Thursday, March 31, 2011

Face to Face -- "10-9-8"

10-9-8 - Face to Face™ (Bonus Tracks)

(Debuted June 2, 1984, Peaked #38, 15 Weeks on the Chart)

If there were a song that was destined to be on Casey Kasem's American Top 40 countdown show, this was it. It did reach the lower rungs of the Top 40, but didn't stick around long enough to get to any of the numbers in the title.

The Boston-based band was expecting to get their big break during the summer of '84. The same week "10-9-8" debuted on the Hot 100, a movie called Streets of Fire began running in the theaters. In the movie, a character name Ellen Aim is the lead singer of a group called The Attackers. She is kidnapped by a motorcycle gang (led by Willem Dafoe). Diane Lane played Ellen Aim, but she lip-synced the vocals of the songs she was performing before she was snatched. The actual words were sung by Face to Face's vocalist Laurie Sargent, and the other members of the band appeared on screen as The Attackers.

The film was a flop, not even earning back its budget. To make matters worse, Face to Face didn't get a lot of mileage out of their appearance in the film, since the studio focused on its own soundtrack and Dan Hartman's single "I Can Dream About You," which ended up being a #6 hit.

The YouTube video (also the promotional video shown on MTV) is an interesting example of the use of color in 80s style. While the idea of using a single color in a black-and-white frame is still used, the red and green colors used in the video are definitely from that era. Just as it's hard to explain the allure of bell bottoms and platform shoes to those who missed the 1970s, I often have trouble trying to explain to my 12 year-old daughter about what we were thinking in the 1980s when we were trying to be trendy.




1 comment:

  1. This is the blog that I was looking for, still promoting the music of the 80's. I grew up with 80's music and still listen to them now, especially new wave music.

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