MFM Presents: Waiting for Impact - Episode 1: "I've Been Thinking About You"

[0] This is exactly right.

[1] Hey, you guys, it's Karen and Georgia, and we're here because we're so excited to announce the premiere of our brand -new show, Waiting for Impact, a Dave Holmes passion project.

[2] It's hosted by Dave Holmes, who as you know, is a former MTV Vijay and a professional pop culture obsessive.

[3] Waiting for Impact is a deep dive into the disappearance of 90s R &B boy band Sudden Impact after their debut in Boys to Men's Motown, Philly.

[4] video.

[5] Dave has been obsessed with them since the first time he saw them point to the camera and he is determined to track them down and find out what really happened to them.

[6] There's all kinds of guests, comedians, actors, writers, and it's a really cool deep dive into the 90s and Dave's life as well.

[7] It's so much fun.

[8] So enjoy the network premiere episode right here and then head over to the Waiting for Impact feed for episode two, which is out today.

[9] And there's new episodes every Tuesday, so please subscribe to the show on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.

[10] And if you like what you hear, you can write a review, and you can also follow Exactly Right on Instagram at Exactly Right.

[11] Please enjoy.

[12] We are so proud of this show, and we know you're going to love it.

[13] Goodbye.

[14] I'm Dave Holmes, and there's a pop culture mystery that I have not been able to get out of my head for decades.

[15] It's the summer of 1991.

[16] If you're a young person, which I was, you're glued to MTV, or VH1, or BET.

[17] These are cable channels that play music videos.

[18] It's a little bit like YouTube, except everyone was watching the same thing at the same time.

[19] Also, if you were like, oh, I have an idea of what I want to watch next, you couldn't.

[20] You kind of just watched what they played.

[21] But they all played a new music video that summer.

[22] It was the first music video for the vocal group Boys to Men.

[23] It was called Motown Philly.

[24] There's a lot going on in the music video for Motown Philly.

[25] Throughout it, there's a photographer in a short black skirt.

[26] Taking pictures of the groups in what a big photo album tells us is the East Coast family.

[27] The East Coast family is a collection of pop acts put together by Michael Bivens, a guy who was already famous from himself being in the pop acts, new edition, and Belbiv DeVoe.

[28] So we see boys to men, obviously it's their video.

[29] We see another bad creation, a young group of actual children who had two top ten singles.

[30] We see Bell Biv DeVoe themselves, Boys to Men, ABC, B, B, B, D, just like the lyrics of Motown Philly say.

[31] But it's what happens two minutes and 38 seconds into the Motown Philly video that I cannot shake.

[32] Five young guys in five white button -down shirts, each with his own necktie, stand in a loose semi -circle around Michael Biffins.

[33] Their name glows above their heads.

[34] Sudden impact.

[35] Sudden impact are all looking at the camera.

[36] And after a second, just as we're getting our bearings, in unison, they point at the camera.

[37] They point at you.

[38] As if to say, here we are.

[39] We're sudden impact.

[40] Any questions?

[41] It's bold.

[42] It's aggressive.

[43] It's the promise of something new.

[44] It's an introduction to a young group who you know are going to be huge.

[45] I myself could not wait to see what sudden impact was going to do next.

[46] What sudden impact did next was disappear.

[47] And it's not an exaggeration to say I have wondered about sudden impact ever since.

[48] What happened?

[49] Did they get in trouble with the Philadelphia mob?

[50] Was it a plane crash?

[51] Did they all fight over the same woman?

[52] Did they ever record anything at all?

[53] And if so, where is it?

[54] Now, a lot of time has passed, and I am not a young man anymore, and everyone younger than me who is listening to this is having the same thought right now.

[55] Dave, Google it.

[56] This was 1991.

[57] There was no internet.

[58] If you were a young pop culture obsessive with questions and theories, you had nowhere to put them.

[59] There was no 24 -hour entertainment news cycle.

[60] E -News wouldn't even premiere until later that summer.

[61] What we had was one syndicated entertainment news show, Entertainment Tonight.

[62] And there was no way they were going to do a story on the whereabouts of a boy band who were in someone else's video for two seconds and pointed at you.

[63] They had bigger fish to fry.

[64] Julia Roberts called off her engagement to Kiefer Sutherland five days before their wedding that summer.

[65] I mean priorities All we know about sudden impact is what didn't happen I want to know what did so I'm going to find out I'm going to find them I'm going to track those guys down one by one necktie by necktie I'm going to get the story of sudden impact and I'm going to try to solve the most elusive most bewildering question of all why can't I stop thinking about them?

[66] This is Waiting for Impact, a Dave Holmes passion project.

[67] The story of sudden impacts doesn't just begin in 1991.

[68] In many ways, the story of sudden impact is about 1991.

[69] And I realize it's risky to tell a story about 1991 in a podcast.

[70] Some of you may not remember 1991.

[71] Some of you may not have even been born yet.

[72] If you need a mental picture of 1991, you really can just close your eyes and imagine any episode of Saved by the Bell.

[73] Saved by the Bell was not a documentary, but it wasn't not one either.

[74] The pastel color palette, the baggy t -shirts tucked into high -wasted jeans, the enormous cell phones, those are actually extremely true to American life.

[75] And real -life kids, just like the ones at Bayside High, listened to Top 40 Radio.

[76] Even if you didn't like what Top 40 radio was playing, you knew what Top 40 radio was playing because it was playing everywhere.

[77] Your friend's car, the mall, McDonald's.

[78] The early 90s is the last time in history.

[79] We were all watching and listening to the same things.

[80] If you're under 30 in 1991, you might not consider yourself a Paul Abdul fan, but you know the words to at least three of her songs, just through osmosis.

[81] You might not love Guns and Roses, but you can talk in detail about their video for November rain.

[82] Whether you sought out the information or not, you have been briefed on the particulars of the Humpty Dance.

[83] Even the alternative was the same small handful of bands, the replacements, the cure, Jane's addiction.

[84] You either embraced the mainstream or you went for the alternative.

[85] I did both.

[86] And in 1991, there's tension on the pop charts, a push and a pull.

[87] Wilson Phillips has had their first number one single, Hold On, and their second, Release Me. In May of that year, Kathy Dennis goes to number two with Touch Me, and the divinels go to number four with I Touch Myself.

[88] Rod Stewart gets a top five single, for God's sake.

[89] The music your local Top 40 radio station would play was all over the map.

[90] Teen pop into hair metal, into adult contemporary.

[91] Say what you will about Queens -Rike.

[92] and Amy Grant being right next to each other on the pop charts, but that is not sustainable.

[93] Things are formless and chaotic in the way they always are just before something big is about to happen.

[94] And it was reasonable to think that sudden impact could have been that next big thing.

[95] The alternative was about to become the mainstream.

[96] We'll get into that in a later episode.

[97] Now, today, someone can have 100 million followers on TikTok and a big influencer business, and I have never seen their face in my life.

[98] My nieces can be obsessed with a musician whose name I have never heard.

[99] But in 1991, if you were famous, you were famous.

[100] What was big was huge.

[101] The movies that summer were Terminator 2 and Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, blockbusters.

[102] 20 million people watched Roseanne every week.

[103] Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were the hot newlyweds in 1991.

[104] And Katie Holmes was 12.

[105] The mainstream was massive.

[106] Today we call it the monoculture, but back then it was just the culture.

[107] The same handful of artists and songs were blasted at you by Top 40 Radio, the same couple dozen stars on every magazine cover.

[108] And at the center of it all was MTV.

[109] You may know MTV Now as a network that plays skateboard wipeout videos and pitch perfect too, but in the 80s and 90s, it was a network that played music videos.

[110] all day long.

[111] That was it.

[112] And that was enough.

[113] MTV was what you turned on to see what was happening in the world.

[114] It was a clubhouse that you couldn't really get into, but you turned it on anyway just to feel like you were there.

[115] Fresh -faced young adults like Duff and Kevin Seale would be your tour guides.

[116] Bill Bellamy and John Sensio and I Dallas, VJs, icons, your friends who haven't met you yet.

[117] The people you wanted to be.

[118] I wanted to be.

[119] MTV was the one -stop shop for youth culture at a time when there was such a thing as youth culture.

[120] And it had cachet.

[121] When an artist got added to the rotation, that meant something.

[122] That was a seal of approval.

[123] It's onto these chaotic pop charts and onto this influential MTV playlist at the end of April 1991 that boys to men, and therefore sudden impact, arrive.

[124] And I'm ready.

[125] Here's a little background.

[126] on Boys to Men.

[127] They're a vocal quartet, kind of a 90s update of a doo -wob group.

[128] They all met at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts and started performing together as unique attraction.

[129] Until one night at a school event, they sang a song by Michael Biven's old group, a popular boy band New Edition, a song called Boys to Men, and they decided that was the right name.

[130] And on a Philadelphia tour stop for Bell Biv DeVoe, Michael Biven's new group, the guys of Boys to Men score one backstage pass.

[131] hand it back and forth, so all four of them can get back there.

[132] They find Bivens, and they sing him an a cappella version of new editions, Can You Stand the Rain?

[133] Michael Bivens gives them his number, and they call, and call and call, and call.

[134] They beg him to manage them.

[135] Michael Bivens has clout.

[136] He's had a lifetime in the music industry.

[137] He's been in two groups that went multi -platinum, and now he wants to move into the record mogul stage of his career, become a star maker, like Motown.

[138] Barry Gordy had been.

[139] Michael Bivens is 22 years old.

[140] Motown has given him a three -artist development deal.

[141] Boys to Men wear him down and become his first signing.

[142] And the lyrics of their debut single Motown, Philly, pretty much tell the story about how they made it big.

[143] Which is weird, because, again, it's their debut single.

[144] They haven't made it big yet.

[145] They're like, hello, let us introduce ourselves.

[146] We are Boys to Men, and we're very big stars.

[147] Boys to Men sing the names of the group's Bivens has seen.

[148] taken under his wing themselves, the second group Bivens signed another bad creation, those children I was telling you about, and the group whose success made it all possible, Bell Biv DeVoe.

[149] Michael Bivens is so confident his acts are going to succeed that he's basically taken the debut single from the group that would become his most successful by a mile and turned it into a promo for his own development deal.

[150] That is bold.

[151] The Motown -Filly video is eye -catching, and only partially because boys to men are in pastels.

[152] Pull it up, watch it now.

[153] I'll wait.

[154] It's good, right?

[155] As you saw, it's staged as a reunion for the East Coast family.

[156] And here again, it's strange that it's a reunion because we're meeting most of these people for the first time, but we didn't overthink it.

[157] A photographer takes pictures of the artists in the lyrics with one of those old -timey cameras where you have to put a cape over yourself and hold up a giant flashbulb, which feels very steampunk for 1991.

[158] But there's boys to men, there's ABC, there's BBD, and then, near the end, sudden impact, who are not mentioned in the lyrics and whose appearance is not explained in any way, it's just, hi, we're sudden impact, how are you?

[159] I mean, I sat up and took notice.

[160] Nobody else around me really did.

[161] And what didn't exist in 1991, what not even screech, not even the nerds could invent for you, was the internet.

[162] In my college at the time, If you wanted to use a computer, you went to the computer lab, where there were like eight of them.

[163] If you knew how, you could send short text messages to one of the other computers in that room, messages like, I'm three feet away from you, or why are we doing this?

[164] And even that didn't happen until 1993.

[165] There was nowhere to go if you had questions about sudden impact.

[166] Questions like, who's sudden impact, or is anyone else seeing this?

[167] If you were obsessed from the second you saw them, as I was, you did two things.

[168] One, you kept it to yourself, and two, you waited for Sudden Impact to show up on MTV.

[169] Sudden Impact never did show up on MTV.

[170] A few years later, though, I did.

[171] And like Sudden Impact, my debut was in a thing a lot of people saw, a thing that didn't go the way that I was planning.

[172] For those who don't know me or who had better things to do at that time in history, in 1998, MTV had an open call for VJs.

[173] that on -air master of ceremony's job, Duff and Kevin Seale had?

[174] The VJ position was my dream gig, a huge high -profile TV job.

[175] I hate that I'm saying this, but kind of a high -profile early version of an influencer.

[176] And in 1998, MTV just opened the application process up to the public.

[177] So if you didn't have experience or an agent or good common sense, you could just stand in line and take your swing.

[178] I stood in line and took my swing.

[179] and I made it to the top ten, and then the top five.

[180] Viewers got to vote on who they wanted to get the gig by telephone, because again, no real internet.

[181] The winner of the first ever MTV wanted the EJ contest is...

[182] And they voted, in droves, for...

[183] Jesse.

[184] Not me. Now, this is a moment that people remind me about a lot, like a lot, lot.

[185] Not every day, not anymore, but easily once a week, particularly if they're trying to insult me on Twitter and they don't have much of an imagination.

[186] And I have to be honest here, I don't love talking about it.

[187] Does anyone love talking about a time they lost in public?

[188] I mean, get this.

[189] I skipped a college friend's wedding to be there for the finals.

[190] And I remember the groom, wishing me luck and telling me they'd turn on the last few minutes in the bar of the wedding venue and watch.

[191] And I think they did.

[192] A whole bunch of my friends stood and watched me lose informal wear.

[193] Yikes.

[194] I've never talked about that with any of them, by the way.

[195] I kind of lost touch with most of them, so I wouldn't have to talk about that.

[196] But in that moment, I remember thinking two things.

[197] One, if I got this close, I needed to put my back into getting some kind of job at MTV.

[198] Otherwise, I would regret it for the rest of my life.

[199] And two, this moment is going to be the first line in my obituary.

[200] So I put my back into it.

[201] I stayed in touch with the people I met there.

[202] I set up some meetings and made some pitches and generally behaved like someone, much more confident than I am, and one thing led to another, and they finally gave me a job.

[203] And we're going to check in with Dave Holmes outside.

[204] What's going on, Dave?

[205] Hey, you doing there, ladies.

[206] Hello.

[207] Hope you're all nice and cozy in there.

[208] It's so hot out here.

[209] I can't even tell you.

[210] But we got a ton of adoring fans, one of whom is right here.

[211] Yes, that is Britney Spears.

[212] She was co -hosting TRL that day with Melissa Joan Hart.

[213] And if you have a podcast, you have to mention Britney Spears in it.

[214] That's a new law.

[215] Anyway, I did not get a job.

[216] I got the job.

[217] My dream life.

[218] A position at the epicenter of the pop culture universe.

[219] A golden ticket to the Wonka factory.

[220] I was there for four and a half years.

[221] It was everything I hoped it would be.

[222] Honestly, it was more.

[223] It's led me to where I am now.

[224] I still get to do what I love.

[225] And I truly believe that if I keep working hard, keep challenging myself, keep hustling, someday that want to be a VJ moment will be the second life.

[226] in my obituary.

[227] I worked in TV for a few more years, and then I started writing more, and eventually that became my focus.

[228] And now I'm an editor at large for Esquire, the magazine I grew up reading.

[229] I love my life.

[230] I'm not rich.

[231] I'm not famous, but I've gotten what I wanted.

[232] And then I wake up, and I turn on the television, and there's my old colleague, Carson Daly, hosting one of his two big network TV shows.

[233] Ryan Sechrest has two speeds.

[234] He's either on live television, or he's asleep.

[235] And if by the time this show drops, he's sold his Apple Watch sleep tracker data to Netflix as a competition reality show, none of us will be surprised.

[236] I'm doing what I love.

[237] The 1991 version of me would lose his mind if he saw how I got to spend my days.

[238] That big swing that I took back then, showing up and standing in line to audition at MTV, bought me a career I'm proud of.

[239] But in terms of money or fame, I'm definitely the sudden impact in someone else's story.

[240] I don't love talking about losing on national television, but it did lead to something good.

[241] And I've always wondered whether the same is true for Sudden Impact.

[242] I don't know whether they want to talk about, getting a huge boost at the beginning of their career and then vanishing.

[243] They didn't become stars.

[244] They didn't even release a single as far as I know, but does that mean they didn't make it?

[245] Sudden impact never happened.

[246] But something did.

[247] And just because we don't know what it is, just because it didn't unfold in a way that we could see, doesn't mean it wasn't good.

[248] Maybe it was actually better.

[249] However you get it, and at whatever level you get it, fame does a weird thing to you.

[250] I eventually got that MTV job in 1998, right when it really solidified its place as the epicenter of the monoculture, for maybe the last time.

[251] In 1998, MTV had that huge studio overlooking Times Square with those massive floor -to -ceiling windows.

[252] We called it the fishbowl.

[253] Kids would stand in the middle of Broadway and just scream up at those windows.

[254] It didn't matter who was there, whether it was Backstreet Boys or the Q -card guy.

[255] If you were there, you were somewhere exciting, and the kids had no choice but to scream at you.

[256] I used to love going up to that window and waving and hearing the screams.

[257] I knew those screams were not for me, not really, but it was a nice reminder that I used to be out there and now I'm up here.

[258] It was a moment to be grateful.

[259] The day MTV called me up and gave me a job might have been the happiest day of my life up until that point.

[260] Who am I kidding?

[261] It was, by far.

[262] I remember telling my parents this, in these words.

[263] I don't care about getting rich.

[264] I don't care how famous this job makes me. All I know is now I'll get to talk about the things I'm obsessed with and make things I know how to make.

[265] And I want this job to allow me to keep doing that for the rest of my life.

[266] I want this to be the start of a career I'm in love with.

[267] I thought about the future.

[268] I thought about the fact that once it was all over, maybe I'd have a high enough profile to write a book or two.

[269] I thought I might transition into production and express myself that way.

[270] I thought about the new ways I would get to use my talents, now that I was in a place where remembering things like Sudden Impact was considered a talent.

[271] I thought about all the new stuff I'd get to learn how to do.

[272] And I did.

[273] And I loved it there.

[274] And loving it was enough.

[275] at first.

[276] But something happens when you're in the epicenter of the monoculture at a very hot time.

[277] When you're surrounded by the rich and the famous, whether you notice it or not, you start wanting to be rich and famous.

[278] You don't even notice it.

[279] It's not a decision.

[280] It's not a switch that you flip.

[281] You just see how some people are living, and you think, sure, I'm happy, but that's success.

[282] You see your peers in magazines and on talk shows, and you start wanting to get in magazines and on talk shows.

[283] You start to think, if people can't see me all over the place, am I really successful?

[284] When you get what you want, you just start wanting more.

[285] You go up to that window over Broadway, and you wave at the kids standing out there, and they scream at you because you're inside, and your first thought isn't how lucky you are to be up there.

[286] Your first thought is, did they scream louder yesterday?

[287] You forget that all you wanted in the beginning was just to be a part of it.

[288] You forget that it all started because you were a fan.

[289] Being a fan can be an isolating experience, especially before there's an internet where you can find other fans.

[290] I was in college in 1991, at a place where very practical people were learning very practical things that would make them very effective in their very practical careers.

[291] I was obsessing over things like sudden impact and feeling like a real weirdo about it.

[292] What's great about making a life out of your obsessions is that eventually you meet other weirdos.

[293] What percentage of the population do you think consists of people like us?

[294] Very, very, very few.

[295] And if it wasn't for the internet, it would seem like nobody.

[296] And I do worry that we're a dying breed.

[297] It feels like a very generation X thing.

[298] This is my friend Scott Gimple.

[299] Scott and I met just after I moved to L .A. We were doing shows at an improv comedy theater that, like a lot of improv comedy theaters, doesn't exist anymore.

[300] Scott is one of the funniest people I know, which is very strange because he's also the chief content officer for the Walking Dead universe of TV shows and movies and video games.

[301] He's a big deal.

[302] He's also the only other person I know who paid attention to the sudden impact moment.

[303] That's the other thing that got me is Michael Bivens is saying, here it is.

[304] You're going to love this.

[305] This is my universe.

[306] This is my record label.

[307] Enjoy.

[308] Thank you.

[309] Or pardon me, you're welcome.

[310] I'm not only giving you the story of boys to men in a video.

[311] I am actually telling it to you in the middle of a song that's going to get played on the radio for decades to come.

[312] Yeah, which, again, his storytelling is a narration.

[313] You know, he talks about how he met them.

[314] The song itself is like they're going back to their schools, saying how they were dreaming of it.

[315] It's join us in our success.

[316] Yeah.

[317] And I believe both of us said yes.

[318] I don't know.

[319] I mean, why did I never stop thinking about it?

[320] Scott and I bonded over a few things when we first met, a shared love of those digital trivia games who used to be able to play in bars, the movies of Witt Stillman, you don't know Jack, and somehow, sudden impact.

[321] Scott's passion is storytelling, so it makes sense that he would connect to a moment like this.

[322] To a storyteller, like him, the sudden impact moment feels like a cliffhound.

[323] To a pop culture nerd like me, it's a detail to obsess over.

[324] But the point is, we both remember the point.

[325] I seem to remember in the early days of our friendship, the iconic sudden impact point being a greeting.

[326] Yeah.

[327] I think we held on to that for a little while.

[328] Yeah.

[329] Which I will say, in revisiting it, we put a bit more flourish than they did.

[330] I mean, he's not wrong.

[331] guys do look a little nervous.

[332] And who could blame them?

[333] It's a big moment.

[334] It's a moment freighted with promise.

[335] Plus, they're dressy, like they're on their way to church.

[336] Some people can't relax in a tie.

[337] Anyway, Scott and I are friends now, but we were on very different tracks back in 1991.

[338] I was studying self -loathing in college, which we will address at some point.

[339] Scott was studying film at USC.

[340] We both had huge dreams, but unlike me, Scott had a plan.

[341] At 11 years old, I said, okay, this is what I'm going to do.

[342] I am going to work to become an intern at DC Comics.

[343] Then I'll become an assistant editor.

[344] It's incredibly pragmatic.

[345] Then hopefully I'll become an editor.

[346] And then after that, hopefully I will be writing a couple of comics.

[347] Then, because I'm at home as a freelancer writing comics, maybe I can start working towards TV and film.

[348] And that was my plan from 11.

[349] years old.

[350] Things didn't work out that way.

[351] By the time Scott was out of college, the comics industry was actually briefly in decline.

[352] So he started working in TV, first as a production assistant, then as a writer, then as the person in charge of the biggest show in the world.

[353] Scott's one of my closest friends, but sometimes even with good friends, there are things you don't know, areas you don't address, until you're recording a podcast about sudden impact.

[354] Like the fact that for all he's accomplished, he's still not giving up on that 11 -year -old.

[355] I still aspire to have a monthly comic.

[356] And I don't, it's still something I'm aspiring, working towards, and it's cool to have that goal.

[357] Yeah.

[358] And there's a comic that I have that I co -created with Robert Kirkman that we do, but you know, Robert's the anchor man on that.

[359] Yeah.

[360] And I've done some comics along the way, but yeah, I still have a goal in that area.

[361] I still owe that 11 -year -old some achievement.

[362] So you're determined to come full circle to the original dream.

[363] Yeah.

[364] Yeah.

[365] I mean, literally, I might be 70.

[366] I might be 80.

[367] But I'm, yeah, absolutely.

[368] And maybe I also feel, and I'm not trying hard to bring it full circle here, I swear to God I'm not.

[369] But I don't like the idea of endings.

[370] I don't like the idea that there are endings.

[371] And yes, do I hope that a sudden impact album comes out?

[372] Yes, and do I, am I still holding on to that hope, which is akin to the hope that I had back in 91?

[373] Like, oh, I can't wait to see this.

[374] I still have that because I don't like thinking that it's over for anybody.

[375] I don't like the idea of whatever happened to.

[376] I don't know if that's like a cock -eyed optimism or something, but I know with myself, it takes me a while to get to certain things, but I do get to them.

[377] Right.

[378] And I guess I put that on other people, too.

[379] I have no idea why I never stopped thinking about sudden impact.

[380] But Scott has a theory about why it's still on his mind.

[381] In retrospect, I realized that it hit me in the sweet spot of my pop culture loves being someone who, you know, loved comics, loves comics, and, you know, this was before Marvel was making movies and stuff and shared universes were basically in comic books.

[382] But this is a shared universe.

[383] This is ABC.

[384] This is Boys Demand.

[385] This is BPD.

[386] This is sudden impact.

[387] And there's something to that.

[388] That was that these, there's a connection to Marvel in D .C. of these, these, these great, groups of heroes.

[389] And Michael Bivens is sort of laying down that there is a narrative here.

[390] They're there to succeed.

[391] You know, they aren't like, hey, we want to...

[392] I mean, I will say, boys to men, it's like, hey, we're doing it just for you.

[393] We were dreaming about this.

[394] But there's an aspect to shared universes that I think also just hit me, right?

[395] Where, you know, my heart pumps.

[396] Now, if that sudden impact moment had happened in 2021, there would be 5 ,000 memes immediately.

[397] Someone would replace all their faces with the real housewives of New York or something.

[398] There would be online quizzes.

[399] Which Sudden Impact are you?

[400] BuzzFeed would run a story like the Internet just noticed that the second Sudden Impact guy from the left is not looking at the camera and we are literally shook.

[401] In 2021, you can't disappear.

[402] Sudden Impact doesn't bring up much on Google.

[403] There's a Canadian thrash band by that name.

[404] probably not the same guys.

[405] There's a 1983 Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry movie called Sudden Impact.

[406] That's the one that gave us go -ahead make my day.

[407] But the group from the Motown -Filly video is nowhere to be found.

[408] Not even a GeoCity's fan site.

[409] Nothing.

[410] In fact, it is the nothing that makes me want to find them that much more.

[411] Information about Sudden Impact is the last hard -to -find thing in a world where there is no longer any such thing as scarcity.

[412] I can't have it, so I must have it.

[413] It's Scott who sends me a second video from Michael Biven's East Coast family.

[414] This one is from 1992.

[415] It's called One For All For One, and it's got boys to men, another bad creation, and a whole slew of new faces, including five white guys called White Guys, W -H -Y -T -G -I -Z -E.

[416] Now, these guys look a little like sudden impact, which I feel like might be a clue of some kind.

[417] But then I go on the internet and I search for information on white guys and there's not a whole lot of that either.

[418] But it's not until the second or third time through the one for all for one video for both of us separately, that we realize something.

[419] We recognize someone.

[420] A young singer in a vest and a tie in a warm smile.

[421] She goes by the single name, Yvette.

[422] Wait a minute, is that?

[423] Go and look for yourself.

[424] It's Yvette Nicole Brown.

[425] 2021 Emmy nominee Yvette Nicole Brown.

[426] Now, Yvette is a Walking Dead super fan.

[427] She hosted the Talking Dead for a little while.

[428] She and Scott are friends.

[429] People.

[430] We know somebody in the East Coast family.

[431] We have an inn.

[432] Scott, it's not only a Yvette Nicole Brown, but she sounds great.

[433] Sounds great, has that smile, does the, not only her primary vocal, but some backing vocals with some flourish.

[434] And it just blows my mind.

[435] She was there.

[436] And I know she's at this point, like, just out of Cleveland.

[437] So I even want to know, like, how does that happen?

[438] Because they're Philadelphia -based, she must still have been living in Cleveland.

[439] I mean, I guess parts of it.

[440] of Ohio are Eastern Time Zone, so I mean, I guess in that way she could be part of the East Coast family.

[441] Oh my God, she knows some of the answers.

[442] She has some of the stories, and she's someone I literally can call whenever.

[443] Yeah.

[444] So, Scott, I have to ask, would you?

[445] Oh, yeah.

[446] Great.

[447] If anybody in our orbit has a connection to sudden impact, it's Yvette.

[448] And if she does, We can track them down one by one.

[449] We can get closure on this thing.

[450] We can find out what happened.

[451] We can maybe even get them back together.

[452] But this is not just about sudden impact.

[453] It's about why I can't stop thinking about sudden impact.

[454] It's about why their story arc is a thing that I am still curious about.

[455] So while I'm looking for them and looking back at this moment in pop culture history, I'm going to track down some other fascinating faces and names of the early 90s, people I know personally and people I watched, people who made an impact and then changed direction, people who thought their lives were going way one way and ended up going way another, and maybe that was way better.

[456] This is a podcast about the 90s and about what we left there.

[457] It's about big swings that didn't pan out and unexpected good things that did.

[458] This is waiting for impact, a Dave Holmes passion project.

[459] This has been an exactly right production, written by me, Dave Holmes, produced by Hannah Kyle Crichton, recorded, mixed, and sound designed by Andrew Eepin, additional engineering and assembly by Annalise Nelson, music by Ben Wise, artwork by Garrett Ross, executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hard Start and Danielle Kramer.

[460] Follow the show on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, at Exactly Right.

[461] And follow me at Dave Holmes.

[462] For more information, go to exactly rightmedia .com.

[463] Binge the show, add free on Stitcher Premium.

[464] For a free month, head to StitcherPremium .com slash impact and enter promo code Impact when you select a monthly plan.

[465] Listen, subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.