Robert Hazard and the Heroes and Me

Author’s note: This was first published in December, 1988 in issue #4 of Cubist Pop Manifesto, a fanzine I published with my college roommates at the time, Brian Welcker and Tom Hoffman. This story was one of the first things I had ever written that drew a response from people outside my immediate circle of friends, which was incredibly exciting. But to keep this in perspective, we’re talking about maybe 50 copies that circulated outside of Pittsburgh. Today, millions exceed this experience every day through social media.

Recently a friend of mine remembered this story, so I dug it out and decided to type it up. Reading it for the first time in two decades, I must confess I’m finding it more cloying than funny. And though it was difficult, I have left all grammatical errors intact.

Robert Hazard and the Heroes and Me

by Frank Boscoe

Robert Hazard & the Heroes were a band from Philadelphia that formed at some point during my pre-adolescence. In 1982 they released a self-titled 5 song EP on their own label, RHA Records.

The EP received a fair amount of commercial airplay in Philadelphia, particularly the first track which was called “Escalator of Life”, and caught the attention of the RCA record corporation (1). The EP was shortly re-released on RCA, though mysteriously “The Heroes” were entirely obscured and Robert Hazard is the only artist given credit. In fact, no other musicians were mentioned whatsoever, although the liner notes do inform us that styling and grooming was by Kathryn Atkyns and Mark Casertano.

The other songs on the EP were “Change Reaction”, “Hang Around With You”, “Out of the Blue”, and “Blowin’ in the Wind”, which was originally written and recorded by Bob Dylan (2).

I really liked the song “Escalator of Life” when I heard it and so I decided to buy the EP in my local record store. Each copy of the record contained a 14 X 20″ black and white poster depicting a sharp-looking Robert Hazard  (3) wearing a string tie and holding a cigarette, and the cassette contained a coupon redeemable for the poster direct from RCA.

This was the first recording I bought for myself, with my own money. I bought the cassette as I did not own a record player at the time. I was fourteen.

Eight weeks later I received a piece of mail from RCA, which read, in effect:

Please accept our apologies. Product #336229-B is presently out of stock. The product will be shipped once supplies are replenished.

The supplies were apparently never replenished, as I am still waiting for my poster.

Surprisingly, “Escalator of Life” began an ascent up the national singles charts, eventually managing to crack that revered and elusive top 40 barrier (4). This in turn enabled the band to reach the uppermost stratum of musical eminence: a guest appearance on “American Bandstand”.

I was a very infrequent viewer of “American Bandstand”, but on this particular Saturday I tuned in eagerly (5). Host Dick Clark was talking to Robert Hazard and the members of his recently-turned-anonymous band were standing around looking quite fashionable.

“Robert, you originally released your record on your own before it was released by a record company,” Clark was saying, “For the benefit of any young, aspiring musicians in the television audience, would you recommend that a new band put out an album themselves first, or wait until they sign a contract with a record company?”

Without any real hesitation Robert Hazard replied, “Oh, put it out yourself, definitely”.

For that instant everything seemed frozen. The normally sanguine studio was rife with a sudden odd tension. Apprehensive glances were exchanged between teenagers who until just recently had been dancing to records with a good beat that you can dance to I’ll give it a ten. Dick Clark looked momentarily like the tired, middle-aged man he actually was. The planned script had been violated.

I squirmed uneasily from my perspective in the home viewing audience. Something was clearly happening, but my adolescent naivete prevented me from grasping the full scope of the unfolding drama. It wasn’t until several years later, in fact, when I understood what I had witnessed, triggered by a chance, jesting remark: “You know, it seems like Dick Clark owns practically everything” (6). Of course! Here it was, the Big Conflict, art versus product, major label versus independent, large guy versus small guy. However you wish to define it, this was it, playing before me on channel 6.

After the briefest of flickerings, the professional smile returned to Dick Clark’s face. “No you’re not supposed to say that, that’s not right”. His delivery was warm and smooth, accompanied by a slight chuckle, but laced with a subliminal bitterness. “Kids,” he said, glancing toward the camera, his voice still smooth but now gently pleading, “You’re really much better off with a record contract behind you.” (7)

After a commercial, Robert Hazard and his uncredited band began playing the hit “Escalator of Life”. It looked good, it sounded good. The song ran its course, and then about four seconds later they began “Change Reaction”, the second song on the EP.

“That’s odd,” I wondered vaguely, “That transition was so smooth, it almost sounded just like the record.”

“Change Reaction” went through its several choruses and verses for about four minutes and then the music began to fade in the identical manner of the EP.

“Wait a minute…” I lurched up from my beanbag chair (8). I glanced at the screen. Robert Hazard was standing there, looking good, not doing much of anything because the singing part had finished. The guitar player was still playing. The bass player had stopped and was looking at the keyboard player, who had also stopped. Confusion was in their eyes. This scene lasted for only the briefest of instants, but I knew. The whole thing was a lip-synch. A complete fraud. The corporate sham (9).

Not one, but two jolting realities in a ten-minute span, although here again I did not fully grasp all of the implications immediately. It was quite a Saturday morning.

“Escalator of Life” faded down and out of the charts after its oh-so-brief splash on the national airwaves, as all minor hits do. Robert Hazard never achieved chart status again.

His career wasn’t quite over, though. In 1984 he recorded a full-length and universally ignored LP for RCA called Wing of Fire. To this day I have not heard a single song from this record (10), although it remains a staple of used record bins just about everywhere. In the New Trouser Press Record Guide Ira Robbins compares it to Tom Petty and calls it “a solid effort by a reasonably talented guy”.

Robert Hazard was rumored to be planning a comeback tour in 1986, and he was supposed to play in a then-new club in Allentown, Pa, known as the Airport Music Hall. I’m not sure whether he did or not. The club is now closed (11).

He did release another album that year, though, although I honestly wasn’t aware of it until I chanced upon it last week. Entitled Darling, the LP makes up for lost credits as the back cover names eight guitarists, four bass players, three drummers, four keyboard players, four backup vocalists, and two “special guests”. The most striking feature of the record is that it features practically the same damn cover photo as his first record, this time sans cigarette. The record was released on his own Heroic Music label.

Many years before any of his records, in 1979, he wrote a song called “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, which was recorded in 1983 by the former singer from a terrible band called Blue Angel. Her name is Cyndi Lauper, and the song turned out to be quite a hit, a considerably larger hit than “Escalator of Life”, in fact.

Dick Clark went on to own more things and also to co-host a critically-denounced television program with Ed McMahon called “Television’s Greatest Bloopers and Practical Jokes” (12). I thought that some footage of Robert Hazard might find its way onto that show at some point, but probably no one would understand it but me.

 

 

(1) “Radio Corporation of America” was what I was going for here.

(2) Here’s what I meant by cloying. Obviously, all I needed to say was “a cover of Blowin’ in the Wind”. If I were reading this aloud with sufficient deadpan delivery, then it might convey how even at age 14 I found this to be the least edgy choice of a cover tune possible. I mean, this was a song they sometimes sung in church! But as written I don’t see how that comes through. Instead, it’s an example of what an acquaintance of mine would soon refer to as my A.A. Milne writing style. She was right; at least someone caught it early.

(3) My heavy use of Robert Hazard throughout, as opposed to going with just ‘Hazard’ or ‘Robert’ or even ‘Bob’, borders on cloying, but I stand behind it as a steady reminder of the artifice that was involved. I didn’t know for sure that this was a stage name, but how could it not be? Back in the 1980s it wasn’t possible to just look things up the way it is now – even if I had taken the trouble to go to the Carnegie Library and track down a Philadelphia Inquirer story on microfilm, say, there’s no guarantee it would have told me that his birth name was Robert Rimato. At least I was right!

(4) I was convinced it reached #36 or so. How else would my future wife, for example, growing up on the Jersey Shore, know it? But the same source that confirmed the existence of the stage name knocks me back down to earth with the information that the peak chart position was only #58.

(5) This is partly a lie. I think my 20-year old self was insinuating that my 14-year old self was already too savvy for American Bandstand, but the truth was I didn’t watch it much because it aired Saturdays at noon, a time when I simply was not likely to be watching TV. I’m pretty sure I caught this episode by chance. Now I could check the date it aired, check Weather Underground records for the Delaware Valley, and confirm that it was probably raining that day, but I don’t see the need to take it that far. A look at the other acts on American Bandstand that season reveals a lot of schmaltz like Toto and America (how did teenagers dance to that?), but plenty that I would have been very interested in, such as Heaven 17, Adam Ant, Wall of Voodoo, Bow Wow Wow, the Bangles, Thompson Twins, and the English Beat (the only act to appear twice!).

(6) Someone in my freshman dorm was obsessed with Dick Clark’s cultural influence and it became something of a running joke. I did a bit of surfing around to see if there was anything more to it than game shows and steak houses on the Jersey Turnpike, but it doesn’t seem like it. I guess he was just responding to the way that so much of the junk TV he grew up with was all linked together, even though it was on different channels.

(7) It seems implausible that Dick Clark would waste valuable air time talking about contracts, but that’s how I remember it. I cannot locate any American Bandstand footage on YouTube or elsewhere, which is consistent with how I imagine Dick Clark likes to run his medium-sized media empire.

(8) Do they still make these?

(9) It seems positively quaint that so many  used to get so agitated by lip synching, with no similar controversy over stunt doubles in films or apprentice-produced works of art. Milli Vanilli was still two years in the future – of course in their case it wasn’t even their own voices they were lip synching to.

(10) Still true.

(11) I did get to see Modern English there during its brief tenure. They were never on American Bandstand – I checked.

(12) Returning to the airwaves in the fall of 2012, according to Wikipedia.