Magic Moments Monday!! Its Huey Lewis & the News!!
Well its Magic Moments Monday once again and I wanted to feature another artist of my past that I loved listening too and brings back alot of memories. I remember listening to them all through my Boy Scout years (ages 11-18) A great band and great sound and they just scream 1980's. My song that is a odd one and not a popular one by far but on his Fore album that takes me back to that time is called "Forest for the Trees" Listen to that one for me and and you will have a piece of me that your connecting with!! so give them a listen if you don't know them, I bet you will love them once you heard thier music!!
Huey Lewis & The News is a Grammy winning and Academy Award nominated US rock band based in San Francisco, California. Their greatest success was in the 1980s, when they were one of the most popular music acts of the decade. The band is known for writing simple, light-hearted songs from a working class perspective and typically appealed to yuppies and baby boomers. Combining a rock (and sometimes, a "blues rock") backing with soul and doowop-influenced harmony vocals and Lewis's voice, they reached enormous success and had numerous hit songs during the 1980s and early 1990s.
In 1972, singer/harmonica player Huey Lewis and keyboardist Sean Hopper joined the Bay Area jazz-funk band Clover.. Clover would record several albums in the 1970s, and in the middle of the decade transplanted themselves to England to become part of the UK pub rock scene for a time. Without Lewis (but with Hopper), they eventually became the original backing band for Elvis Costello's first album My Aim is True. The band returned to the Bay Area by the end of the 1970s.
Clover's main competition in the Bay Area jazz-funk scene was a band called Soundhole, whose members included drummer, Bill Gibson,saxophonist/guitarist, Jonny Colla, and bassist Mario Cipollina (younger brother of John Cipollina. Like Clover, Soundhole had spent time backing a famous singer, Van Morrison. After getting a singles contract from Phonogram Records in 1978, Huey Lewis united his former bandmate and three of his former rivals to form a new group, Huey Lewis & The American Express. In 1979 they recorded, and released a single "Exo-Disco" (a disco version of the theme from the film Exodus) that was largely ignored. In 1979, the band would woo guitarist Chris Hayes and move to Chrysalis Records. After the credit card organization American Express complained, in January 1980 they changed their name to Huey Lewis & the News.
Later in 1980, the band issued their first album, a self-titled LP Huey Lewis & the News. It went largely unnoticed. However, in 1982, the band released their second album, the self-produced Picture This. Shortly thereafter the album turned gold, fuelled by the breakout success of hit single "Do You Believe in Love", written by former Clover producer Mutt Lange. Largely because of the single, the album remained on the Billboard charts for 35 weeks and peaked at #13. Several other singles from Picture This followed with only limited success, though the video "Workin' For a Livin'" received considerable airplay on MTV and HBO's Video Jukebox.
Due to record label delays on the release of their third album Sports, Huey Lewis & the News was back to square one in late 1983, touring small clubs in a bus to promote the record. It initially hit #6 in the U.S. when first released. However, the album slowly became a number-one hit in 1984 and multi-platinum success in 1985, thanks to the band's frequent touring and a series of clever, funny videos that received heavy MTV airplay. Four singles from the album would reach the Billboard Top Ten: "Heart and Soul", "I Want a New Drug", "The Heart of Rock & Roll", and "If This is It".
Their song "The Power of Love" was a number-one U.S. hit and featured in the 1985 film Back to the Future, with which they also recorded the theme song "Back In Time". Huey Lewis has a cameo appearance in the film as a faculty member who rejects Marty McFly's band's audition for the school's "Battle of the Bands" contest; ironically, the piece the band plays is an instrumental version of "The Power of Love" (Lewis's response: "Sorry, guys... you're just too darn loud"). "The Power of Love" was also nominated for an Academy Award.
Following the success of "The Power of Love" and Back to the Future, Huey Lewis and The News released Fore! in 1986. Fore! was the band's second number-one album on the Bilboard 200. The album had widespread success, spawning two number-one singles, namely "Jacob's Ladder" and "Stuck With You". Fore! is also known for the Mainstream Rock number-one hit "Hip To Be Square". All told, the album had five top-ten singles and was certified triple platinum.
The band continued to tour throughout 1987, and released Small World in 1988. After two mega hit, multi-platinum albums, Small World was a commercial disappointment, stalling at number eleven and only going platinum. The album, which was more jazz and less rock than their previous albums, had one hit single, "Perfect World", which reached #3 on the pop charts.
By the end of the 1980s it was clear that Huey Lewis and The News were no longer going to have the mainstream success that they enjoyed in the mid-1980s, and in 1991 they released Hard at Play on their new label EMI. The album went back to the rock sound that listeners expected of them, and the band was able to crank out four singles, two of which had decent success ("Couple Days Off", "It Hit Me Like A Hammer"), but the album only went gold.
The band, realizing that their chart-topping days were over, released a covers album in 1994 called Four Chords and Seven Years Ago featuring doo-wop and rock songs from the 1950s and '60s. This was the last album released with bassist Mario Cipollina, who left the band after the Four Chords and Several Years Ago tour ended. The album charted on the Billboard 200 and had a couple of adult contemporary hits.
The band's next album with all new material didn't come until 2001, with Plan B, which was the last album with lead guitarist Chris Hayes on it. The album was a collection of songs which the band enjoyed playing and didn't focus on trying to hit the charts, however a single from the album was able to make the Adult Contemporary charts. Since 2001 no new-material albums have been released, and the band continues to tour. In 2007, Huey Lewis released a duet with Garth Brooks, reproducing a past hit "Working For a Living" that was released on Brooks' Ultimate Hits set. The single charted in the top 50 country songs.
Thier website you can check them out on is:
http://www.hueylewis.com/