When it comes to pop music everyone has a guilty pleasure - and yesterday afternoon I was listening to the radio when they happened to play one of mine: Kim Wilde's 'Kids in America'.
‘Kids in America’
was first released in 1981; a couple of months before I was born, so I was too young to be aware of it. My main interests back then
were crying and soiling myself; nothing much has changed in the intervening years.
A couple of years
ago I played bass on a short tour of the Netherlands as part of a 70s & 80s
show - and both this and 'Come on, Eileen' were setlist highlights; neither
song has much credibility, but they both have enjoyable bass parts.
(Not a
euphemism.)
My enjoyment of
this song wasn’t strictly professional: everything bar the guitarist, drummer
and myself was on click-track – and me and the lead guitarist, Tim, would be in stiches watching Dean Elliott mime the keyboard part:
constantly failing to anticipate the random car horn effects of the
song’s introduction.
 | |
| Arriving at a Dutch venue. |
(Don’t be misled:
Dean is a talented muso in his own right. Check out his show The Simon & Garfunkel Story: coming to a theatre near you, with not a mimed instrument in sight.)
The tour
coincided with my thirtieth birthday – with us performing at the Chasse Theater
in Breda that night. As a result I was treated to the slightly surreal
experience of a couple of thousand people singing Happy Birthday to me in
Dutch, dressed all the while in a sequined-and-platform-shoed
combo.
My microphone wasn’t live so I couldn’t thank them afterwards. I must have looked such a c**t.
The song also has
an early and slightly less-sequined significance. In the late nineties, on the
eve of my seventeenth birthday, my band Big Day Out won the much-coveted prize
of ‘Best Band in Hertfordshire’; like the Mercury Music prize, on a minimalistic scale.
One of the
competition’s judges was the record producer Ricky Wilde (Kim Wilde’s brother,
who co-wrote ‘Kids in America’ with his veteran rock and roller father, Marty
Wilde; it was a family affair.)
Ricky spoke very highly of us, and invited us into his studio to record a demo. He expressed an interest in managing us, but ultimately nothing ever came of it.
It was still exciting going into a professional studio for the first time. Here's one of the tracks Ricky produced for us: not a bit like 'Kids in America', damn it.
Ricky spoke very highly of us, and invited us into his studio to record a demo. He expressed an interest in managing us, but ultimately nothing ever came of it.
It was still exciting going into a professional studio for the first time. Here's one of the tracks Ricky produced for us: not a bit like 'Kids in America', damn it.