November 9, 2021 • 47 mins
We have made contact with Sudden Impact. Aaron Kane, the group’s lead singer, tells us how they came together, how they got Michael Bivins’ attention, and where things began to go wrong. Plus, Dave shares war stories with an old MTV colleague about having a normal life one day, and a TV show the next.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
What's up, Dave?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
What's up Aaron?
Speaker 3 (00:07):
No, Now I have a visual with my emails.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I am talking to Aaron Kin, the guy in the
center of the Sudden Impact point, in the middle of
the Boys to Men Motown, Philly video at the heart
of the thing I have been obsessed with for three decades.
The guy behind the point is now on my laptop
screen talking to me. I'm finally about to find out
what happened to sudden Impact. This is a significant life event,
(00:35):
but first I need some very basic information, like who
is everyone. I pull up a screenshot of the sudden
Impact point. I have the picture here.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
There it is. That's it.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Can you talk me through who's who?
Speaker 3 (00:48):
I was the guy in the middle with the bowtide
looking like a waiter.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Because I was the lead singer.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Had to set yourself apart.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Yeah, I'm in the middle with the bow tie right,
so all the way all the way.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah, that's my brother. That's my brother.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
That's Noel, the guy who you really can't tell what
he looks like because his point obscures his entire face.
That is Noel Kane.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
The next guy's Dave.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
The shy guy, the one who's looking at and pointing
to the director a little bit off camera. That's Dave.
Just Dave. Listening back to this, I realized I should
have asked for a last name. And this is a
thing that will come back and bite me in the ass.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
The next guy's Alan Heally, that's my man.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
The guy who's pointing in kind of an Uncle Sam
wants you kind of way.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
And then the next guy that's Todd that was writing
all the songs.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Todd White is on the right in what looks like
a modified Billy Ray Cyrus Mullet, very on trend for
nineteen ninety one. Todd's the guy who had the idea
for Sudden Impact, and that's the guy who you met
when you were gonna fight exactly.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
That's how the whole thing started. Two guys get ready
to go to blows.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
The story of Sudden Impacts, as told to me by
Aaron Kane, is cinematic. It's got ups and downs. It
has set pieces and moments that would cut down into
a beautiful montage, and between two of the leads a
meet cute. On this episode, the story of Sudden Impact
from Aaron Kane, a guy who is right in the
middle of the action This is Waiting for Impact, a
(02:21):
Dave Holmes passion project. Where are you right now?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
I am in my studio, in my house right now.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I got my just sitting in front of my studio Blackwood,
New Jersey, right over the bridge from Philadelphia, Philly.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
A place by the way that Aaron visited for the
first time ever when he and the Boys their cameo
in the Motown Philly video. We'll get into how he
came to settle in Philadelphia a little bit later, but
first let's get into how this whole thing started and
the high school house party in Newport News, Virginia that
changed five guys lives forever. So take me back to
the start. What's your what's your musical background?
Speaker 3 (03:19):
No musical background. My family doesn't really come from music.
My dad's dad, he was kind of in a band
and played fiddle and stuff like that, but he died
before I was even born.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
So, but no musical background.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
I was always, uh a sports guy, played baseball, basketball, football, like.
I was always into sports, and this music thing just
kind of like fell into our.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Lat though it was the craziest thing.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Sudden Impact came together because of a perfect combination of fate,
and testosterone.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
A guy named Todd White started group and he was
just like doing little demos around town this and that.
I started talking to one of his girlfriends and me
and him were about to fight. Actually that's how we met.
And he heard did I sang a little bit? I
sang with a couple of people around in high school
(04:19):
and stuff. And this one night we went to a
party and I saw him there and we were getting
ready to fight, and he comes up to me and
he's like, hey, man, I hear that you sing. And
I'm like, yeah, I sing a little bit. And he's like, hey, well,
I'm starting this group. You know, wy don't you come
by the studio. Maybe we could work something out. So
(04:40):
we go to the studio. I just happened to go
by there one day and ended up getting on the
track singing some stuff. At that time, it was just
three of us at that time.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
So instead of brawling and ruining a perfectly good house party,
Todd and Aaron decided to sing along with a guy
named Eric, who, as far as we know, was not
talking to either of their girlfriends.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
We did like this little hometown demo. Just started kind
of working the demo round town.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
A little bit.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
The demo really wasn't even that good, but you know,
we loved it and everything.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
What was it called?
Speaker 1 (05:19):
It was called Please Be Mine?
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Was it a ballad? Was it up tempo? What was it? Uh?
Speaker 3 (05:23):
It was a ballad at first, and then we turned
it into We had this guy named Timmy Beale. He
was kind of like a producer around town. We had
this guy do a remix to it, and they this
is how the hook went. Please be mine, de my girl,
please be Mine.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
That was it. That was like, that was That was
basically the whole song.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
That's all you need.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
That was it all?
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Right? After thirty years, I have finally heard music from
Sudden Impact and I like it. Now this this is
all happening. In nineteen eighty nine, Aaron Kane is sixteen
years old. It's the summer between his sophomore and junior
years of high school. He's a star athlete with a
demo tape. Whether he was the inspiration for zac Efron's
character in High School Musical, I cannot say. But Eric
(06:16):
leaves the group. Three more guys join Aaron's brother, Noel,
Alan Healy and Dave, whose last name I really should
have asked for him. Todd White makes a connection with
a guy named Cecil Jenkins. Cecil puts the entertainment together
for local church festivals, so he books them for a
couple of those festivals, and the guys get to work
on their vocals, practice their stage show. The buzz is
(06:38):
starting to build, so they did what any ambitious young
boy band would do, a photo shoot. The pictures turned
out well, so they turned their favorite one shot of
all of them under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge into a poster.
This teen movie is off to a good start. It's
got a poster. It's got a near fistfight over a
girl that leads to a friendship and the formation of
a singing group. But to move the plot forward, we
(07:02):
need a road trip. Cecil Jenkins was a good friend
of Marvin Gay. Marvin Gay was about to get his
posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Cecil wants
to go to the ceremony and he wants company.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Cecil Jenkins says, hey, guys, listen, Marvin Gay is getting
ready to get his star on Hollywood Boulevard. You know,
just want to tell you guys, if you know, if
you guys want to come out to La with me.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
You're more than welcome come out. Well.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Two guys in the group, Todd White and Alan Heally,
their parents were the only ones that said yes, you
can go.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Aaron seventeen by now, his little brother nol is fifteen,
and mister and Missus Kane are not about to let
kids that age just drive across the country. Neither is
Missus Dave's mom. But Todd and Allen drive out to
Los Angeles for Marvin Gay's Walk of Fame ceremony. An
article about that ceremony that ran in the next day's
LA Times points out neither of Marvin Gaye's parents showed up,
(08:02):
which is a shame and which also tells you that
there was an entertainment reporter for the LA Times who
didn't know that Marvin Gay's mother had died two years
earlier and that Marvin Gay's dad murdered him. So his
parents are not there, but four hundred other people are,
including one very important.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Person, Michael Bifvens.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Just happened to stop by that ceremony when two of
the guys from my group were there, and at the
time we had that crappy demo and we took a
picture underneath the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. We took a picture
and we made a poster, and that's all we had.
(08:45):
We had a poster. We had a crappy demo. So anyway,
they take the crappy demo.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
They take the poster.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Out to La Thorn, Marvin Gays getting his star in
Hollywood Boulevard. Michael Bivens up stopping by to guys in
my group see Michael Bivens. They're like, oh my gosh,
that's Michael Bivens from New Edition.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
This is September nineteen ninety. We know that by the
next summer people would just be coming up to Michael
Bivens and singing in his face. Todd and Allen don't
have their whole group together to meet Michael Bivens, but
they do have a demo tape and a poster, so
they take bold action.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
They run up on Mike, Hey, sign signed, this is
a poster. This is a poster of us. Can you
sign a poster? And Michael Bivens said, guys, get that
shit out of my face. Get that New Kids on
the Block poster out of my face.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Okay, that's harsh, and.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
They were like no.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
They were like, no, no, no, no, this is us,
this is this is us.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And he was like, are you kidding me? He was like,
that's you, guys.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
And at this time, Michael Bivens had just signed a
three artists production deal with Gerald Bugsby from Motown, and
he had ABC, another bad creation, and he had.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Boys men and he needed one more. Wouldn't you know.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
The two guys, Todd and Allen hop in Michael Bibvens' bins.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
They go to Motown that day.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Michael Bibbins didn't even hear the demo, didn't even hear
the demo.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
He just loved the poster so much.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Now, if this were to happen in a movie, this
would pull you out of the movie. One of the
biggest pop stars on the planet wants to sign an
act he's only met two fifths of whose songs and
voices he's heard zero of, just because he's seen the poster.
You'd be thinking, all right, somebody at Motown is going
to step in here. But there are a couple things
to consider. We've talked about the story of New Edition
(10:51):
and how they fired more Restar, the guy who had
discovered and produced them when he paid them a dollar
eighty seven for a world tour and a hit album.
We've talked about how Maurice Starr went on to form
New Kids on the Block pretty much completely out of spite.
We've talked about how New Kids on the Block were
the biggest pop act in the world in nineteen ninety.
What we don't know is how this all felt to
(11:12):
Michael Bivens. What we don't know is whether, as Maurice
Starr form New Kids to get back at New addition,
Michael Bivens might have wanted to sign Sudden Impact to
get back at Maurice's Star dollar signs and revenge at
the same time, I would take it. We should also
consider that this is real life, and as the saying goes,
truth is fucking crazy.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
We actually got signed to Motown off of a poster
without them even hearing any music.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
And you're hearing about all this from across the country.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Michael Biffins called us during this time. Michael Bivens calls
us and the guy Todd and now and they're like, hey,
Michael Bivens is on the line, and now you gotta
think this At the time where Michael Bibvens just BBD
just came out right, and that album was amazing, Like
(12:10):
that BBD new album had just come out. Michael Bivens
is talking to us, Hey, hey, doing this is Michael Bivens.
You know, we want to sign you guys here the
Motown And you got to think, I'm thinking to myself,
yeah right, We're talking to him on the phone.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
We're like, yeah, right, this is this. I'm like, Todd,
who is this?
Speaker 3 (12:31):
You got somebody acting like Michael Bivens And now it
was really am.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
So what tell me what that feels like to you
getting this call and finding out that you're like, you've
ascended to Motown.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Man, it was.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
It was craziness. Like, first of all, it took me
like a couple of days to actually realize that it
was true, you know what I mean, Like, who thinks
they they're getting a call from Michael Biffins to sign
you to Motown Records, and all we have is.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
One It does sound like a prank, Yeah, and all
we have is.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
One crappy demo. That's it, you know, you know, back then,
back then, that's the way it was. It was all
about artist development, you know's that's one thing in the
music world today That's why artists don't. You know, you
don't have artists that stick around for a long time
because the whole artist development thing has kind of been
(13:32):
pushed to the side.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
But back then, you know, you could get signed on
a whim, and you know they could develop you.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
You know, the music industry was flush back in nineteen ninety.
After all, if you liked a particular artist and you
wanted to hear a song or an album by them
on your schedule, you had to buy it in physical form.
If you wanted the album, you had to go to
a store and put down anywhere from ten to eighteen
dollars to get the cassette or the compact disc. Around
(14:00):
four million Americans did that with Bell Bivdevo's album Poison.
So Michael Bivens had clout, and that clout allowed him
to do something risky like sign an act to Motown
Records after only seeing their poster. It allowed the Boys
Set an impact to reach the big time just by
asking nicely. Back in the seventies and eighties, record labels
(14:21):
took their time with new artists. They let them develop
their sound and their look over the course of a
few years. A few albums. It took Bruce Springsteen a
couple of years and a couple albums to come up
with Born. To run that development is generally the job
of a department within record labels called A and R
Artists and Repertoire an R people find new artists, work
with them to determine where they'll fit in the marketplace,
(14:43):
help them develop an identity. And Michael Bivins had a
good relationship with an A and R guy at another label.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
And we signed with Motown, and then we started working
for a little bit. And then and Michael Bivens calls
this up one day and says, hey, listen, guys.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
I want to take you. I don't want you guys
to be with Motown.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
I want you guys to go to Capitol Records. Now
still minds you, Dave. We don't have any song. I mean,
we've been working on demos at the house. We have
a sixth member in our group that was the producer.
He produced everything. He's actually my best friend right now.
His name is Tim Bird.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
I make two mental notes here. One find Tim Bird
and two just really breathe with the fact that there's
someone they call the sixth member of sudden.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Impact, and so we're like, all right, cool, we'll go
to Capitol because Michael Bivens had a good relationship with
the A and R guy over the area. His name
was Steph Johnson. So we end up signing this huge deal. Still,
minds you, Capitol hasn't heard any music. Still, We're going
(16:02):
through all these deals and everything, and nobody has heard
any music. They're going off of just Michael Bivens words.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
They signed with Capitol Records. Capitol puts the boys up
in a beach house in Virginia to bond with each other,
rents them a studio nearby to write and record some songs.
What were the influences? What did you what did you
sound like?
Speaker 1 (16:24):
I mean our influences.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
People make fun of it, but New Kids on the
Block was a big influence for us. New Kids on
the Block was huge influence for us. Of course, New Edition,
you know back then it was New Edition bb D,
Bobby Brown, Keith Sweat, Teddy Riley guy.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
That's the we were trying.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
We were trying to be like the more R and
B version of New Kids on the Block.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
The Virginia music scene would blow up a few years
later with Timbaland and Missy Elliott and then Pharrell and
then Neptunes. But at the time, Sudden Impact were the
pioneers of the Virginia sound. I mean maybe they were.
I don't know, I've never heard anything before. They developed
their sound, before they even made a sound. They got
their big break.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
And then boom Motown Philly comes out, and that's what
really took us to that next level.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
What was shooting the video? Like, did you know that
you would be a part of it long in advance?
Was it kind of last minute? What happened?
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yeah, we knew.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
That was actually the first time that when we were
in the video, that was the first time that I
had ever been to Philadelphia. We recorded the one part
I don't know if you're the I mean, the iconic
part is Viv sitting in the middle of us.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
And then we do this yep, we like point to
the camera.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
To the point Aaron is doing the Sudden Impact, point
to me over zoom and I have fully left my body.
The video come out, and the video blows up. Boys
the Men becomes stars, and so does Sudden Impact.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Actually, the first time that Boys the Men was ever
on MTV, there was a show on MTV. You probably
remember Dave with Martha Quinn. Yep, Martha Quinn had a
show on there.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
I thought. I think it was like called.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
MTV Live or something like that, and that was the
first time Boys the Men was ever on MTV and
they had people calling in right, yeah and get and
guess what the first question was when somebody called in
during that interview. The first question I actually remember her name.
(18:43):
Her name was Lydia from Utah.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Uh huh.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
And the first question Boys of Men has just released
their new album, Motown Philly just came out. They're on
MTV for the first time, and the first question is
who those white guys in the video?
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Listen. I am not opposed to tracking down Lydia from Utah.
And it's good that Boys to Men goes on to
become the biggest selling R and B group of all time,
because it is absolutely criminal that the first question they
get on their first MTV appearance is about sudden impact.
But as Boys to Men is blowing up, sudden impacts
are being talked about on MTV with original VJ Martha Quinn,
(19:28):
and they're on a major label, Capital. The Beatles were
on Capitol, the Eagles the Beastie Boys, Juice Newton. They're
on a huge label in a peak here for the
recording industry, so they're being shown a taste of the
good life with Capital.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
It was fantastic, Dave, Like, I mean, they put us
up in this huge house right on the beach, this
amazing studio in Virginia Beach. They were sending us to
Disney World, they were sending us to Universal Studio.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
And how old are you at this time?
Speaker 1 (20:03):
We're like nineteen twenty at this time, So what's that lifestyle? Like?
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Oh man, you're talking about some kids right out of
high school that had a crappy demo. They got a
huge advancement. Like back then, Back then, the advancements, especially
with Capitol Records, we were getting like huge advancements.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
And advance is an amount of money a record company
gives you when they put you under contract. It's to
keep you afloat while you're working on your thing. They
take it out of your earnings when you start making money.
But if you never do start making money, you don't
even have to pay it back. From today's perspective, it
is wild the corporations could do business this way at
this level. But in nineteen ninety one. That's how it worked.
(20:49):
Aaron and the rest of the Sudden Impact guys were
at the cusp of pop music stardom. But in order
to move forward into the great unknown, Aaron had to
close the door on the shore thing he knew.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
I actually got a baseball scholarship coming out of high school,
and that was a hard decision for me to make.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
It was go to college.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
I got a scholarship to King's College in Tennessee. It
was a really hard decision because baseball was my life
ever since. I just had a talent for it from
time I was five years old all the way up
going out of high school. And I had to make
a decision when I graduated high school, do I go
(21:32):
to college play baseball, or do I pursue this music thing.
I'm getting ready to sign the Capitol Records get a
huge advancement. My mom actually had a conversation with her dad,
my grandfather, and my grandfather, you know, because my parents
wanted me to go to college and everything. And my
(21:56):
grandfather said, listen, if you make him go to college
and he misses out on this music thing, he's probably,
you know, gonna have some resentment his whole life, you
know what I mean? So I said, listen in Boys
and Men's Video, I'm getting ready to get this huge advancement.
(22:19):
I'm going with the music thing, you know what I mean?
And I mean, what do you what would you do day?
You're a little kid.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
You're a little kid now, yeah you're all.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
You're on MTV, b et get ready to sign with
Capitol Records.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
This is very understandable. How how big an advance are
we talking?
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Uh? I mean, I don't really want to but it was.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
It was nice, but I wish you know, uh you
think that it's just gonna.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Keep coming, you know.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
And I definitely wish that I would have made some
different decisions back then.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
I mean I did some amazing stuff, but.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Yeah, I wish I would have did a little something
different with my money back then.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
You know, somehow you weren't at your wisest when you
were nineteen. How that happened? But I guess that's what happened.
So an impact is getting paid, they're getting put up
on the beach, they're getting trips to Disney World. But
and this is how I know we're talking about kids
right now. The thing that means the most is a
(23:35):
team jacket.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
I'll tell you a funny story, Dave. So at that
time BBD went on tour, and they went on tour,
and Michael Bivens gave everybody out BBD tour jackets with
your name on them, like they were really really cool jackets.
(24:00):
And so of course us being around Newport News, being
around Virginia, we would always wear our bb You know,
we're a motow Philly video. We got BBD tour jackets on.
It was like wherever we went, it was like we
were celebrities and we really hadn't.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Done anything and what did that feel like?
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Oh man, it was amazing.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
I believe him, and I know a little bit about
what he means. Having a normal life one day and
then finding yourself in the middle of the entertainment industry
the next is a thing I can relate to. It's
exciting and it's disorienting, and you don't really want to
talk about how weird it is while it's happening. You
don't want to seem like you're bragging to someone who
it hasn't happened for. You don't want to seem like
(24:48):
you just fell off the turnip truck for someone who
has already happened to But it's big. You have to
talk about this stuff. Yeah, okay, all right, Yeah, there's
(25:10):
this guy.
Speaker 4 (25:11):
Oh my god. Uh, this is the most nervous I
think I've ever been.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
This is Damien Fahe. He was a VJ on MTV.
Just after I left. He and I were in my
backyard doing something we never do, which is watching old
clips of ourselves. I found one of him on TRL
that someone posted. The YouTube reads like this.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
She's sold almost two hundred million albums, had twenty five
top ten singles, won three Grammys, and a bunch of VMAs.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Ladiesship, and she put the M and MTV.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
This is Madonna. This is two thousand and two, two
thousand and three.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
See.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
I keep my hand because my hand was shaking, so
I figured if I put it in under my arm,
it won't shake. Because I was so nervous.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Damien is interviewing Madonna on live television, a thing even
seasoned professionals get nervous for. And Damien's just a few
months into the job and he has just been told
she doesn't want to talk to him.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
She wanted Carson refused to do the interview if it
wasn't Carson.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Carson Daily was the host of TRL from its premiere
in nineteen ninety eight. Damien was brought on to be
phased in as his replacement as Carson transitioned into his
post MTV life of hosting everything on television.
Speaker 4 (26:24):
They talked her into They said, we don't have Carson,
but we can do She said, well, I want John
Norris if I can't get Carson. John Norris was like
her second, because I guess he's been with And they said,
we don't have John Norris, we have Damien hosting the
show now. And it was sort of like, who the
fuck is that. I have no idea who that is.
(26:44):
And so they told me this story. This is always
good to know, you know before that your third tier,
you know, before an interview.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
It's strange watching these old videos, the haircuts, the clothes,
it's like finding a video of yourself from high school,
except hours aired on television. I want to see if
we can put ourselves back into the mindset of those
guys twenty years ago. Mostly we can't remember what happened
at all. Whenever old things come up, like every now
(27:13):
and then, somebody will digitize something with me in it
and put it up on YouTube, and I'll watch it
and it's like, oh, that's nice. Good for that guy,
Good for that guy. Who is me? Like who that's
my face and my body and my voice. But I
don't have a single recollection, yeah, of any of it.
For me. I always say it was like it was
(27:36):
like getting a head injury, you know, like if you've
just if you've ever been in a very bad car
accident in.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
Shot, it is like watching a different I'm like, oh,
that's cool, look at that what that guy did.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Good for him.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
That wasn't me. You know. It's like I just feel
like a totally different kind of person like me.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Damien got plucked out of his normal life and dropped
right into the center of MTV, hosting TRL at the
height of its popularity. He had been working at a
top forty radio station in Boston while going to college.
An MTV casting director came to town on a nationwide search
to find a new rock vjay, and a co worker
encouraged him to try out. He didn't want to do it.
(28:12):
He had tried out for a local TV show a
few months before and just eaten it at the audition.
He was humiliated. He didn't want to be embarrassed again,
but just to get his coworker off his back, he
showed up.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
And so then I go to the radio station waiting
in the lobby with like three other DJs. One guy
goes downstairs, you know, fifteen minutes past as he comes
back up, okay, Damien fahee, you know, and I go
downstairs and I go in the basement. And it was
so weird because it was it was like it was
(28:45):
the last thing that I wanted to do. And then
the second I got like the first laugh from the
casting people, I was like, this is all I want
to do. Oh my god, I love this.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
When you get a taste to that, you start really
wanting it.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
I said, when when will I know you know about this?
And they said, well, it's going to take a while.
We got to you know, take the tapes back to
New York and have our bosses look at it and everything.
And I said, okay, well I'll be in touch. I'll
be in touch because this is this is really fun, right,
And so like I just like you know, got in
my car and drove home, and you know, I remember
(29:23):
seeing like a license plate of the car stopped in
front of me. The first car stopped in front of me.
I just stopped signing. It was like two forty eight
VJ five whatever, Like that's a sign I'm getting this
fucking job. Holy shit.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Damien got a call back in New York. He met
a friend there the night before. They had some drinks,
so he showed up a little hungover. And here's the
thing about that. I can't recommend it in good conscience,
but it kind of works. If you have a headache
and a sore stomach to focus on, that is less
energy to give to your nerves. He went back home
to Boston, and then he got a phone call another callback.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
They're like, this is the last callback, the final round.
It's between you and this other guy. And I'm like,
oh my god, don't tell me that.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
And so do you know who the other guy was?
Speaker 4 (30:04):
De Snyder's son, Oh, Jesse Snyder.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
This is rock Royalty we're talking about here, the son
of d Snyder, lead singer of heavy metal band Twisted Sister,
the guy who testified before Congress against explicit lyrics record labels.
This is very serious and Damien is going to have
to step up his game.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
I went home for the weekend from from from from school,
and I said, I'm gonna have my dad take me out,
buy me clothes for this cool clothes and sos like,
of course, you know, go out. It's been two hundred
dollars in structure.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Of course.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
I had like very big jeans, leather, square toed dress shoes,
like a very pattern. It was like an aqua in
maroon like FLOORI de lee kind of like pattern saying
going on with the button down and then on top
of that like a like a like a red a
(31:01):
deep like burgundy red leather jacket from like like like
a Chicago Coppu where like in the nineteen seventy and
so so that was like mine, I'm gonna wow, I'm
going to New York. Baby.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
I can see this outfit very clearly, and I don't
like it. But Damien takes a train down from Boston
for the callback. He's nervous. He's not hungover this time,
so he has that much more energy to devote to
being nervous.
Speaker 4 (31:29):
I remember waking up that morning. I was, you know,
super nervous. I couldn't eat anything. My Mom's like, your
stomach is upset. Here take these large vitamins.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
I don't need to tell you that Damien vomited on
that train. Kids don't take large vitamins from your mother's
purse on an empty stomach before a big audition. But
still Damien knows he looks good.
Speaker 4 (31:52):
I remember getting walking into MTV with that outfit on,
and Vinnie comes out, casting director, and he goes, hey,
good to see you. You know, we're all ready for you,
and he he. I go, well, I'm ready, let's do this,
and he looks me up and down and he goes,
let's get you into some new clothes. And I'm like,
(32:12):
but I spent two hundred dollars in structure.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
You know. A week later, Damien gets a call from
the head of casting. They're giving him a contract to
be a VJ, starting right away at the MTV beach house.
Where are you feeling it? Everywhere?
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Everywhere?
Speaker 4 (32:28):
Like yeah, yeah, Remember where I was, Remember what was on,
you know, television, Remember like the smell of the air
this way the air smelled. I remember my fucking giant
Nokia cell phone. I don't waiting by the fucking phone
at the kitchen table, and then it rang, and then
I would wanted to like I didn't want to pick
it up, all like, you know, hello, you know, I
(32:49):
wanted to let it ring three times, don't sound too
you know, And then I picked it up and like they.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Would resend the job off for if you answer the
phone to you're too excited for this. Yeah, it's we're
looking for it right at let's get Jesse Snyder. The
job of an MTV VJ is a dream job for
a person of a certain age, but for a person
of a certain kind, people like me and Damien. It's
an emotional challenge.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
Someone who experienced a lot of like loneliness and feeling
invisible for a lot of years in throughout you know,
your teens. To hear, you know, see a giant audience,
it's really scary and you just imagine that they're gonna
boo you or they're not gonna care. And so it
was all that was in my head. So I wanted
to be like really cool. I wanted to say the
(33:35):
cool bands? What bands are you gonna do? I don't know,
what do people like? What is going to make people
think I'm cool?
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yea?
Speaker 4 (33:42):
And it was just like all that and that, I
mean that lasted for years.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
When you were standing like on the edge of this thing.
When you were just starting this job, you knew it
was going to bring you some sort of like fame. Yeah,
what did that look like? What specifically like in my head,
what did it look like? I think I kind of
went in.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
I hosted a few shows, and they sort of were like,
you need to just do what Carson does, like you
need to be just like Carson. And so in my head,
I'm like, oh, I'm never going to be as big
as Carson. I can't do what he does. So I'm
just going to be like this mid tier like VJ.
And so I think in my head I never really
had like these huge like oh my god, I'm gonna
(34:29):
be so fucking famous, I'm going to be I never
had that. It was it was like, I don't know,
for some reason, I just never stepped into like this
is what my life's going to be.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
A very strange thing happens when you start to achieve
a conventional and public kind of success, you just start
wanting more conventional and public success. But the problem is
who decides what that success should look like. Some of
you used the MTV job as as stepping stone to
untold wealth, right and then have just vanished. And I like,
(35:05):
for me, I just vanity wise. I don't want some
stranger somewhere to be like, oh, that guy got the
job and then nothing happened after, Like I don't know,
I don't know who this person is who would react
that way. I'll probably never see that person. But that
stranger somewhere has so much control over me because I
(35:29):
like just the idea that I'm not doing enough for
him and I don't know him, and I know what's
enough for him, but like, uh and and I didn't
go in wanting to please that guy. My choices on
some level have been guided by a ghost, a fictional character,
some guy in some bar somewhere, some dick on Twitter,
(35:49):
someone I don't know who thinks I'm a loser. I
went in just wanting to be close to where things
were happening, to use my skills, and to like, you know, yeah,
have a better professional life than I had before that
used all of the dumb shit about myself that I
(36:11):
was taught to. Yeah, it was frivolous. That's all I wanted.
And then immediately this vanity comes in where it's like, well,
I have to keep doing bigger and better things that
I don't want. We're complicated people, us former mtvvjs, guided
on some level by voices, by someone else's idea of success.
(36:33):
When I managed to shake that voice off and think
about my life rationally, I know I'm doing what I
want to be doing. Damien is an executive producer on
Family Guy, so he knows he's doing what he wants
to be doing. Plus he has a really nice house,
and I kind of want that too. But that's beside
the point. We're both happy with our lives and our jobs.
But the real work sometimes still is to bust those ghosts.
(36:58):
If Aaron Kane of Sudden Impact is troubled by ghosts,
if he's worried that some fictional asshole somewhere is having
a laugh at his expense for appearing in a big
music video and then never releasing an album, it doesn't
come through at all. He's excited when he talks about
this stuff. In his voice. You can still hear that
kid who nearly got punched in the face at a
high school party and got pulled into the music business instead.
(37:20):
He's enthusiastic. It's like he still can't believe his love
just to recap the scores here. Such an impact is
on their second major label record deal. They're making an
undisclosed but nice amount of money. They're featured in one
of the biggest videos of nineteen ninety one. They've released
zero songs and everybody's talking about them, but this movie
is still just getting going.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
But once we did that video, it kind of took
us to another level. There was anticipation, you know what
I mean, Like yeah, like everybody was like waiting on
this white group to like, you know, oh, there's this
white group that's down with Boys the Men and with
Michael Bivens from New Edition, Like what's going on with these.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Guys and what was going on? How far along was
the album?
Speaker 3 (38:10):
We did four songs under Capitol Records and they were cool.
The two of the songs were really really cool out
of the four, again produced by my boy Tim Bird.
So from there, Michael Bivens gets another situation. You know,
(38:30):
he's got Boys Men, he's got ABC off of Motown
that really did big things.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Boiso Men's doing huge things.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
So Motown says, Hey, Mike, I want to give you
your own label called do you know the name of
Michael Bivens?
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Label of ten Exactly ten.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
The antar person at Capitol whom Michael Bivens liked, the
person he trusted to develop sudden impact and make them
as as big as new Kids on the block left Capital,
and Michael wanted the guys to move to his label
BIF ten. The problem was the guys were comfy a Capital.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
So when BIV called us up right, BIV called us
up and said that I want to take you off
of Capital.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Now and put you on fIF ten.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
We really weren't feeling that because we were living the
life of Capital World. We got a nice house on
the beach, We're going to Disney World. You know, we're
getting money. And that didn't sit well with Mike when
we said that, And he kind of got offended a
(39:42):
little bit when we said that, because he felt like
he's made everything happen for us. Anyway, he's getting his
own label. We should be honored to be on BIV ten.
And you know, maybe that was a mistake on our part.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
You know, we don't know.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
It Again comes back to being little kids again, you
know what I mean. And you're a little kid living
on the beach, you're happy, you know.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Did you have a manager no okay. With a feeling
of loyalty to Michael Bivens and no one else to
guide them, the guys made the decision to dance with
the guy who brought him.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
So, like a couple months past or whatever, we end
up not being with Capital anymore. Got to get rid
of the house, stop recording at the big studio.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Did you lose the rights to the songs he had
already recorded?
Speaker 3 (40:33):
Yep, okay, yep, Capital, that's Capital's songs now. But anyway,
so we go back to Newport News and then that's
once BIV ten things started happening. That's when the whole
East Coast Family thing started happening, and that was great.
(40:54):
Biv said that we're gonna do a song. He started
getting all these groups together. I want to do this
song with all these groups. And that's where Hayden and Ivett,
Kyle Lee and ten ten and all these other groups
start coming into the picture.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Aaron and the guys, who are now on their third
label and at least their second name White Guys WHYTG
I Z E take part in the East Coast Family
one for All for one music video. They're wearing sport
coats on a hot Houston day.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
And then we did the video in Houston, Texas, and man,
let me tell you something. That day we did that video,
we did it in like this warehouse and Dave, it
was like one hundred and ten degrees at like seven
o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
It was like, it was crazy, and you guys are
wearing layers.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
Oh did you see us in the video?
Speaker 3 (41:57):
We got yeah backets on. Yeah, yeah, we got jackets.
You can't tell on the video, but we were just soaked.
So we did that. We did the East Coast Family
Song and that actually went to number one on the
R and B charts.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
I don't know if you know that. Yeah, that song
actually went to number one on the R and B charts.
Huge song.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
That was fantastic for me because I sang the leads
of the park and the song and it was funny.
My mom picks me up from the airport. I'm coming
back from Houston. My mom picks me up from the airport.
As soon as I get into the car, the song
comes on the radio and I was like, oh, this
(42:47):
is me on the radio.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Oh thing you do you know?
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Yeah, yeah, I'm finally on the radio.
Speaker 5 (42:57):
Finally And this is how long after you after you
moved into the Capitol House, Like, what has this been
two years?
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Now?
Speaker 1 (43:14):
This was? Yeah, this was probably about two years. Yeah,
you're right.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
It's a couple of years into their brush with the
big time and the guys have finally released something. It's
a couple quick lines on a posse track, but it's something.
And if you've seen the one four All four one video,
the one where we found vt Nicole Brown's secret life
as a singer, the one where we met Hayden, you
know there are more than a few artists on the
BIV ten label. There are many, and they're all waiting
(43:41):
for their shot and waiting, and Michael isn't finished signing
artists yet. He brings on a girl group who you
might remember from around the turn of the millennium.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
I don't know if you remember seven oh.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Two where my Girl's at et cetera exactly.
Speaker 3 (43:57):
So anyway, he picks up two and everybody on BIF
ten is pissed off, like like, are you kidding me?
You've just picked up this other group and another group
he had called Subway put them out, and we're all like,
what the heck is going on?
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Dude?
Speaker 3 (44:17):
Like we're supposed to be next, and you're picking up
new groups, like what's going on? We're supposed to be next.
So slowly but surely, everybody off of bif ten started
getting dropped off, getting dropped off. This person got dropped off,
(44:37):
this person got dropped off, and everybody's like, wow, what
is going on here? Like we just did all this
amazing stuff, and all these artists don't have a record
deal anymore. It was because the whole uh, New Edition
went back on tour and Michael and still had BBD.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
They were still like he just didn't have time for that,
you know.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
And it's a shame because he really could have made
all that happen, but he just.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
He would have.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
Had to say stop to BBD and stop to New
Edition for all of that to like really happen. And
it just just sucks for all of us because we thought,
you know, oh, we're gonna come out, We're gonna be
like boys men, and next to you know, nobody has.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
A record deal.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
So now here we are in Newport News sitting there
and don't have no deal.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
Another complication for sudden impact. But this movie is still
in its first act. We'll have more with Aaron Kine
and talk with the guy many people call the sixth
member of Sudden Impact, producer Tim Bird. They'll tell us
the rest of the story and we'll see if we
can get even deeper into the inner circle of Sudden Impact.
Next time on Waiting for Impact, a Dave Holmes passion project.
(46:14):
This has been an Exactly Right production. Written by Me
Dave Holmes, Produced by Hannah Kyle Crichton, recorded, mixed and
sound designed by Andrew Eapen. Additional engineering and assembly by
Annalise Nelson, Music by Ben Wise, artwork by Garrett Ross.
(46:34):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard 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 exactly Rightmedia dot com. Binge the show add
free on Stitcher Premium for a free month. Head to
(46:55):
Stitcher Premium dot com slash impact and enter promo code
Impact Let the monthly plan, listen, subscribe and leave us
a review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
What's up, Dave?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
What's up Aaron?
Speaker 3 (00:07):
No, Now I have a visual with my emails.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I am talking to Aaron Kin, the guy in the
center of the Sudden Impact point, in the middle of
the Boys to Men Motown, Philly video at the heart
of the thing I have been obsessed with for three decades.
The guy behind the point is now on my laptop
screen talking to me. I'm finally about to find out
what happened to sudden Impact. This is a significant life event,
(00:35):
but first I need some very basic information, like who
is everyone. I pull up a screenshot of the sudden
Impact point. I have the picture here.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
There it is. That's it.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Can you talk me through who's who?
Speaker 3 (00:48):
I was the guy in the middle with the bowtide
looking like a waiter.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Because I was the lead singer.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Had to set yourself apart.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Yeah, I'm in the middle with the bow tie right,
so all the way all the way.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah, that's my brother. That's my brother.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
That's Noel, the guy who you really can't tell what
he looks like because his point obscures his entire face.
That is Noel Kane.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
The next guy's Dave.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
The shy guy, the one who's looking at and pointing
to the director a little bit off camera. That's Dave.
Just Dave. Listening back to this, I realized I should
have asked for a last name. And this is a
thing that will come back and bite me in the ass.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
The next guy's Alan Heally, that's my man.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
The guy who's pointing in kind of an Uncle Sam
wants you kind of way.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
And then the next guy that's Todd that was writing
all the songs.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Todd White is on the right in what looks like
a modified Billy Ray Cyrus Mullet, very on trend for
nineteen ninety one. Todd's the guy who had the idea
for Sudden Impact, and that's the guy who you met
when you were gonna fight exactly.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
That's how the whole thing started. Two guys get ready
to go to blows.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
The story of Sudden Impacts, as told to me by
Aaron Kane, is cinematic. It's got ups and downs. It
has set pieces and moments that would cut down into
a beautiful montage, and between two of the leads a
meet cute. On this episode, the story of Sudden Impact
from Aaron Kane, a guy who is right in the
middle of the action This is Waiting for Impact, a
(02:21):
Dave Holmes passion project. Where are you right now?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
I am in my studio, in my house right now.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I got my just sitting in front of my studio Blackwood,
New Jersey, right over the bridge from Philadelphia, Philly.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
A place by the way that Aaron visited for the
first time ever when he and the Boys their cameo
in the Motown Philly video. We'll get into how he
came to settle in Philadelphia a little bit later, but
first let's get into how this whole thing started and
the high school house party in Newport News, Virginia that
changed five guys lives forever. So take me back to
the start. What's your what's your musical background?
Speaker 3 (03:19):
No musical background. My family doesn't really come from music.
My dad's dad, he was kind of in a band
and played fiddle and stuff like that, but he died
before I was even born.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
So, but no musical background.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
I was always, uh a sports guy, played baseball, basketball, football, like.
I was always into sports, and this music thing just
kind of like fell into our.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Lat though it was the craziest thing.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Sudden Impact came together because of a perfect combination of fate,
and testosterone.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
A guy named Todd White started group and he was
just like doing little demos around town this and that.
I started talking to one of his girlfriends and me
and him were about to fight. Actually that's how we met.
And he heard did I sang a little bit? I
sang with a couple of people around in high school
(04:19):
and stuff. And this one night we went to a
party and I saw him there and we were getting
ready to fight, and he comes up to me and
he's like, hey, man, I hear that you sing. And
I'm like, yeah, I sing a little bit. And he's like, hey, well,
I'm starting this group. You know, wy don't you come
by the studio. Maybe we could work something out. So
(04:40):
we go to the studio. I just happened to go
by there one day and ended up getting on the
track singing some stuff. At that time, it was just
three of us at that time.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
So instead of brawling and ruining a perfectly good house party,
Todd and Aaron decided to sing along with a guy
named Eric, who, as far as we know, was not
talking to either of their girlfriends.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
We did like this little hometown demo. Just started kind
of working the demo round town.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
A little bit.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
The demo really wasn't even that good, but you know,
we loved it and everything.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
What was it called?
Speaker 1 (05:19):
It was called Please Be Mine?
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Was it a ballad? Was it up tempo? What was it? Uh?
Speaker 3 (05:23):
It was a ballad at first, and then we turned
it into We had this guy named Timmy Beale. He
was kind of like a producer around town. We had
this guy do a remix to it, and they this
is how the hook went. Please be mine, de my girl,
please be Mine.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
That was it. That was like, that was That was
basically the whole song.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
That's all you need.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
That was it all?
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Right? After thirty years, I have finally heard music from
Sudden Impact and I like it. Now this this is
all happening. In nineteen eighty nine, Aaron Kane is sixteen
years old. It's the summer between his sophomore and junior
years of high school. He's a star athlete with a
demo tape. Whether he was the inspiration for zac Efron's
character in High School Musical, I cannot say. But Eric
(06:16):
leaves the group. Three more guys join Aaron's brother, Noel,
Alan Healy and Dave, whose last name I really should
have asked for him. Todd White makes a connection with
a guy named Cecil Jenkins. Cecil puts the entertainment together
for local church festivals, so he books them for a
couple of those festivals, and the guys get to work
on their vocals, practice their stage show. The buzz is
(06:38):
starting to build, so they did what any ambitious young
boy band would do, a photo shoot. The pictures turned
out well, so they turned their favorite one shot of
all of them under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge into a poster.
This teen movie is off to a good start. It's
got a poster. It's got a near fistfight over a
girl that leads to a friendship and the formation of
a singing group. But to move the plot forward, we
(07:02):
need a road trip. Cecil Jenkins was a good friend
of Marvin Gay. Marvin Gay was about to get his
posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Cecil wants
to go to the ceremony and he wants company.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Cecil Jenkins says, hey, guys, listen, Marvin Gay is getting
ready to get his star on Hollywood Boulevard. You know,
just want to tell you guys, if you know, if
you guys want to come out to La with me.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
You're more than welcome come out. Well.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Two guys in the group, Todd White and Alan Heally,
their parents were the only ones that said yes, you
can go.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Aaron seventeen by now, his little brother nol is fifteen,
and mister and Missus Kane are not about to let
kids that age just drive across the country. Neither is
Missus Dave's mom. But Todd and Allen drive out to
Los Angeles for Marvin Gay's Walk of Fame ceremony. An
article about that ceremony that ran in the next day's
LA Times points out neither of Marvin Gaye's parents showed up,
(08:02):
which is a shame and which also tells you that
there was an entertainment reporter for the LA Times who
didn't know that Marvin Gay's mother had died two years
earlier and that Marvin Gay's dad murdered him. So his
parents are not there, but four hundred other people are,
including one very important.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Person, Michael Bifvens.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Just happened to stop by that ceremony when two of
the guys from my group were there, and at the
time we had that crappy demo and we took a
picture underneath the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. We took a picture
and we made a poster, and that's all we had.
(08:45):
We had a poster. We had a crappy demo. So anyway,
they take the crappy demo.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
They take the poster.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Out to La Thorn, Marvin Gays getting his star in
Hollywood Boulevard. Michael Bivens up stopping by to guys in
my group see Michael Bivens. They're like, oh my gosh,
that's Michael Bivens from New Edition.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
This is September nineteen ninety. We know that by the
next summer people would just be coming up to Michael
Bivens and singing in his face. Todd and Allen don't
have their whole group together to meet Michael Bivens, but
they do have a demo tape and a poster, so
they take bold action.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
They run up on Mike, Hey, sign signed, this is
a poster. This is a poster of us. Can you
sign a poster? And Michael Bivens said, guys, get that
shit out of my face. Get that New Kids on
the Block poster out of my face.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Okay, that's harsh, and.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
They were like no.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
They were like, no, no, no, no, this is us,
this is this is us.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And he was like, are you kidding me? He was like,
that's you, guys.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
And at this time, Michael Bivens had just signed a
three artists production deal with Gerald Bugsby from Motown, and
he had ABC, another bad creation, and he had.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Boys men and he needed one more. Wouldn't you know.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
The two guys, Todd and Allen hop in Michael Bibvens' bins.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
They go to Motown that day.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Michael Bibbins didn't even hear the demo, didn't even hear
the demo.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
He just loved the poster so much.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Now, if this were to happen in a movie, this
would pull you out of the movie. One of the
biggest pop stars on the planet wants to sign an
act he's only met two fifths of whose songs and
voices he's heard zero of, just because he's seen the poster.
You'd be thinking, all right, somebody at Motown is going
to step in here. But there are a couple things
to consider. We've talked about the story of New Edition
(10:51):
and how they fired more Restar, the guy who had
discovered and produced them when he paid them a dollar
eighty seven for a world tour and a hit album.
We've talked about how Maurice Starr went on to form
New Kids on the Block pretty much completely out of spite.
We've talked about how New Kids on the Block were
the biggest pop act in the world in nineteen ninety.
What we don't know is how this all felt to
(11:12):
Michael Bivens. What we don't know is whether, as Maurice
Starr form New Kids to get back at New addition,
Michael Bivens might have wanted to sign Sudden Impact to
get back at Maurice's Star dollar signs and revenge at
the same time, I would take it. We should also
consider that this is real life, and as the saying goes,
truth is fucking crazy.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
We actually got signed to Motown off of a poster
without them even hearing any music.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
And you're hearing about all this from across the country.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Michael Biffins called us during this time. Michael Bivens calls
us and the guy Todd and now and they're like, hey,
Michael Bivens is on the line, and now you gotta
think this At the time where Michael Bibvens just BBD
just came out right, and that album was amazing, Like
(12:10):
that BBD new album had just come out. Michael Bivens
is talking to us, Hey, hey, doing this is Michael Bivens.
You know, we want to sign you guys here the
Motown And you got to think, I'm thinking to myself,
yeah right, We're talking to him on the phone.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
We're like, yeah, right, this is this. I'm like, Todd,
who is this?
Speaker 3 (12:31):
You got somebody acting like Michael Bivens And now it
was really am.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
So what tell me what that feels like to you
getting this call and finding out that you're like, you've
ascended to Motown.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Man, it was.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
It was craziness. Like, first of all, it took me
like a couple of days to actually realize that it
was true, you know what I mean, Like, who thinks
they they're getting a call from Michael Biffins to sign
you to Motown Records, and all we have is.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
One It does sound like a prank, Yeah, and all
we have is.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
One crappy demo. That's it, you know, you know, back then,
back then, that's the way it was. It was all
about artist development, you know's that's one thing in the
music world today That's why artists don't. You know, you
don't have artists that stick around for a long time
because the whole artist development thing has kind of been
(13:32):
pushed to the side.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
But back then, you know, you could get signed on
a whim, and you know they could develop you.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
You know, the music industry was flush back in nineteen ninety.
After all, if you liked a particular artist and you
wanted to hear a song or an album by them
on your schedule, you had to buy it in physical form.
If you wanted the album, you had to go to
a store and put down anywhere from ten to eighteen
dollars to get the cassette or the compact disc. Around
(14:00):
four million Americans did that with Bell Bivdevo's album Poison.
So Michael Bivens had clout, and that clout allowed him
to do something risky like sign an act to Motown
Records after only seeing their poster. It allowed the Boys
Set an impact to reach the big time just by
asking nicely. Back in the seventies and eighties, record labels
(14:21):
took their time with new artists. They let them develop
their sound and their look over the course of a
few years. A few albums. It took Bruce Springsteen a
couple of years and a couple albums to come up
with Born. To run that development is generally the job
of a department within record labels called A and R
Artists and Repertoire an R people find new artists, work
with them to determine where they'll fit in the marketplace,
(14:43):
help them develop an identity. And Michael Bivins had a
good relationship with an A and R guy at another label.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
And we signed with Motown, and then we started working
for a little bit. And then and Michael Bivens calls
this up one day and says, hey, listen, guys.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
I want to take you. I don't want you guys
to be with Motown.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
I want you guys to go to Capitol Records. Now
still minds you, Dave. We don't have any song. I mean,
we've been working on demos at the house. We have
a sixth member in our group that was the producer.
He produced everything. He's actually my best friend right now.
His name is Tim Bird.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
I make two mental notes here. One find Tim Bird
and two just really breathe with the fact that there's
someone they call the sixth member of sudden.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Impact, and so we're like, all right, cool, we'll go
to Capitol because Michael Bivens had a good relationship with
the A and R guy over the area. His name
was Steph Johnson. So we end up signing this huge deal. Still,
minds you, Capitol hasn't heard any music. Still, We're going
(16:02):
through all these deals and everything, and nobody has heard
any music. They're going off of just Michael Bivens words.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
They signed with Capitol Records. Capitol puts the boys up
in a beach house in Virginia to bond with each other,
rents them a studio nearby to write and record some songs.
What were the influences? What did you what did you
sound like?
Speaker 1 (16:24):
I mean our influences.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
People make fun of it, but New Kids on the
Block was a big influence for us. New Kids on
the Block was huge influence for us. Of course, New Edition,
you know back then it was New Edition bb D,
Bobby Brown, Keith Sweat, Teddy Riley guy.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
That's the we were trying.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
We were trying to be like the more R and
B version of New Kids on the Block.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
The Virginia music scene would blow up a few years
later with Timbaland and Missy Elliott and then Pharrell and
then Neptunes. But at the time, Sudden Impact were the
pioneers of the Virginia sound. I mean maybe they were.
I don't know, I've never heard anything before. They developed
their sound, before they even made a sound. They got
their big break.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
And then boom Motown Philly comes out, and that's what
really took us to that next level.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
What was shooting the video? Like, did you know that
you would be a part of it long in advance?
Was it kind of last minute? What happened?
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yeah, we knew.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
That was actually the first time that when we were
in the video, that was the first time that I
had ever been to Philadelphia. We recorded the one part
I don't know if you're the I mean, the iconic
part is Viv sitting in the middle of us.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
And then we do this yep, we like point to
the camera.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
To the point Aaron is doing the Sudden Impact, point
to me over zoom and I have fully left my body.
The video come out, and the video blows up. Boys
the Men becomes stars, and so does Sudden Impact.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Actually, the first time that Boys the Men was ever
on MTV, there was a show on MTV. You probably
remember Dave with Martha Quinn. Yep, Martha Quinn had a
show on there.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
I thought. I think it was like called.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
MTV Live or something like that, and that was the
first time Boys the Men was ever on MTV and
they had people calling in right, yeah and get and
guess what the first question was when somebody called in
during that interview. The first question I actually remember her name.
(18:43):
Her name was Lydia from Utah.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Uh huh.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
And the first question Boys of Men has just released
their new album, Motown Philly just came out. They're on
MTV for the first time, and the first question is
who those white guys in the video?
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Listen. I am not opposed to tracking down Lydia from Utah.
And it's good that Boys to Men goes on to
become the biggest selling R and B group of all time,
because it is absolutely criminal that the first question they
get on their first MTV appearance is about sudden impact.
But as Boys to Men is blowing up, sudden impacts
are being talked about on MTV with original VJ Martha Quinn,
(19:28):
and they're on a major label, Capital. The Beatles were
on Capitol, the Eagles the Beastie Boys, Juice Newton. They're
on a huge label in a peak here for the
recording industry, so they're being shown a taste of the
good life with Capital.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
It was fantastic, Dave, Like, I mean, they put us
up in this huge house right on the beach, this
amazing studio in Virginia Beach. They were sending us to
Disney World, they were sending us to Universal Studio.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
And how old are you at this time?
Speaker 1 (20:03):
We're like nineteen twenty at this time, So what's that lifestyle? Like?
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Oh man, you're talking about some kids right out of
high school that had a crappy demo. They got a
huge advancement. Like back then, Back then, the advancements, especially
with Capitol Records, we were getting like huge advancements.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
And advance is an amount of money a record company
gives you when they put you under contract. It's to
keep you afloat while you're working on your thing. They
take it out of your earnings when you start making money.
But if you never do start making money, you don't
even have to pay it back. From today's perspective, it
is wild the corporations could do business this way at
this level. But in nineteen ninety one. That's how it worked.
(20:49):
Aaron and the rest of the Sudden Impact guys were
at the cusp of pop music stardom. But in order
to move forward into the great unknown, Aaron had to
close the door on the shore thing he knew.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
I actually got a baseball scholarship coming out of high school,
and that was a hard decision for me to make.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
It was go to college.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
I got a scholarship to King's College in Tennessee. It
was a really hard decision because baseball was my life
ever since. I just had a talent for it from
time I was five years old all the way up
going out of high school. And I had to make
a decision when I graduated high school, do I go
(21:32):
to college play baseball, or do I pursue this music thing.
I'm getting ready to sign the Capitol Records get a
huge advancement. My mom actually had a conversation with her dad,
my grandfather, and my grandfather, you know, because my parents
wanted me to go to college and everything. And my
(21:56):
grandfather said, listen, if you make him go to college
and he misses out on this music thing, he's probably,
you know, gonna have some resentment his whole life, you
know what I mean? So I said, listen in Boys
and Men's Video, I'm getting ready to get this huge advancement.
(22:19):
I'm going with the music thing, you know what I mean?
And I mean, what do you what would you do day?
You're a little kid.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
You're a little kid now, yeah you're all.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
You're on MTV, b et get ready to sign with
Capitol Records.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
This is very understandable. How how big an advance are
we talking?
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Uh? I mean, I don't really want to but it was.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
It was nice, but I wish you know, uh you
think that it's just gonna.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Keep coming, you know.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
And I definitely wish that I would have made some
different decisions back then.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
I mean I did some amazing stuff, but.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Yeah, I wish I would have did a little something
different with my money back then.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
You know, somehow you weren't at your wisest when you
were nineteen. How that happened? But I guess that's what happened.
So an impact is getting paid, they're getting put up
on the beach, they're getting trips to Disney World. But
and this is how I know we're talking about kids
right now. The thing that means the most is a
(23:35):
team jacket.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
I'll tell you a funny story, Dave. So at that
time BBD went on tour, and they went on tour,
and Michael Bivens gave everybody out BBD tour jackets with
your name on them, like they were really really cool jackets.
(24:00):
And so of course us being around Newport News, being
around Virginia, we would always wear our bb You know,
we're a motow Philly video. We got BBD tour jackets on.
It was like wherever we went, it was like we
were celebrities and we really hadn't.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Done anything and what did that feel like?
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Oh man, it was amazing.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
I believe him, and I know a little bit about
what he means. Having a normal life one day and
then finding yourself in the middle of the entertainment industry
the next is a thing I can relate to. It's
exciting and it's disorienting, and you don't really want to
talk about how weird it is while it's happening. You
don't want to seem like you're bragging to someone who
it hasn't happened for. You don't want to seem like
(24:48):
you just fell off the turnip truck for someone who
has already happened to But it's big. You have to
talk about this stuff. Yeah, okay, all right, Yeah, there's
(25:10):
this guy.
Speaker 4 (25:11):
Oh my god. Uh, this is the most nervous I
think I've ever been.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
This is Damien Fahe. He was a VJ on MTV.
Just after I left. He and I were in my
backyard doing something we never do, which is watching old
clips of ourselves. I found one of him on TRL
that someone posted. The YouTube reads like this.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
She's sold almost two hundred million albums, had twenty five
top ten singles, won three Grammys, and a bunch of VMAs.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Ladiesship, and she put the M and MTV.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
This is Madonna. This is two thousand and two, two
thousand and three.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
See.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
I keep my hand because my hand was shaking, so
I figured if I put it in under my arm,
it won't shake. Because I was so nervous.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Damien is interviewing Madonna on live television, a thing even
seasoned professionals get nervous for. And Damien's just a few
months into the job and he has just been told
she doesn't want to talk to him.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
She wanted Carson refused to do the interview if it
wasn't Carson.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Carson Daily was the host of TRL from its premiere
in nineteen ninety eight. Damien was brought on to be
phased in as his replacement as Carson transitioned into his
post MTV life of hosting everything on television.
Speaker 4 (26:24):
They talked her into They said, we don't have Carson,
but we can do She said, well, I want John
Norris if I can't get Carson. John Norris was like
her second, because I guess he's been with And they said,
we don't have John Norris, we have Damien hosting the
show now. And it was sort of like, who the
fuck is that. I have no idea who that is.
(26:44):
And so they told me this story. This is always
good to know, you know before that your third tier,
you know, before an interview.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
It's strange watching these old videos, the haircuts, the clothes,
it's like finding a video of yourself from high school,
except hours aired on television. I want to see if
we can put ourselves back into the mindset of those
guys twenty years ago. Mostly we can't remember what happened
at all. Whenever old things come up, like every now
(27:13):
and then, somebody will digitize something with me in it
and put it up on YouTube, and I'll watch it
and it's like, oh, that's nice. Good for that guy,
Good for that guy. Who is me? Like who that's
my face and my body and my voice. But I
don't have a single recollection, yeah, of any of it.
For me. I always say it was like it was
(27:36):
like getting a head injury, you know, like if you've
just if you've ever been in a very bad car
accident in.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
Shot, it is like watching a different I'm like, oh,
that's cool, look at that what that guy did.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Good for him.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
That wasn't me. You know. It's like I just feel
like a totally different kind of person like me.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Damien got plucked out of his normal life and dropped
right into the center of MTV, hosting TRL at the
height of its popularity. He had been working at a
top forty radio station in Boston while going to college.
An MTV casting director came to town on a nationwide search
to find a new rock vjay, and a co worker
encouraged him to try out. He didn't want to do it.
(28:12):
He had tried out for a local TV show a
few months before and just eaten it at the audition.
He was humiliated. He didn't want to be embarrassed again,
but just to get his coworker off his back, he
showed up.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
And so then I go to the radio station waiting
in the lobby with like three other DJs. One guy
goes downstairs, you know, fifteen minutes past as he comes
back up, okay, Damien fahee, you know, and I go
downstairs and I go in the basement. And it was
so weird because it was it was like it was
(28:45):
the last thing that I wanted to do. And then
the second I got like the first laugh from the
casting people, I was like, this is all I want
to do. Oh my god, I love this.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
When you get a taste to that, you start really
wanting it.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
I said, when when will I know you know about this?
And they said, well, it's going to take a while.
We got to you know, take the tapes back to
New York and have our bosses look at it and everything.
And I said, okay, well I'll be in touch. I'll
be in touch because this is this is really fun, right,
And so like I just like you know, got in
my car and drove home, and you know, I remember
(29:23):
seeing like a license plate of the car stopped in
front of me. The first car stopped in front of me.
I just stopped signing. It was like two forty eight
VJ five whatever, Like that's a sign I'm getting this
fucking job. Holy shit.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Damien got a call back in New York. He met
a friend there the night before. They had some drinks,
so he showed up a little hungover. And here's the
thing about that. I can't recommend it in good conscience,
but it kind of works. If you have a headache
and a sore stomach to focus on, that is less
energy to give to your nerves. He went back home
to Boston, and then he got a phone call another callback.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
They're like, this is the last callback, the final round.
It's between you and this other guy. And I'm like,
oh my god, don't tell me that.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
And so do you know who the other guy was?
Speaker 4 (30:04):
De Snyder's son, Oh, Jesse Snyder.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
This is rock Royalty we're talking about here, the son
of d Snyder, lead singer of heavy metal band Twisted Sister,
the guy who testified before Congress against explicit lyrics record labels.
This is very serious and Damien is going to have
to step up his game.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
I went home for the weekend from from from from school,
and I said, I'm gonna have my dad take me out,
buy me clothes for this cool clothes and sos like,
of course, you know, go out. It's been two hundred
dollars in structure.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Of course.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
I had like very big jeans, leather, square toed dress shoes,
like a very pattern. It was like an aqua in
maroon like FLOORI de lee kind of like pattern saying
going on with the button down and then on top
of that like a like a like a red a
(31:01):
deep like burgundy red leather jacket from like like like
a Chicago Coppu where like in the nineteen seventy and
so so that was like mine, I'm gonna wow, I'm
going to New York. Baby.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
I can see this outfit very clearly, and I don't
like it. But Damien takes a train down from Boston
for the callback. He's nervous. He's not hungover this time,
so he has that much more energy to devote to
being nervous.
Speaker 4 (31:29):
I remember waking up that morning. I was, you know,
super nervous. I couldn't eat anything. My Mom's like, your
stomach is upset. Here take these large vitamins.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
I don't need to tell you that Damien vomited on
that train. Kids don't take large vitamins from your mother's
purse on an empty stomach before a big audition. But
still Damien knows he looks good.
Speaker 4 (31:52):
I remember getting walking into MTV with that outfit on,
and Vinnie comes out, casting director, and he goes, hey,
good to see you. You know, we're all ready for you,
and he he. I go, well, I'm ready, let's do this,
and he looks me up and down and he goes,
let's get you into some new clothes. And I'm like,
(32:12):
but I spent two hundred dollars in structure.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
You know. A week later, Damien gets a call from
the head of casting. They're giving him a contract to
be a VJ, starting right away at the MTV beach house.
Where are you feeling it? Everywhere?
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Everywhere?
Speaker 4 (32:28):
Like yeah, yeah, Remember where I was, Remember what was on,
you know, television, Remember like the smell of the air
this way the air smelled. I remember my fucking giant
Nokia cell phone. I don't waiting by the fucking phone
at the kitchen table, and then it rang, and then
I would wanted to like I didn't want to pick
it up, all like, you know, hello, you know, I
(32:49):
wanted to let it ring three times, don't sound too
you know, And then I picked it up and like they.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Would resend the job off for if you answer the
phone to you're too excited for this. Yeah, it's we're
looking for it right at let's get Jesse Snyder. The
job of an MTV VJ is a dream job for
a person of a certain age, but for a person
of a certain kind, people like me and Damien. It's
an emotional challenge.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
Someone who experienced a lot of like loneliness and feeling
invisible for a lot of years in throughout you know,
your teens. To hear, you know, see a giant audience,
it's really scary and you just imagine that they're gonna
boo you or they're not gonna care. And so it
was all that was in my head. So I wanted
to be like really cool. I wanted to say the
(33:35):
cool bands? What bands are you gonna do? I don't know,
what do people like? What is going to make people
think I'm cool?
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yea?
Speaker 4 (33:42):
And it was just like all that and that, I
mean that lasted for years.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
When you were standing like on the edge of this thing.
When you were just starting this job, you knew it
was going to bring you some sort of like fame. Yeah,
what did that look like? What specifically like in my head,
what did it look like? I think I kind of
went in.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
I hosted a few shows, and they sort of were like,
you need to just do what Carson does, like you
need to be just like Carson. And so in my head,
I'm like, oh, I'm never going to be as big
as Carson. I can't do what he does. So I'm
just going to be like this mid tier like VJ.
And so I think in my head I never really
had like these huge like oh my god, I'm gonna
(34:29):
be so fucking famous, I'm going to be I never
had that. It was it was like, I don't know,
for some reason, I just never stepped into like this
is what my life's going to be.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
A very strange thing happens when you start to achieve
a conventional and public kind of success, you just start
wanting more conventional and public success. But the problem is
who decides what that success should look like. Some of
you used the MTV job as as stepping stone to
untold wealth, right and then have just vanished. And I like,
(35:05):
for me, I just vanity wise. I don't want some
stranger somewhere to be like, oh, that guy got the
job and then nothing happened after, Like I don't know,
I don't know who this person is who would react
that way. I'll probably never see that person. But that
stranger somewhere has so much control over me because I
(35:29):
like just the idea that I'm not doing enough for
him and I don't know him, and I know what's
enough for him, but like, uh and and I didn't
go in wanting to please that guy. My choices on
some level have been guided by a ghost, a fictional character,
some guy in some bar somewhere, some dick on Twitter,
(35:49):
someone I don't know who thinks I'm a loser. I
went in just wanting to be close to where things
were happening, to use my skills, and to like, you know, yeah,
have a better professional life than I had before that
used all of the dumb shit about myself that I
(36:11):
was taught to. Yeah, it was frivolous. That's all I wanted.
And then immediately this vanity comes in where it's like, well,
I have to keep doing bigger and better things that
I don't want. We're complicated people, us former mtvvjs, guided
on some level by voices, by someone else's idea of success.
(36:33):
When I managed to shake that voice off and think
about my life rationally, I know I'm doing what I
want to be doing. Damien is an executive producer on
Family Guy, so he knows he's doing what he wants
to be doing. Plus he has a really nice house,
and I kind of want that too. But that's beside
the point. We're both happy with our lives and our jobs.
But the real work sometimes still is to bust those ghosts.
(36:58):
If Aaron Kane of Sudden Impact is troubled by ghosts,
if he's worried that some fictional asshole somewhere is having
a laugh at his expense for appearing in a big
music video and then never releasing an album, it doesn't
come through at all. He's excited when he talks about
this stuff. In his voice. You can still hear that
kid who nearly got punched in the face at a
high school party and got pulled into the music business instead.
(37:20):
He's enthusiastic. It's like he still can't believe his love
just to recap the scores here. Such an impact is
on their second major label record deal. They're making an
undisclosed but nice amount of money. They're featured in one
of the biggest videos of nineteen ninety one. They've released
zero songs and everybody's talking about them, but this movie
is still just getting going.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
But once we did that video, it kind of took
us to another level. There was anticipation, you know what
I mean, Like yeah, like everybody was like waiting on
this white group to like, you know, oh, there's this
white group that's down with Boys the Men and with
Michael Bivens from New Edition, Like what's going on with these.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Guys and what was going on? How far along was
the album?
Speaker 3 (38:10):
We did four songs under Capitol Records and they were cool.
The two of the songs were really really cool out
of the four, again produced by my boy Tim Bird.
So from there, Michael Bivens gets another situation. You know,
(38:30):
he's got Boys Men, he's got ABC off of Motown
that really did big things.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Boiso Men's doing huge things.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
So Motown says, Hey, Mike, I want to give you
your own label called do you know the name of
Michael Bivens?
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Label of ten Exactly ten.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
The antar person at Capitol whom Michael Bivens liked, the
person he trusted to develop sudden impact and make them
as as big as new Kids on the block left Capital,
and Michael wanted the guys to move to his label
BIF ten. The problem was the guys were comfy a Capital.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
So when BIV called us up right, BIV called us
up and said that I want to take you off
of Capital.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Now and put you on fIF ten.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
We really weren't feeling that because we were living the
life of Capital World. We got a nice house on
the beach, We're going to Disney World. You know, we're
getting money. And that didn't sit well with Mike when
we said that, And he kind of got offended a
(39:42):
little bit when we said that, because he felt like
he's made everything happen for us. Anyway, he's getting his
own label. We should be honored to be on BIV ten.
And you know, maybe that was a mistake on our part.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
You know, we don't know.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
It Again comes back to being little kids again, you
know what I mean. And you're a little kid living
on the beach, you're happy, you know.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Did you have a manager no okay. With a feeling
of loyalty to Michael Bivens and no one else to
guide them, the guys made the decision to dance with
the guy who brought him.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
So, like a couple months past or whatever, we end
up not being with Capital anymore. Got to get rid
of the house, stop recording at the big studio.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Did you lose the rights to the songs he had
already recorded?
Speaker 3 (40:33):
Yep, okay, yep, Capital, that's Capital's songs now. But anyway,
so we go back to Newport News and then that's
once BIV ten things started happening. That's when the whole
East Coast Family thing started happening, and that was great.
(40:54):
Biv said that we're gonna do a song. He started
getting all these groups together. I want to do this
song with all these groups. And that's where Hayden and Ivett,
Kyle Lee and ten ten and all these other groups
start coming into the picture.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Aaron and the guys, who are now on their third
label and at least their second name White Guys WHYTG
I Z E take part in the East Coast Family
one for All for one music video. They're wearing sport
coats on a hot Houston day.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
And then we did the video in Houston, Texas, and man,
let me tell you something. That day we did that video,
we did it in like this warehouse and Dave, it
was like one hundred and ten degrees at like seven
o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
It was like, it was crazy, and you guys are
wearing layers.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
Oh did you see us in the video?
Speaker 3 (41:57):
We got yeah backets on. Yeah, yeah, we got jackets.
You can't tell on the video, but we were just soaked.
So we did that. We did the East Coast Family
Song and that actually went to number one on the
R and B charts.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
I don't know if you know that. Yeah, that song
actually went to number one on the R and B charts.
Huge song.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
That was fantastic for me because I sang the leads
of the park and the song and it was funny.
My mom picks me up from the airport. I'm coming
back from Houston. My mom picks me up from the airport.
As soon as I get into the car, the song
comes on the radio and I was like, oh, this
(42:47):
is me on the radio.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Oh thing you do you know?
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Yeah, yeah, I'm finally on the radio.
Speaker 5 (42:57):
Finally And this is how long after you after you
moved into the Capitol House, Like, what has this been
two years?
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Now?
Speaker 1 (43:14):
This was? Yeah, this was probably about two years. Yeah,
you're right.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
It's a couple of years into their brush with the
big time and the guys have finally released something. It's
a couple quick lines on a posse track, but it's something.
And if you've seen the one four All four one video,
the one where we found vt Nicole Brown's secret life
as a singer, the one where we met Hayden, you
know there are more than a few artists on the
BIV ten label. There are many, and they're all waiting
(43:41):
for their shot and waiting, and Michael isn't finished signing
artists yet. He brings on a girl group who you
might remember from around the turn of the millennium.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
I don't know if you remember seven oh.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Two where my Girl's at et cetera exactly.
Speaker 3 (43:57):
So anyway, he picks up two and everybody on BIF
ten is pissed off, like like, are you kidding me?
You've just picked up this other group and another group
he had called Subway put them out, and we're all like,
what the heck is going on?
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Dude?
Speaker 3 (44:17):
Like we're supposed to be next, and you're picking up
new groups, like what's going on? We're supposed to be next.
So slowly but surely, everybody off of bif ten started
getting dropped off, getting dropped off. This person got dropped off,
(44:37):
this person got dropped off, and everybody's like, wow, what
is going on here? Like we just did all this
amazing stuff, and all these artists don't have a record
deal anymore. It was because the whole uh, New Edition
went back on tour and Michael and still had BBD.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
They were still like he just didn't have time for that,
you know.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
And it's a shame because he really could have made
all that happen, but he just.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
He would have.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
Had to say stop to BBD and stop to New
Edition for all of that to like really happen. And
it just just sucks for all of us because we thought,
you know, oh, we're gonna come out, We're gonna be
like boys men, and next to you know, nobody has.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
A record deal.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
So now here we are in Newport News sitting there
and don't have no deal.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
Another complication for sudden impact. But this movie is still
in its first act. We'll have more with Aaron Kine
and talk with the guy many people call the sixth
member of Sudden Impact, producer Tim Bird. They'll tell us
the rest of the story and we'll see if we
can get even deeper into the inner circle of Sudden Impact.
Next time on Waiting for Impact, a Dave Holmes passion project.
(46:14):
This has been an Exactly Right production. Written by Me
Dave Holmes, Produced by Hannah Kyle Crichton, recorded, mixed and
sound designed by Andrew Eapen. Additional engineering and assembly by
Annalise Nelson, Music by Ben Wise, artwork by Garrett Ross.
(46:34):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard 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 exactly Rightmedia dot com. Binge the show add
free on Stitcher Premium for a free month. Head to
(46:55):
Stitcher Premium dot com slash impact and enter promo code
Impact Let the 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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