed, drink some beer,
you know what I mean, Like, just dig all the
way into this failure act.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
If I'm going to fail.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
I definitely got lost in a loser moment for a while.
After this happened, I was able to pull myself out
of the downward spiral eventually, but still, more than three
decades later, the sense of failure is still something I
catch on myself.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
It's still my reflex.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
To think of myself as a failure, to focus on
the things I haven't succeeded at instead of the things
I have Now, thanks to therapy and the wisdom of age,
I can shake it off when I feel it on me,
but it gets on me still, and I can't help
but notice something when I look at ut an impact.
Even though that moment in that Motown, Philly video is
all I ever saw them do, I don't think of
(24:05):
them as failures. What I see is a big launch
that didn't pan out. What I see is some guys
who had a plan and it didn't happen, and now
I just want to know what they're doing. I see
them as people who might have succeeded in a way
that I couldn't see, and I want to know what
that way is. I have a certain amount of curiosity
and goodwill for them and for their story that I
(24:26):
can't muster for me or for mine. Maybe that's why
I'm so obsessed.
Speaker 5 (24:30):
I want to play something for you.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Okay, it's not America's funniest Thank god, here there they are.
Speaker 5 (24:41):
Yes, sudden Impact, Yes, just yeah. Do you remember this
video at all?
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Yes?
Speaker 6 (24:46):
I do, the Motown Philly video where it's everybody they
go through and it's like a yeah.
Speaker 5 (24:51):
It's the East Coast family.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
It's perhaps even though they get it to BBC.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
Yeah, I don't know the exact part.
Speaker 5 (24:59):
That's the one.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, it's this sudden impact. We are we are tracking
them down. Do you have a favorite?
Speaker 6 (25:05):
I mean, if I had to pick, and I love
first of all, this has always lifelong been my favorite
thing of picking a favorite guy in a band. Yes,
and and people fighting about it or discussing it or whatever.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Where I remember I would do like for Duran.
Speaker 6 (25:19):
Duran Obviously John Taylor the guitarist was the hottest and
the one I liked, but that's the one everyone picked.
So I was like, I like Roger the drummer because
I Dave we are so Nate.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Absolute so much.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
I yeah, no, absolutely from the jump it was Roger.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Some people divide the world up into astrological signs I
do it by who's your favorite member of Duran Durant?
And I knew Karen was a Roger. All the best
people are Rogers.
Speaker 5 (25:51):
Yep.
Speaker 6 (25:51):
I was just like, sure, it's a given you're gonna
like John Taylor. He looks like almost like a big girl,
which everybody loves in rock and roll, Like there's something
about that that's so soothing to a young girl's soul.
But what's this Italian doing over here? What's this little
guy that's that's holding down a rhythm section.
Speaker 5 (26:10):
Who looks a little out of place and uncomfortable.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
He looks like he hates it, which I love it.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Yes, And it's so when he becomes the first to leave,
it's not surprising at all.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
No, I was proud of him.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Yeah, goes and lives on a farm, and it's just like,
I don't guy's cocaine is bad.
Speaker 5 (26:28):
Let's not do it anymore.
Speaker 6 (26:29):
Guys, you're doing much and you all you now look
like middle aged women.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Okay, so wait, let me look at this.
Speaker 5 (26:36):
Yeah, so I can really see for sure. Yeah, and
you're gonna want to look close.
Speaker 6 (26:40):
But did these guys release a video or like, is
there a reference of any kind of me knowing them
that would Okay.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
That's the whole thing, is that this is what they did.
Oh so my understanding is that they have continued to
make music in some way or another, but I don't
know where they are. And this was such a massive
like platform to be given really before you've done anything.
Speaker 5 (27:09):
And then kind of nothing happened, which is fascinating to me.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
And then we get to the points of this show,
which is the point in the Motown Philly video which
I never get.
Speaker 5 (27:19):
Tired of looking at.
Speaker 6 (27:21):
I got to pick the guy in the center with
the bow tie, which makes me think he's somehow the
lead made something made or he or he is smart
enough to notice set himself apart.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
Yeah, Barber streisandstyle.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
And it is a tuxedo shirt if you look closely, Okay,
it is a tuxedo shirt. And it's it's definitely it's
an Italian restaurant waiter.
Speaker 6 (27:42):
Yeah. I was gonna say, did he have to pick
up a couple tables after this shoot?
Speaker 4 (27:45):
And he had to go straight to his dad's restaurant
And it's.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
That might have been the take, you know, that might
have been the only take. You know, they're young they're
full of promise. It's nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 5 (27:55):
What advice do you have for Sudden Impact about a
life in the arts.
Speaker 6 (28:00):
You know, don't be afraid of a safety net if
you have if you have an accounting degree, that's great.
If you don't put all your eggs in one Sudden
Impact basket, which hopefully they didn't. But like that was
the thing that I did, really did learn coming to
Los Angeles as a stand up comedian, that I better
(28:21):
get some other skills going very quickly, like learn learn things.
Have someone teach you how to write sketches, how to
write scripts, how to be an assistant, something else. But
like flexibility, I guess resilience, adaptability would be.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
My advice. That's the key.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
So maybe the boys of Sudden Impact did just take
a more practical path. Maybe they went back to school,
or maybe they're still grinding.
Speaker 5 (28:48):
It out now. I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
But at long last, after three decades, I know someone
who might well Sudden Impact have existed in my mind
as a symbol, a moment from a music video, a
mystery I've never known how to solve for a vet
(29:14):
Nicole Brown. They're friends co workers East Coast family, siblings.
You know, a Vet from community, from Drake and Josh,
from generally being the best thing about whatever she's in.
But she's also a singer. She was a part of
Michael Bivens's East Coast Family with Sudden Impact. My friend
Scott put me in touch with Evet. And what's fascinating
is that she got her dream life and then got
(29:36):
a new dream life.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
Because she walked up and asked for it.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Karen and I were dreaming and folding denim in nineteen
ninety one, Vet was manifesting.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
Did you did you just always want to sing?
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Gosh, you couldn't tell me I wasn't going to be
a singer. I oh, I mean I grew up loving
Michael Jackson and Jackson five, and I.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Was I'm not that old.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Ever I found them they were already grown and as
they were the Jacksons by the time I was born
and realized what the Jackson five was and how amazing
it was. And I listened to just a lot of
old R and B. Like, well, it's old now, but
it was like eighties R and B when I was
a kid, and I just loved music and I loved
singing and I thought I was going to be and
(30:21):
one of my favorite groups was New Addition, and my
thought was, if I'm going to marry one of them,
I need to be on tour with them, and so
the only way I could ensure that is for me
to sing.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
So that was one of the other.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Reasons why I wanted to be a singer, because I
wanted to marry somebody. A New Audition, So there you go,
there's my secret.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
New Edition were the biggest boy band since the Jackson five.
They were so big when they fired their manager, he
went out and started a new boy band just out
of spite, and that boy band was New Kids on
the Block.
Speaker 5 (30:49):
More on that.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Later, but New Addition were huge in nineteen eighty four.
And like with Duran Duran, you had to have a favorite.
So now it can be told, like who in New
Edition I loved?
Speaker 1 (31:00):
I loved Ralph and I loved Michael. Those were my
two favorites. I love them all, But if I was
gonna marry someone, who would have been those two?
Speaker 5 (31:06):
Okay, so you had a double bias.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Yeah, I mean, I mean Ralph was first and Mike
was second. And Michael knows this, so I'm not telling
tales out of school. I'm not he's not finding out
here that he wasn't.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
My favorite.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
New Edition had been put together by music producer Maurice Starr,
who got them in a recording studio, released their debut album,
Candy Girl, and when a couple of the singles started
selling well in Europe, sent them off on a world tour.
They came back from that tour and Star mailed them
a check for their year plus of hard work. That
check was for one dollar and eighty seven cents, not
(31:37):
five checks. One check for them all to split. I
know that doesn't sound like a lot, but adjusted for inflation,
that is.
Speaker 5 (31:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
No, that's still some bullshit. So they fired Maurice Starr.
They moved to MCA Records. They released the album New Edition,
which went double platinum in the States. They released five
more hit albums, and then they took a break. In
the late eighties, the individual New Edition guys began to
go their separate ways. When Bobby Brown went solo, then
his replacement Johnny Gil did the same, then lead singer
(32:07):
Ralph Tresvant. That left the other three Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins,
and Ronnie de Vaux to form Bell biv Davoux, who
blew up in nineteen ninety with the album Poison and Listen.
I tried a lot of things when I was trying
to break into this business, but there is one thing
I never thought of doing, and it's just going up
to my hero and demanding a job. Ivette sang for
(32:28):
Michael Bivins in a hotel lobby and then he called
her up and signed her to his label.
Speaker 5 (32:33):
So tell me where you're feeling that in your body
when you get the call.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
I mean, it's you know, my whole whole everything just
like lights up at the thought of that. Because one
thing I didn't tell you about meeting him that Kaihaga
fall Sheridan was one of those atrium hotels, so like
the center of the hotel, you can look all the
way up and see all the floor, so it's like
a big square and you can look up right. So
every time I asked Mike to sing for me, I
(32:57):
asked when he walked in the door, when he was
getting his key from the front desk, as he went
to the elevator, he said no to me like three times.
So he got on the elevator and went up to
like the six or seventh floor, and as he gets
off the elevator, I hear singing coming from the six
or seventh floor and I look up and there's Michael
Bibbin's letting somebody sing for So I get on.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
The elevator and I punched it.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
I get off the floor and he's just finishing up
listening to someone that said, you just really messed up
that I've been asking you, and I really would like
to sing for.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
You, sir, and let me, sir.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
He was like, he's a kid too, I'm like, sir,
and so he said, well, just go on and sing then,
and so I sang angrily.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
He listened angrily.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
He took my number angrily like it was a really
like contentious, you know situation. But he was like, I
gotta get her number because she actually can sing, like
and he was looking for talent.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
What's truly wild about this story is if that's absolute
certainty about it, not just now, but then it's not
like she went to apply for a job.
Speaker 5 (33:53):
The job was hers and she knew it. She just
went to pick it up.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
There's one other thing about it.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Dave the fall whatever year, I think it was a
freshman year, sophomore year of college is the same year
that Michael discovered Boys to Men. And Michael was on
BT with Boys to Men introducing them to the world.
And I was in college watching BT and I said
to my roommate, my friend Nikki, I said, he's going
(34:18):
to manage me. I'm like, I'm I'm Michael's going to
manage me.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
And she was like sure. I felt in my heart,
I'm like, he's going to manage me. Like I just knew.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
I didn't know how it was going to happen. I
just knew that he was part of my destiny. Like
whatever I was going to be in entertainment, that Michael
Bibbins was part of it.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
I can just feel it.
Speaker 5 (34:35):
Yeah, I can just feel it. And you manifested it.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Yeah, or God knew what was going to happen and
put it in my mind.
Speaker 5 (34:42):
So you get signed to Motif ten MM, and then
then what happens.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
We do a video, We do a song, and we
do a video and that's where we worked with Well,
they were they were the white guys by the time
I did the video.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
They started a sudden impact.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Yeah, I knew sudden impact became white guys and now
I have a thousand more questions for Sudden Impact, Slash White.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Guys another Bad Creatures, so many great talented people.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
We did our.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Video Bivin's put a Vette Hayden and another singer into
a vocal group together.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
We were putting a group called Different and we were
brought out my my junior year, I think, yeah, the
summer of my junior year of college, we were brought
out to California school.
Speaker 5 (35:28):
Yep in school.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
We were brought out to California to record.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
And so I spent the summer of my junior year
out here and we were like just hanging out around
the pool and going to parties, like we hadn't recorded yet.
And it was coming up on the middle of August
and I said to Mike, I said, you know, I
got one more year school, like I'm almost almost have
my degree, like I need to. I hate to go
back and do this. And so he was like, we'll
go home, finish your degree. You can come back and
(35:54):
we'll do it, you know after, And then of course
by then, you know, the music industry change.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
As the early nineties became the mid nineties, popular music
got a little dirtier. I love your Smile by Shenise
became freakd Like Me by Adina Howard mc hammer, whose
nineteen ninety song you Can't Touch This was so wholesome
it won a seventy year old guy ten thousand dollars
on America's Funny As People. By nineteen ninety four, was
doing a song called Pumps on a Bump with a
(36:21):
video that features him in a speedo. The videos on
YouTube watch at your own risk. Sexy Jams was just
not a direction if that wanted to go in. She
wanted to do uplifting, almost gospel style R and B music,
So her time as a singer never really came. Are
you frustrated during this time, like while you're signed?
Speaker 1 (36:40):
And you know, I wasn't frustrated, but I'm someone that
likes to be efficient, and I just felt, like, you know,
laying out by the pool is fun, and going to
these parties is fun, and it's great to be around
Michael and stuff. But my dream, or my mother's dream,
even more than mine, was for me to graduate from college.
And I wanted that for myself. I wanted that for her,
(37:03):
and I had put in three good years and I
had scholarships and pill grants, and you know, I really
worked hard. I had work study all through college, so
I earned, you know.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
The right to be there.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
And I felt like, though it was fun to be
out in LA, if we're not recording, I don't need
to be here.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
I need to be recording.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
So it was the frustration of it not being an
efficient amount of time spent.
Speaker 5 (37:30):
So at what point did you say music is not happening.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
I've always felt like, you know, you race towards the
thing that's racing towards you, and so music just didn't
like me that much.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
It just wasn't you know.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
It thought I was cute, Yeah, but it didn't like
me like that, right where acting loves me, like acting
things I'm great. And so when I started auditioning for
commercials and that started to take off, I was like, well,
this is what it should be.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
The dream of singing receded into the background while the
dream of acting took over. But singing never completely disappeared.
And this is the funny thing, Dave.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
I sing on just about every show I get, every
show that I've been a series regular on, I've sung
on every single whie. So the gift is still being
used and I do a lot of cartoons, a lot
of kids shows, a lot of cartoons, and I've been
singing on all of those as well. So it's not
like it's gone. It just didn't manifest in the way
(38:32):
that I thought it would.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
If that is at peace with the way her career
turned out. She didn't get to be a big famous singer,
but it's not because of anything she did or Michael
Bivens did. The world was just a different place back then.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
We were very young and naive and didn't understand what
it was. And I don't know that I don't know
that any of us back then had the killer instinct
you would need the killer instinct that performers now are
like born with. We didn't have a social media. All
the meeting is that they had to read. They could
(39:05):
read up on anybody they wanted, They could find out
about anything, they could put out their own music, like
the world was wide open for that generation, and so
I feel like those of us back in the East
Coast family, we didn't have those those opportunities to figure
it out. So that's why some of us made it,
and some of us are still trying to get to
(39:26):
whatever place we wanted to get to because it's just
not laid out. There was no blueprint back then, like
it was a record label and that's it. So many
ways to make it now. Yeah, if some an impact
was out right now, they would be they would you know,
be streaming, they'd be on YouTube, they'd be doing TikTok
videos like we wouldn't know them.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
They'd be super duper famous as a.
Speaker 5 (39:45):
Boy band right now, right right.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
They just didn't get their shot, right, they get their shot,
you know. Yeah, Hayden didn't either. Hayden Heide was such
a great You need to talk to Hayden.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
If you watch that one for all for one video,
you remember Hayden. He sticks out like a sore thumb,
looks like a frat boy on your college rugby team.
Speaker 5 (40:05):
But that voice. How was this guy not a star? Yeah?
I would love to talk to Hayden. Do you know how?
Speaker 3 (40:12):
I sure know how to get you in contact with Hayden?
Speaker 5 (40:14):
Not sure would be fantasy?
Speaker 3 (40:16):
Yeah, no, that would be No.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
You got to talk to Hayden because he's he's first
of all, he's that's someone I hope puts out an album.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
Yeah, his voice is he was like a white one.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Yeah, incredible voice. I mean, all I've heard is is
you know from No He.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Had a whole He had a whole album on Motown.
It never got released. He remade PEG Yes beautiful, Yes,
amazing version of PEG never came out. It was something
that something happened with the label. I can't remember. But
there's a whole album of music that is done. Hayden's
album not being released is a tragedy. It's a tragedy
for music that blue eyed soul. He would have really
(40:52):
yeah he did. That's a loss for all of us.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
We are one step closer to meeting Sudden Impact. If
that's gonna hook me up with Hayden, another act from
Michael Bivens' East Coast family who could have been huge.
Speaker 5 (41:04):
I want to know his.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Story, and not for nothing. He might still be in
touch with Sudden Impact or White Guy's or whatever their
name is. Now we'll talk to him, and we'll take
a deep dive into the pop landscape of nineteen ninety
one and how one procedural change in the way charts
were compiled changed what the entire world listened to with
pop chart columnist.
Speaker 5 (41:23):
Chris malanfe That's Next Time on.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Waiting for Impact, a Dave Holmes passion project. This has
been an exactly Right production written by Me Dave Hormelson,
produced by Hannah Kyle Crichton, recorded, mixed and sound designed
by Andrew Epen. Additional engineering and assembly by Annalise Nelson.
(41:50):
Music by Ben Wise, artwork by Garrett Ross. Executive produced
by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hart Stark and Danielle Kramer. Follow
the show on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at exactly right
and follow me at Dave Holmes. For more information, go
to Exactlyrightmedia dot com. Binge the show ad free on
(42:13):
Stitcher Premium for a free month. Head to Stitcherpremium dot
com slash Impact and enter promo code Impact when you
select a monthly plan, listen, subscribe, and leave us a
review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your
podcasts
Host
Dave Holmes
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