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Tommy Tutone Tommy Tutone also plays a benefit show for a girl who has bone cancer: 1 pm Sunday, Sept. 21, at Hidden Springs Cafe, 19389 Willamette Drive, West Linn. |
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Spins of the Week: Photek, Modus Operandi (Astralwerks)--English electronic musician Rupert Parkes delivers some dazzling beats and blips on his debut full-length, assembling an array of sounds into a listening experience that's part jungle, part ambient and wholly entertaining. Butterglory, Rat Tat Tat (Merge)--The prolific indie-rock duo of Matt Suggs and Debby Vander Wall comes through with its best record yet, an album of lilting melodies and low-key vocals that's filled with impressive songs. |
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No musician tries to be a one-hit wonder. It's usually a fluke or a simple matter of timing that makes a song stand out to the point that everybody ignores the rest of a band's output. For Tommy Tutone, such a moment came in 1981, when "867-5309/Jenny" grew into one of the year's biggest and most memorable hits, essentially overshadowing the rest of his career. Tutone (né Heath), now 50 and living in Lake Oswego with his wife and 2-year-old daughter, has made a few stabs at re-entering the music business since his songwriting partnership with Jim Keller ended in 1984. After Tutone-2 went gold on the strength of "Jenny"--which peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard charts and became one of the first hit videos on a new channel called MTV--the Bay Area duo spent nearly a year recording the follow-up, National Emotion. By the time it was released, most of Tutone's supporters at CBS Records had left due to reorganization at the label, effectively halting the promotional effort behind the record. "After that, [Keller] and I could no longer agree, and it seemed like the time had passed, so we called it quits," Tutone says, seated outside the downtown Portland office building where he works as a computer programmer. He now has thinning gray hair and wears conservative eyeglasses, although his gap-toothed grin makes him instantly recognizable as the guy from the "Jenny" video. Tutone went on to record three other albums in the '80s, but they would go unreleased. He moved to Nashville in the early '90s, where his attempts to make it as a country songwriter were rebuffed. "They told me that I asked too much of the listener," he says of the Nashville record industry. In 1995, however, Tutone released a comeback album, Nervous Love, although this failed to garner much attention. Since moving to the Portland area last year, Tutone has played only one local show--at Duffy's Pub--although few people knew about it, he says. He's also assembled a band of California musicians--bassist Pete Costello, drummer Rick Deputy and guitarist Scott McKinstry--and recorded an album, to be released soon on the California label Magpie. In the new songs, Tutone retains the '80s power-pop style that marked his CBS albums while incorporating R&B elements reminiscent of Van Morrison and Graham Parker. The material is strong enough that nobody could accuse Tutone of going through a mid-life crisis. Besides, he maintains a positive attitude about his role as a one-hit wonder. Asked if he felt cheated when the record industry turned its back on him, he replies, "I could have, but I saw so many bands do worse. I saw 40 bands sign to CBS--20 of them made albums and two of them got promoted, and I was one of them. So I was very lucky in that sense." "Jenny," which was written by Keller and Alex Call and had Tutone reciting a Carmel, Calif., woman's actual telephone number, continues to show up on '80s greatest-hits compilations, although none of the Tutone albums are currently in print. Now, the man whose band once toured with the likes of Tom Petty, ZZ Top and Cheap Trick is starting over, performing in a pub near his home. And though it irks him that near-misses like "Cheap Date," "Angel Say No" and "Which Man Are You" don't merit an individual greatest-hits collection, he grudgingly acknowledges that being a one-hit wonder is better than never having had a hit at all. "I don't think about the recriminations. It would make me mad if I thought about it too hard," he says. "Like I say, I'm pretty lucky. I would hate to be trapped in fame as much as I'd hate to be trapped in un-fame." Portland Postscripts: KPSU 1450 AM has finally extended its hours. The Portland State University radio station can now be heard from 5 pm until 2 am; formerly, it went off the air at midnight. The local electronic-music scene keeps showing increased signs of life. Besides the recent opening of Zoot Suite, the Bean (1720 SE 12th Ave.) has added a weekly DJ show called the Point, which starts Friday, Sept. 19, at 7 pm. DJs Sean and Lorrin are said to spin acid jazz, jungle and trip-hop. |
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