Speaker 1: I'm Dave Holmes, and there's a pop culture mystery that
Speaker 1: I have not been able to get out of my
Speaker 1: head for decades. It's the summer of nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1: If you're a young person, which I was, you're glued
Speaker 1: to MTV or VH one or BET. These are cable
Speaker 1: channels that play music videos. It's a little bit like YouTube,
Speaker 1: except everyone was watching the same thing at the same time. Also,
Speaker 1: if you were like, oh, I have an idea of
Speaker 1: what I want to watch next, you couldn't. You kind
Speaker 1: of just watched what they played. But they all played
Speaker 1: a new music video that summer. It was the first
Speaker 1: music video for the vocal group Boys to Men. It
Speaker 1: was called Motown Philly. There's a lot going on in
Speaker 1: the music video for Motown Philly. Throughout it there's a
Speaker 1: photographer and a short black skirt taking pictures of the
Speaker 1: groups in what a big photo album tells us is
Speaker 1: the East Coast Family. The East Coast Family is a
Speaker 1: collection of pop acts put together by Michael Bivins, a
Speaker 1: guy who was already famous from himself being in the
Speaker 1: pop acts New Edition and Bell biv Devoue. So we
Speaker 1: see Boys to Men obviously it's their video. We see
Speaker 1: another bad creation, a young group of actual children who
Speaker 1: had two top ten singles. We see Bell BIV devou
Speaker 1: themselves boys to men. ABC BBD, just like the lyrics
Speaker 1: of Motown Philly say, but it's what happens two minutes
Speaker 1: and thirty eight seconds into the Motown Philly video that
Speaker 1: I cannot shake. Five young guys in five white button
Speaker 1: down shirts, each with his own necktie, stand in a
Speaker 1: loose semi circle around Michael Biffins. Their name glows above
Speaker 1: their heads. Sudden Impact, Sudden Impact are all looking at
Speaker 1: the camera, and after a second, just as we're getting
Speaker 1: our bearings in unison, the point at the camera. They
Speaker 1: point at you as if to say, here we are.
Speaker 1: We're Sudden Impact. Any questions. It's bold, it's aggressive, it's
Speaker 1: the promise of something new. It's an introduction to a
Speaker 1: young group who you know are gonna be huge. I
Speaker 1: myself could not wait to see what Sudden Impact was
Speaker 1: gonna do next. What Sudden Impact did next was disappear.
Speaker 1: And it's not an exaggeration to say I have wondered
Speaker 1: about Sudden Impact ever since.
Speaker 2: What happened?
Speaker 1: Did they get in trouble with the Philadelphia Mob. Was
Speaker 1: it a plane crash? Did they all fight over the
Speaker 1: same woman? Did they ever record anything at all? And
Speaker 1: if so, where is it now?
Speaker 2: A lot of time has.
Speaker 1: Passed and I am not a young man anymore, and
Speaker 1: everyone younger than me who is listening to this is
Speaker 1: how having the same thought right now, Dave google it.
Speaker 1: This was nineteen ninety one. There was no Internet. If
Speaker 1: you were a young pop culture obsessive with questions and theories,
Speaker 1: you had nowhere to put them. There was no twenty
Speaker 1: four hour entertainment news cycle. E News wouldn't even premiere
Speaker 1: until later that summer. What we had was one syndicated
Speaker 1: entertainment news show, Entertainment Tonight. And there was no way
Speaker 1: they were going to do a story on the whereabouts
Speaker 1: of a boy band who were in someone else's video
Speaker 1: for two seconds and pointed at you. They had bigger
Speaker 1: fish to fry. Julia Roberts called off her engagement to
Speaker 1: keep her sevil in five days before their wedding that summer.
Speaker 1: I mean priorities. All we know about Sudden Impact is
Speaker 1: what didn't happen. I want to know what did. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to find out. I'm going to find them.
Speaker 1: I'm going to track those guys down, one by one,
Speaker 1: necktie by. I'm going to get the story of Sudden Impact,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to try to solve the most elusive,
Speaker 1: most bewildering.
Speaker 2: Question of all.
Speaker 1: Why can't I stop thinking about them? This is Waiting
Speaker 1: for Impact, a Dave Holmes passion project. The story of
Speaker 1: Sudden Impacts doesn't just begin in nineteen ninety one. In
Speaker 1: many ways, the story of Sudden Impact is about nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one. And I realize it's risky to tell a
Speaker 1: story about nineteen ninety one in a podcast. Some of
Speaker 1: you may not remember nineteen ninety one. Some of you
Speaker 1: may not have even been born yet. If you need
Speaker 1: a mental picture of nineteen ninety one, you really can
Speaker 1: just close your eyes and imagine any episode of Saved
Speaker 1: by the Bell. Saved by the Bell was not a documentary,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't not one either. The pastel color palette,
Speaker 1: the baggy T shirts tucked into high waisted jeans, the
Speaker 1: enormous cell phones, those are actually extremely true to American
Speaker 1: life and real life kids, just like the ones at
Speaker 1: Bayside High listened to Top forty radio even if you
Speaker 1: didn't like what Top forty radio was playing. You knew
Speaker 1: what Top forty radio was playing because it was playing
Speaker 1: everywhere your friend's car, the mall McDonald's. The early nineties
Speaker 1: is the last time in history we were all watching
Speaker 1: and listening to the same things. If you're under thirty
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety one, you might not consider yourself a
Speaker 1: Paul Abdual fan, but you know the words to at
Speaker 1: least three of her songs, just through OUs Moses. You
Speaker 1: might not love Guns N' Roses, but you can talk
Speaker 1: in detail about their video for November Rain. Whether you
Speaker 1: sought out the information or not, you have been briefed
Speaker 1: on the particulars of the Humpty Dance. Even the alternative
Speaker 1: was the same, small handful of bands, the replacements, the Cure,
Speaker 1: Jane's addiction. You either embraced the mainstream or you went
Speaker 1: for the alternative.
Speaker 2: I did both.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen ninety one, there's tension on the pop charts,
Speaker 1: a push and a pull. Wilson Phillips has had their
Speaker 1: first number one single, hold On, and their second release
Speaker 1: Me in May of that year. Kathy Dennis goes to
Speaker 1: number two with Touch Me, and the The Vinyls go to
Speaker 1: number four with I Touch Myself. Rod Stewart gets a
Speaker 1: top five single. For God's sake, the music of your
Speaker 1: local top forty radio station would play was all over
Speaker 1: the map, teen pop into hair metal, into adult contemporary.
Speaker 1: Say what you will about Queen's Reich and Amy Grant
Speaker 1: being right next to each other on the pop charts,
Speaker 1: but that is not sustainable. Things are formless and chaotic
Speaker 1: in the way they always are just before something big
Speaker 1: is about to happen, and it was reasonable to think
Speaker 1: that such an impact could have been that next big thing.
Speaker 1: The alternative was about to become the mainstream. We'll get
Speaker 1: into that in a later episode. Now, today someone can
Speaker 1: have one hundred million followers on TikTok and a big
Speaker 1: influencer business and I have never seen their face in
Speaker 1: my life. My nieces can be obsessed with a musician
Speaker 1: whose name I have never heard. But in nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: if you were famous, you were fame us. What was
Speaker 1: big was huge. The movies that summer were Terminator two
Speaker 1: and Robinhood Prince of Thieves Blockbusters. Twenty million people watched
Speaker 1: Roseanne every week. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were the
Speaker 1: hot newlyweds. In nineteen ninety one and Katie Holmes was twelve.
Speaker 1: The mainstream was massive. Today we call it the monoculture,
Speaker 1: but back then it was just the culture. The same
Speaker 1: handful of artists and songs were blasted at you by
Speaker 1: Top forty radio, the same couple dozen stars on every
Speaker 1: magazine cover, and at the center of it all was MTV.
Speaker 1: You may know MTV now as a network that plays
Speaker 1: skateboard wipe out videos and Pitch Perfect two, but in
Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties, it was a network that played
Speaker 1: music videos all day long. That was it, and that
Speaker 1: was enough. MTV was what you turned on to see
Speaker 1: what was happening in the world. It was a clubhouse
Speaker 1: that you couldn't really get into, but you turned it
Speaker 1: on anyway just to feel like you were there. Fresh
Speaker 1: faced young adults like Duff and Kevin Seal would be
Speaker 1: your tour guides, Bill Bellamy and John Cencio and Idallas
Speaker 1: VJs icons, your friends who haven't met you yet, the
Speaker 1: people you wanted to be, Okay, the people I wanted
Speaker 1: to be. MTV was the one stop shop for youth
Speaker 1: culture at a time when there was such a thing
Speaker 1: as youth culture, and it had cachet. When an artist
Speaker 1: got added to the rotation, that meant something, that was
Speaker 1: a seal of approval. It's onto these chaotic pop charts
Speaker 1: and onto this influential MTV playlist at the end of
Speaker 1: April nineteen ninety one that Boys to Men and therefore
Speaker 1: sud An Impact arrive and I'm ready.
Speaker 2: Here's a little background on Boys to Men.
Speaker 1: They're a vocal quartet kind of a nineties update of
Speaker 1: a doo wop group. They all met at the Philadelphia
Speaker 1: High School for Creative and Performing Arts and started performing
Speaker 1: together as unique attraction until one night at a school event,
Speaker 1: they sang a song by Michael bivens old group, the
Speaker 1: popular boy band New Edition, a song called Boys to Men,
Speaker 1: and they decided that was the right name, and on.
Speaker 2: A Philadelphia tour stop for Bell.
Speaker 1: Biv Devo Michael bivens new group, the guys of Boys
Speaker 1: to Men score one backstage pass and it back and
Speaker 1: forth so all four of them can get back there.
Speaker 1: They find Bivens and they sing him an a cappella
Speaker 1: version of New Editions Can You Stand the Rain. Michael
Speaker 1: Bivens gives them his number and they call and call
Speaker 1: and call and call. They beg him to manage them.
Speaker 1: Michael Bivens has clout He's had a lifetime in the
Speaker 1: music industry.
Speaker 2: He's been in.
Speaker 1: Two groups to win multi platinum, and now he wants
Speaker 1: to move into the record mogul stage of his career
Speaker 1: become a starmaker like Motown's Barry Gordie had been. Michael
Speaker 1: Bivens is twenty two years old. Motown has given him
Speaker 1: a three artist development deal. Boys to Men wear him
Speaker 1: down and become his first signing, and the lyrics of
Speaker 1: their debut single Motown Philly pretty much tell the story
Speaker 1: about how they made it big, which is weird because
Speaker 1: again it's their debut single. They haven't made it big yet.
Speaker 1: They're like, hello, let us introduce ourselves. We are Boys
Speaker 1: to Men and we're very big stars. Boys to Men
Speaker 1: sing the names of the group's Bivens has taken under
Speaker 1: his wing themselves, the second group Bivens signed, another bad creation,
Speaker 1: Those Children I was telling you about, and the group
Speaker 1: whose success made it all possible, Bell biv Devouls Family.
Speaker 1: Michael Bivens is so confident his acts are going to
Speaker 1: succeed that he's basically taken the debut single from the
Speaker 1: group that would become his most successful by a mile,
Speaker 1: and turned it into a promo for his own development
Speaker 1: deal that is bold. The Motown Philly video is eye catching,
Speaker 1: and only partially because Boys to Men are in pastels.
Speaker 1: Pull it up, watch it now, I'll wait. It's good,
Speaker 1: right as you saw. It's staged as a reunion for
Speaker 1: the East Coast family. And here again it's strange that
Speaker 1: it's a reunion because we're meeting most of these people
Speaker 1: for the first time. But we didn't overthink it. A
Speaker 1: photographer takes pictures of the artists and the lyrics with
Speaker 1: one of those old timey cameras where you have to
Speaker 1: put a cape over yourself and hold up a giant flashbulb,
Speaker 1: which feels very steampunk for nineteen ninety one. But there's
Speaker 1: Boys to Men, there's ABC, there's BBD, and then near
Speaker 1: the end Sudden Impact, who are not mentioned in the
Speaker 1: lyrics and whose appearance is not explained in any way.
Speaker 1: It's just Hi, We're sudd An Impact. How are you?
Speaker 1: I mean I sat up and took notice. Nobody else
Speaker 1: around me really did. And what didn't exist in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one, what not even screech not even the nerds
Speaker 1: could invent for you was the Internet. In my college
Speaker 1: at the time. If you wanted to use a computer,
Speaker 1: you went to the computer lab, where there were like
Speaker 1: eight of them. If you knew how, you could send
Speaker 1: short text messages to one of the other computers in
Speaker 1: that room, messages like I'm three feet away from you
Speaker 1: or why are we doing this? And even that didn't
Speaker 1: happen until nineteen ninety three. There was nowhere to go
Speaker 1: if you had questions about Sudden Impact, questions like Who's
Speaker 1: Sudden Impact? Or is anyone else seeing this? If you
Speaker 1: were obsessed from the second you saw them, as I was,
Speaker 1: you did two things. One you kept it to yourself
Speaker 1: and two you waited for Sudden Impact to show up
Speaker 1: on MTV. Sudden Impact never did show up on MTV
Speaker 1: a few years later, though I did, and like Sudden Impact,
Speaker 1: my debut was in a thing. A lot of people
Speaker 1: saw a thing that didn't go the way that I
Speaker 1: was planning, for those who don't know me or who
Speaker 1: had better things to do at that time in history.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety eight, MTV had an open call for
Speaker 1: VJs that on air. Master of Ceremonies Job Duff and
Speaker 1: Kevin Seeal had the VJ position. Was my dream gig,
Speaker 1: a huge, high profile TV job. I hate that I'm
Speaker 1: saying this, but kind of a high profile early version
Speaker 1: of an influencer. And in nineteen ninety eight, MTV just
Speaker 1: opened the application process up to the public, so if
Speaker 1: you didn't have experience or an agent or good common sense,
Speaker 1: you could just stand in line and take your swing.
Speaker 1: I stood in line and took my swing, and I
Speaker 1: made it to the top ten, and then the top
Speaker 1: five viewers got to vote on who they wanted to
Speaker 1: get the gig buy telephone because again no real internet
Speaker 1: ever MCV one of the ejay contests, and.
Speaker 2: They voted in droves four.
Speaker 1: Not me. Now, this is a moment that people remind
Speaker 1: me about a lot, like a lot lot. Not every day,
Speaker 1: not anymore, but easily once a week, particularly if they're
Speaker 1: trying to insult me on Twitter and they don't have
Speaker 1: much of an imagination. And I have to be honest here,
Speaker 1: I don't love talking about it. Does anyone love talking
Speaker 1: about a time they lost in public? I mean, get this,
Speaker 1: I skipped a college friend's wedding to be there for
Speaker 1: the finals, and I remember the groom, wishing me luck
Speaker 1: and telling me they'd turn on the last few minutes
Speaker 1: in the bar of the wedding venue and watch, And
Speaker 1: I think they did. A whole bunch of my friends
Speaker 1: stood and watched me lose informal wear.
Speaker 2: Yikes. I've never talked about that with any of them.
Speaker 1: By the way, I kind of lost touch with most
Speaker 1: of them, so I wouldn't have to talk about that.
Speaker 2: But in that moment, I remember thinking two things.
Speaker 1: If I got this close, I needed to put my
Speaker 1: back into getting some kind of job at MTV, otherwise
Speaker 1: I would regret it for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: And two, this moment is going to be the first
Speaker 1: line in my obituary, So I put my back into it.
Speaker 1: I stayed in touch with the people I met there.
Speaker 1: I set up some meetings and made some pitches and
Speaker 1: generally behaved like someone much more confident than I am.
Speaker 1: And one thing led to another, and they finally gave
Speaker 1: me a job.
Speaker 2: And we're gonna check in with Dave.
Speaker 3: Who's outside?
Speaker 2: How you doing there, ladies?
Speaker 1: Hello, Hope you're all nice and cozy in there. It's
Speaker 1: so hot out here, can't even tell you.
Speaker 2: But we got a ton of adorning fans, one of
Speaker 2: whom is right here.
Speaker 1: Yes, that is Britney Spears. She was co hosting TRL
Speaker 1: that day with Melissa Jonhard. And if you have a podcast,
Speaker 1: you have to mention Britney Spears in it. That's a
Speaker 1: new law. Anyway, I did not get a job. I
Speaker 1: got the job my dream life, a position at the
Speaker 1: epicenter of the pop culture universe, a golden ticket to
Speaker 1: the Banka Factory. I was there for four and a
Speaker 1: half years. It was everything I hoped it would be. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it was more. It's led me to where I am now.
Speaker 1: I still get to do what I love, and I
Speaker 1: truly believe that if I keep working hard, keep challenging myself,
Speaker 1: keep hustling, someday that want to be a VJ moment
Speaker 1: will be the second line in my obituary. I worked
Speaker 1: in TV for a few more years, and then I
Speaker 1: started writing more, and eventually that became my focus. And
Speaker 1: now I'm an editor at large for Esquire, the magazine
Speaker 1: I grew up reading. I love my life. I'm not rich,
Speaker 1: I'm not famous, but I've gotten what I wanted. And
Speaker 1: then I wake up and I turn on the television
Speaker 1: and there's my old colleague Carson Daily hosting one of
Speaker 1: his two big network TV shows. Ryan Seacrest has two speeds.
Speaker 1: He's either on live television or he's asleep. And if
Speaker 1: by the time this show drops, he's sold his Apple
Speaker 1: Watch sleep tracker data to Netflix as a competition reality show,
Speaker 1: none of us will be surprised. I'm doing what I love.
Speaker 1: The nineteen ninety one version of me would lose his
Speaker 1: mind if he saw how I got to spend my days.
Speaker 1: That big swing that I took back then showing up
Speaker 1: and standing in line to audition at MTV bought me
Speaker 1: a career I'm proud of. But in terms of money
Speaker 1: or fame, I'm definitely the sudden impact in someone else's story.
Speaker 1: I don't love talking about losing on national television, but
Speaker 1: it did lead to something good, and I've always wondered
Speaker 1: whether the same is true for sudden impact. I don't
Speaker 1: know whether they want to talk about getting a huge
Speaker 1: boost at the beginning of their career and then vanishing.
Speaker 1: They didn't become stars, They didn't even release a single
Speaker 1: as far as I know, But does that mean they
Speaker 1: didn't make it? Sudden impact never happened, but something did,
Speaker 1: and just because we don't know what it is, just
Speaker 1: because it didn't unfold in a way that we could see,
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it wasn't good.
Speaker 2: Maybe it was actually better.
Speaker 1: However, you get it, and at whatever level you get it,
Speaker 1: fame does a weird thing to you. I eventually got
Speaker 1: that MTV job in nineteen ninety eight, right when it
Speaker 1: really solidified its place as the epicenter of the monoculture
Speaker 1: for maybe the last time. In nineteen ninety eight, MTV
Speaker 1: had that huge studio overlooking Times Square with those massive
Speaker 1: floorid to ceiling windows.
Speaker 2: We called it the Fishbowl.
Speaker 1: Kids would stand in the middle of Broadway and just
Speaker 1: scream up at those windows. It didn't matter who was there,
Speaker 1: whether it was Backstreet Boys or the Q card guy.
Speaker 1: If you were there, you were somewhere exciting, and the
Speaker 1: kids had no choice but to scream at you. I
Speaker 1: used to love going up to that window and waving
Speaker 1: and hearing the screams. I knew those screams were not
Speaker 1: for me, not really, but it was a nice reminder
Speaker 1: that I used to be out there and now I'm
Speaker 1: up here. It was a moment to be grateful. The
Speaker 1: day MTV called me up and gave me a job.
Speaker 1: Might have been the happiest day of my life up
Speaker 1: until that point. Who am I kidding? It was by far.
Speaker 1: I remember telling my parents this in these words. I
Speaker 1: don't care about getting rich. I don't care how famous
Speaker 1: this job makes me. All I know is now I'll
Speaker 1: get to talk about the things I'm obsessed with and
Speaker 1: make things I know how to make. And I want
Speaker 1: this job to allow me to keep doing that for
Speaker 1: the rest of my life. I want this to be
Speaker 1: the start of a career I'm in love with. I
Speaker 1: thought about the future. I thought about the fact that
Speaker 1: once it was all over, maybe i'd have a high
Speaker 1: enough profile to write a book or two. I thought
Speaker 1: I might transition into production and express myself that way.
Speaker 1: I thought about the new ways I would get to
Speaker 1: use my talents now that I was in a place
Speaker 1: where remembering things like sudden impact was considered a talent.
Speaker 1: I thought about all the new stuff i'd get to
Speaker 1: learn how to do. And I did, and I loved
Speaker 1: it there, and loving it was enough at first. But
Speaker 1: something happens when you're in the epicenter of the monoculture
Speaker 1: at a very hot time, when you're surrounded by the
Speaker 1: rich and the famous. Whether you notice it or not,
Speaker 1: you start wanting to be rich and famous. You don't
Speaker 1: even notice it. It's not a decision. It's not a
Speaker 1: switch that you flip. You just see how some people
Speaker 1: are living and you think, sure, I'm happy, but that's success.
Speaker 1: You see your peers in magazines and on talk shows,
Speaker 1: and you start wanting to get in magazines and on
Speaker 1: talk shows. You start to think, if people can't see
Speaker 1: me all over the place, am I really successful? When
Speaker 1: you get what you want, you just start wanting more.
Speaker 1: You go up to that window over Broadway and you
Speaker 1: wave at the kids standing out there, and they scream
Speaker 1: at you because you're inside, and your first thought isn't
Speaker 1: how lucky you are to be up there. Your first
Speaker 1: thought is did they scream louder yesterday? You forget that
Speaker 1: all you wanted in the beginning was just to be
Speaker 1: a part of it. You forget that it all started
Speaker 1: because you were a fan. Being a fan can be
Speaker 1: an isolating experience, especially before there's an Internet where you
Speaker 1: can find other fans. I was in college in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one at a place where very practical people were learning,
Speaker 1: very practical things that would make them very effective in
Speaker 1: their very practical careers. I was obsessing over things like
Speaker 1: sudden Impact and feeling.
Speaker 2: Like a real weirdo about it.
Speaker 1: What's great about making a life out of your obsessions
Speaker 1: is that eventually you meet other weirdos. What percentage of
Speaker 1: the population do you think consists of people like us?
Speaker 3: Very very very few? And if it wasn't for the Internet,
Speaker 3: it would seem like nobody and I do worry that
Speaker 3: we're a dying breed. It feels like a very Generation
Speaker 3: X thing.
Speaker 1: This is my friend Scott Kimple. Scott and I met
Speaker 1: just after I moved to LA We were doing shows
Speaker 1: at an improv comedy theater that, like a lot of
Speaker 1: improv comedy theaters, doesn't exist anymore. Scott is one of
Speaker 1: the funniest people I know, which is very strange because
Speaker 1: he's also the chief content officer for the Walking Dead
Speaker 1: universe of TV shows and movies and video games.
Speaker 2: He's a big deal.
Speaker 1: He's also the only other person I know who paid
Speaker 1: attention to the sudden Impact moment.
Speaker 3: That's the other thing that got me is Michael Bivins
Speaker 3: is saying here it is, you're going to love this,
Speaker 3: this is my universe, this is my record label. Enjoy,
Speaker 3: thank you, our pardon me. You're welcome.
Speaker 1: I'm not only giving you the story of Boyce to
Speaker 1: Men in a video. I am actually telling it to
Speaker 1: you in the middle of a song that's going to
Speaker 1: get played on the radio for decades to come.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which again his storytelling us a narration. You know,
Speaker 3: he talks about how he met them. The song itself
Speaker 3: is like they're going back to their schools, saying how
Speaker 3: they were dreaming of it. It's join us in our success. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I believe both of us said yes.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, why why did I never stop thinking about it?
Speaker 1: Scott and I bonded over a few things when we
Speaker 1: first met, a shared love of those digital trivia games
Speaker 1: used to be able to play in bars, the movies
Speaker 1: of Wit Stillman, You Don't Know, Jack, and somehow Sudden Impact.
Speaker 1: Scott's passion is storytelling, so it makes sense that he
Speaker 1: would connect to a moment like this. To a storyteller
Speaker 1: like him, the Sudden Impact moment feels like a cliffhanger
Speaker 1: to a pop culture nerd like me. It's a detail
Speaker 1: to obsess over, but the point is we both remember
Speaker 1: the point I seem to remember in the early days
Speaker 1: of our friendship, the iconic sudden impact point being a greeting.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think we held on to that for a little while. Yeah,
Speaker 3: which I will say in revisiting it, we put a
Speaker 3: bit more flourish than they did.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's not wrong. The guys do look a
Speaker 1: little nervous, and who could blame them. It's a big moment.
Speaker 1: It's a moment freighted with promise. Plus they're dressy, like
Speaker 1: they're on their way to church. Some people can't relax
Speaker 1: in a time anyway. Scott and I are friends now,
Speaker 1: but we were on very different tracks back in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one. I was studying self loathing in college, which
Speaker 1: we will address at some point. Scott was studying film
Speaker 1: at USC. We both had huge dreams, but unlike me,
Speaker 1: Scott had a plan.
Speaker 3: At eleven years old, I said, Okay, this is what
Speaker 3: I'm going to do. I am going to become I'm
Speaker 3: going to work to become an intern at DC Comics.
Speaker 3: Then I'll become an assistant editor. It's incredibly pragmatic. Then
Speaker 3: hopefully I'll become an editor, and then after that, hopefully
Speaker 3: I will be writing a couple of comics. Then, because
Speaker 3: I'm at home as a freelancer writing comics, maybe I
Speaker 3: can start working towards TV and film. And that was
Speaker 3: my plan from eleven years old.
Speaker 2: Things didn't work out that way.
Speaker 1: By the time Scott was out of college, the comics
Speaker 1: industry was actually briefly in decline. So he started working
Speaker 1: in TV, first as a production assistant, then as a writer,
Speaker 1: then is the person in charge of the biggest show
Speaker 1: in the world. Scott's one of my closest friends. But
Speaker 1: sometimes even with good friends, there are things you don't know,
Speaker 1: areas you don't address until you're recording a podcast about
Speaker 1: sudden impact, like the fact that for all he's accomplished,
Speaker 1: he's still not giving up on that eleven year old.
Speaker 3: I still aspire to have a monthly comic and it's
Speaker 3: still something I'm aspiring working towards. And it's cool to
Speaker 3: have that goal. And there's a comic that I have
Speaker 3: that I co creative with Robert Kirkwin that we do,
Speaker 3: but you know, Robert's the anchorman on that. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: I've done some comics along the way, but yeah, I
Speaker 3: still have a goal in that area. And I still
Speaker 3: owe that eleven year old some.
Speaker 2: Achievement.
Speaker 1: So you're determined to come full circle to the original.
Speaker 3: Dream, Yeah, yeah, I mean literally. I might be seventy,
Speaker 3: I might be eighty, but I'm yeah, absolutely, And maybe
Speaker 3: I also feel that I'm not trying hard to bring
Speaker 3: it full circle here. I swear to God I'm not.
Speaker 3: But I don't like the idea of endings. I don't
Speaker 3: like the idea that there are endings. And yes, do
Speaker 3: I hope that a Sudden Impact album comes out?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: And am I still holding onto that hope, which is
Speaker 3: a kin to the hope that I had back in
Speaker 3: ninety one, like, oh, I can't wait to see this.
Speaker 3: I still have that because I don't like thinking that
Speaker 3: it's over for anybody. I don't like the idea of
Speaker 3: whatever happened to I don't know if that's like a
Speaker 3: cock eyed optimism or something, but I know with myself
Speaker 3: it takes me a while to get to certain things,
Speaker 3: but I do get to them right, And I guess
Speaker 3: I put that on other people too.
Speaker 1: I have no idea why I never stopped thinking about
Speaker 1: such an impact, but Scott has a theory about why
Speaker 1: it's still on his mind.
Speaker 3: In retrospect, I realized that it also it hit me
Speaker 3: in the sweet spot of my pop culture loves being
Speaker 3: someone who you know, loved comics, loves comics, and you know,
Speaker 3: this was before Marvel was making movies and stuff, and
Speaker 3: shared universes were basically in comic books.
Speaker 2: But this is a shared universe.
Speaker 3: This is ABC, this is Boys to Men, this is BBD,
Speaker 3: this is some Impact And there's something to that that
Speaker 3: was that that these there's a connection to to Marvel
Speaker 3: and DC of these these groups of heroes, and Michael
Speaker 3: Bibvens is sort of laying down that there is a
Speaker 3: narrative here. They're there to succeed. You know, they are like, hey,
Speaker 3: we want to I mean, I will say boys. Command
Speaker 3: is like, hey, we're doing it just for you. We
Speaker 3: were dreaming about this. But there's an aspect to shared
Speaker 3: universes that I think also just hit me right where,
Speaker 3: you know my heart pumps.
Speaker 1: Now, if that sudden Impact moment had happened in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, there would be five thousand memes immediately. Someone
Speaker 1: would replace all their faces with the Real Housewives of
Speaker 1: New York or something. There would be online quizzes which
Speaker 1: Sudden Impact, are you BuzzFeed would run a story like
Speaker 1: the Internet just noticed that the second Sudden Impact guy
Speaker 1: from the left is not looking at the camera and
Speaker 1: we are literally shook. In twenty twenty one, you can't disappear.
Speaker 1: Sudden Impact doesn't bring up much on Google. There's a
Speaker 1: Canadian thrash band by that name, probably not the same guys.
Speaker 1: There's a nineteen eighty three Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry movie
Speaker 1: called Sudden Impact. That's the one that gave us go
Speaker 1: ahead and make my day. But the group from the Motown,
Speaker 1: Philly video is nowhere to be found, not even a
Speaker 1: GeoCities fan site.
Speaker 2: Nothing.
Speaker 1: In fact, it is the nothing that makes me want
Speaker 1: to find them that much more. Information about Sudden Impact
Speaker 1: is the last hard to find thing in a world
Speaker 1: where there is no longer any such thing as scarcity.
Speaker 2: I can't have it, so I must have it.
Speaker 1: It's Scott who sends me a second video from Michael
Speaker 1: Bivens East Coast Family. This one is from nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: It's called one four All for one, and it's got
Speaker 1: boys to Men, another bad creation and a whole slew
Speaker 1: of new faces, including five white guys called white guys, whytgize.
Speaker 1: Now these guys look a little like sudden impact, which
Speaker 1: I feel like might be a clue of some kind.
Speaker 1: But then I go on the internet and I search
Speaker 1: for information on white guys and there's not a whole
Speaker 1: lot of that either. But it's not until the second
Speaker 1: or third time through the one four all four one
Speaker 1: video for both of us separately that we realize something.
Speaker 1: We recognize someone a young singer in a vest and
Speaker 1: a tie, in a warm smile. She goes by the
Speaker 1: single name Yvette. Wait a minute, is that go.
Speaker 2: And look for yourself.
Speaker 1: It's Yvette Nicole Brown twenty twenty one Emmy nominee a
Speaker 1: Vette Nicole Brown. Now Vette is a Walking Dead super fan.
Speaker 1: She hosted The Talking Dead for a little while. She
Speaker 1: and Scott are friends. People we know somebody in the
Speaker 1: East Coast family.
Speaker 2: We have an inn.
Speaker 1: Scott. It's not only Evet Nicole Brown. But she sounds great, like.
Speaker 3: She sounds great, has that smile, Yeah, does the not
Speaker 3: only her primary vocal, but some backing vocals with some flourish,
Speaker 3: And it just blowsed my mind. She was there, and
Speaker 3: I know she's at this point like just out of Cleveland.
Speaker 3: So I even want to know, like, how does that happen?
Speaker 3: Is there a Philadelphia base? She must still have been
Speaker 3: living in Cleveland.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess parts of Ohio are Eastern time zone,
Speaker 1: So I mean I guess in that way, she could
Speaker 1: be part of the East Coast family.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: She knows some of the answers, she has some of
Speaker 3: the stories, and she's someone I literally can call whenever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Scott that ask, oh would you?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah great?
Speaker 1: If anybody in our orbit has a connection to Sudden Impact,
Speaker 1: it's event. And if she does, we can track them
Speaker 1: down one by one. We can get closure on this thing.
Speaker 1: We can find out what happened. We can maybe even
Speaker 1: get them back together. But this is not just about
Speaker 1: Sudden Impact. It's about why I can't stop thinking about
Speaker 1: Sudden Impact.
Speaker 2: It's about why.
Speaker 1: Their story arc is a thing that I am still
Speaker 1: curious about. So while I'm looking for them and looking
Speaker 1: back at this moment in pop culture history, I'm going
Speaker 1: to track down some other fascinating faces and names of
Speaker 1: the early nineties. People I know personally and people I watched,
Speaker 1: People who made an impact and then changed direction, people
Speaker 1: who thought their lives were going way one way and
Speaker 1: ended up going way another, and maybe that was way better.
Speaker 1: This is a podcast about the nineties and about what
Speaker 1: we left there. It's about big swings that didn't pan
Speaker 1: out and unexpected good things that did. This is Waiting
Speaker 1: for Impact, a Dave Holmes passion project. This has been
Speaker 1: an Exactly Right production written by me Dave Holmes, produced
Speaker 1: by Hannah Kyle Crichton, recorded, mixed and sound designed by
Speaker 1: Andrew Eapen. Additional engineering and assembly by Analise Nelson. Music
Speaker 1: by Ben Wise, artwork by Garrett Ross. Executive produced by
Speaker 1: Karen Kilgareff, Georgia hard Stark and Danielle Kramer. Follow the
Speaker 1: show on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at exactly right and
Speaker 1: follow me at Dave Holmes. For more information, go to
Speaker 1: Exactlyrightmedia dot com. Binge the show add free on stitch
Speaker 1: your premium for a free month. Head to Stitcherpremium dot com,
Speaker 1: slash Impact and enter promo code Impact and you select
Speaker 1: a monthly plan. Listen, subscribe and leave us a review
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.