— New Forgotten Favorites this week. It involves one of my favorite rap groups. Come see me talk nostalgically about The Fat Boys and how they would rap about comic books and movies. They also had songs with The Beach Boys, Chubby Checker, Freddy Krueger and William “The Refrigerator” Perry.
— I run down the more interesting DVDs/Blu-Rays that went on sale this week. Come see WrestleMania, BMX Bandits and Sharktopus. Yes, I said SHARKTOPUS.
— Over on Held Over! I take a look at ads for The Shootist and BeastMaster 1 and 2.
Since I talked about The Fat Boys over on Strange Kid’s Club, let’s see a few videos featuring them.
It doesn’t get any more 80s than The Fat Boys on Miami Vice.
Another great 80s clip featuring The Fat Boys in the movie Knights of the City. Check out Markie Dee sporting that rad crop top. WTF, dude?
And here’s the video for the Fat Boys/Freddy Krueger collaboration Are You Ready for Freddy? It was used to promote the release of Nightmare on Elm Street 4: Dream Master.
The song, Voices that Care, written and sung in support of the troops participating in Desert Storm (as well as the Red Cross) turns 20 years old today. The single was released on Feb 28, 1991. The song was performed by a “super group” of celebrity entertainers in much the same fashion as USA for Africa and Band-Aid.
The recording of the single and the presentation of the video to the troops was filmed and presented in a TV Special that aired on Fox the same day the single was released.
Here’s the Voices that Care music video:
Participants in this “super group” included TWO members of New Edition (Ralph Tresvant and Bobby Brown), Garth Brooks, Celine Dion, Will Smith, Kenny G (yes, that Kenny G), Amy Grant, Michael Bolton, Luther Vandross, The Pointer Sisters and Peter Cetera. And like We Are the World, there were scores of random celebrities singing in the choir in the background like Alyssa Milano, Jon Lovitz, Clyde Drexler (?), Chevy Chase, Jimmy Buffett, Nell Carter, Alan Thicke (?), Orel Hershiser (?), Brian Bosworth (?), Mike Tyson (?!), Don King (?!), Lando Calrissian, Capt Kirk, The Fonz, Gary Busey, etc, etc. And check out much younger versions of Meryl Streep, Kevin Costner Kurt Russell and Michelle Pfeiffer (actually she looks exactly the same 20 years later). The video, like it’s predecessors, is a time capsule of Hollywood circa 1991.
I’m not going to lie. I owned the Cassingle of this song. And I liked it. Actually, I still like it. It’s as cheesy as you would expect a song like this to be. Maybe even more chessy. Like, super hero cheesy. Everyone does the “hold one headphone to your head and sing into the microphone” bit you see in We are the World. You also get a lot of anguished looks to the side of the camera during singing. Michael Bolton is all Michael Bolton-y. It helps add to the mood and it gets me…right here *points at heart*. Oh, and Nelson showed up. I’m not entirely sure they were invited, but they showed up anyway.
By the way, after you watch the video, in case you were wondering, the balding guy in the Elton John glasses at the very end of the song, the one you have no idea who that is…he’s the guy that sang the original demo that went out to all the celebrities. I always thought that was cool they gave him the last solo lines of the song.
And to sing us out, here’s Kids Incorporated with their version of Voices That Care:
The other thing I want to talk about? In the madness of AWESOME-tober-fest, there is one thing I didn’t get to mention while I was going on and on and on about werewolves and monsters. The movie Krush Groove turned 25 years old on Oct 25 (it was released in 1985).
I don’t know about you guys, but I LOVED this movie. I saw it in the theater, I recorded it off HBO, I now have watched it twice since it popped up on Netflix Instant Streaming. It is still a good movie. It helps that I was introduced into rap music by both Run-DMC and The Fat Boys, who appear prominently in this movie. It’s the fictionalized retelling of the rise of Def Jam records, its owner Russell Simmons, its most popular acts Kurtis Blow and Run-DMC and the appearance of newcomers The Fat Boys. The movie is funny, the music is great and I had a lot of fun watching it again recently.
Just as awesome as the movie is the kickass soundtrack. Featuring songs by Rap/R&B heavyweights Run-DMC, Kurtis Blow, Full Force and The Fat Boys. You also get songs from Sheila E and the then unknown Beastie Boys and LL Cool J (who both cameo in the movie). I listened the s**t out of this tape back in the 80s. You can download the entire soundtrack and see for yourself how badass it is here. Check out the awesome video for the title single on the album here.
I think the movie is more famous as a joke than anything else. Kevin Smith even wrote a quick joke line about it in his movie Dogma. It’s between Matt Damon and Ben Affleck while they are on the bus talking about being able to tell right from wrong. During the discussion Affleck mentions a bet they have about which would be the bigger movie; ET or Krush Groove. Matt Damon says time will tell on that one.
I’ll agree, the movie is cheesy, and you really have to be interested in the music and subject matter to really enjoy it. It works on the same level as Breakin’ or Beat Street (but Krush Groove is a much better written movie). One of my favorite scenes in the movie, and I mentioned this in my unofficial movie trilogies article back in July, is the quick cameo by LL Cool J. At the time, LL was not world famous. This was his big break. The scene involves auditions for Def Jam artists and they say the interviews are over, but LL Cool J ain’t havin’ none of that. He busts in, yells, “BOX!” at his friend who turns on the “box”, and Cool J begins spouting some sick ass lyrics to a booming beat. As an introduction to movie audiences, this can’t be beat and it’s hard to really describe the shock of seeing this scene when LL Cool J was still a n00b. Here’s the scene:
I love that scene and that song. Now, to be fair, there is one thing in the movie I hate. It brings the movie to a screeching halt. It’s Sheila E. Don’t get me wrong, I like Sheila E’s music and her contribution to the soundtrack album is actually pretty good (Holly Rock). However, her movie scenes are terrible. She’s inserted as somewhat of a love interest in a love triangle with brothers Run and Russell (played by a young Blair Underwood). I. HATE. HER. IN. THIS. MOVIE. Whenever she’s not on-screen, though, I love it.
If you’ve never seen this movie, I say check it out. It’s a fun movie with good music. Not bad considering it’s a quarter of a century old now.
If you are like me you treasure ’80s movies and how wonderfully horrible they are. One of my favorite movie devices studios used a lot was have the characters in the movie sing a song that could then be promoted on the radio to boost awareness of the movie. This, of course, led to some horribly bad music sung by actors while “in character” that really had very little or nothing to do with the movie. Some of them worked, most of them didn’t.
I say they were horribly bad, but the reason I remember a lot of these is because I owned them either on the movie soundtrack or on an audio tape that I recorded from the TV.
Here are ten of my favorite ridiculously awesome ’80s songs sung by movie characters.
The Nerds Song by the Tri-Lambdas – From 1984’s epic Revenge of the Nerds. The Tri-Lambs put on quite a show for the final carnival. Lamar rapping while wearing the ’80s obligatory Beat It jacket (bonus points for no sleeves) along with Poindexter’s electric violin and Tashi the Korean dressed as an American Indian banging a gong. Classic.
No on 15 by the Tri-Lambdas – From Revenge of the Nerds Part II in 1987. The nerd gang gets back together and puts on a rockin’ show to vote down Proposition 15. If I’m not mistaken, I thought Prop 15 was voted on by the International Greek Council of Fraternities so I’m not sure how any of these random party people can vote “No on 15”. Anyway, Lamar is back rapping again and this time he’s joined by Barry Sobel doing a very Beastie Boys-esque rap. This one is more fun than the last song, but the first movie was a better movie.
Are You Ready for Freddy? by Fat Boys featuring Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) – In 1988, the Fat Boys were asked to record the “theme” for Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4. This was the result, which included Robert Englund actually doing a rap as Freddy at the end. Yes, the quality is a bit questionable, however I was a huge Fat Boys fan in the ’80s so I loved it. Surprisingly, even though this was released as a single promoting the movie, it was not included on the official soundtrack. I got it off the Fat Boys album “Coming Back Hard Again”, which I still have on audio cassette.
Cavalcade of Awesome 