Hipsway - The Honeythief

Ah, the one hit wonder - such an interesting phenomena.  The category is comprised of major bands where only one single hit the Top 40 (such as Roxy Music), talented underappreciated artists who never quite caught on (Marshall Crenshaw), and acts who just caught lightning in a bottle (T'Pau).

Hipsway is mostly the latter, but there was definitely talent in the band, as well.  The group formed in Glasgow, Scotland in 1984 and was led by Johnny McElhone (fomerly of Altered Images) on bass. Singer Grahame Skinner, guitarist Pim Jones, and drummer Harry Travers rounded out the lineup.

The group's self-titled debut album came out in 1986, and had a seriously catchy song on it, "The Honeythief," which became a hit.  Interestingly, "The Honeythief" was the third single released from the LP, which is kind of hard to understand.  At any rate, the song reached #19 in the U.S. and #17 in the UK, and helped the album to chart, too (#55 U.S., #42 UK).

Unfortunately, follow up success was elusive, thought Hipsway did have a few charting songs in the UK.  However, after the poor performance of their second LP (1989's Scratch the Surface), they broke up.  Noteably, Johnny McElhone would go on to have continued success in the UK with his next band, Texas (a definite candidate to show up on this blog down the line).

Hipswap did re-form in 2016, and even released a new album in 2018.

Kix - Cold Blood

Although they were lumped in with the hair metal scene, Kix were actually more of a bluesy hard rock band, along the lines of AC/DC or Cinderella.  Additionally, they were an East Coast act, cutting their teeth primarily in the northeast until their all-too-brief period of success.

The band formed in Maryland in 1977 and were initially called Shooze.  They then changed their name to The Generators before finally settling on Kix.  Led by frontman Steve Whiteman, and with bassist Donnie Purnell as the primary songwriter, the group seemed to have all of the ingredients for major success.  However, in spite of strong material their first three albums barely dented the charts.

This all changed with 1988's Blow My Fuse.  The LP went platinum and reached #46 on the charts, led by the power ballad "Don't Close Your Eyes" (which reached #11 on the singles charts).  However, in classic ERV style, we're opting for "Cold Blood" instead - a straight up banger that is more representative of Kix' style.

Unfortunately, the band was unable to maintain its momentum; the 3 year delay between Blow My Fuse and Hot Wire probably didn't help matters.  With the emergence of grunge, their fate was sealed, and the band broke up in 1995.  However, they subsequently re-formed in 2003 (without Donnie Purnell) and have been performing since, albeit with some personnel changes.

Cool trivia fact: the actress in the video is Helene Clarkson.