Everybody Have Fun Tonight

Intro/Outro (00:04):

It takes a bit of a blend of art and science to get baking just right and having extra eyes, ears, and hands can make a big difference along the way. That’s where Ab Maori, north America comes into play. We are the team behind industrial and artisan bakers that help optimize success. We’ll discuss more on this episode of The Oven Light. So let’s get going. Flip the switch. Welcome back everybody to the Oven Light. Hey, the switch is on. Let’s go.

Rick (00:37):

I’m your host, Rick Sach. Welcome back. I tell you what, we’ve got an incredible show today. I’m really honored to have both these guests here with us. You may not know them personally, but you’ve heard their voices for years. Let’s welcome the lead musicians from eighties band, pop, rock, whatever you want to call it. Wang Chung. We’ve got Jack Hughes, that captivating voice, and we also have Nick Feldman, you know, the longtime guitarist. Hey, Jack. Nick. Good to see you guys. Glad you’re here.

Jack (01:07):

I you, Greg. Thanks having us all. Good to see you too. Yeah, it’s great to be here.

Rick (01:10):

This is really an honor to be here with you. We’re an Indianapolis and we’re taping this episode of The Oven Light. Hey, let’s jump into it really quickly. We’re just going to kind of lighten the mood a little bit, and on the podcast we have something called the Hot Pan, and we’re a baking ingredients company, part of Associated British Foods, a company called AB Maori. But we give you some kind of quick little questions just to kind of relax things. You both have seen the world a little bit, so maybe you have a favorite breakfast item or a baked good, something kind of feeds into our world. Do you have a story or anything you want to share?

Nick (01:41):

Well, my, my oldest son, Harry, is a restaurateur, I suppose you would call him. He has his own restaurant in Margate in the uk, which is about 70 miles southeast of London. He’s married to an Italian girl called Simona. So it’s an Italian restaurant that specializes in Southern Italian cooking. So it ain’t like lasagna and all. Well, they do do lasagna actually, but that sounds good. And garlic bread. So that’s not just because paternal involved, but that’s one of my favorite restaurants for sure. But you were talking about bakeries.

Rick (02:15):

Yeah,

Nick (02:15):

And Margate is a really tiny little place called Westgate on Sea, and there’s a bakery there that invented this thing called the Cruin, and the Cruin is a cross between a croson and a muffin, and they’re a addictively. Delicious.

Rick (02:30):

Your pronunciation Jack is better than I could give you, but we talked a little bit about the Cronut and how that caused a scene, but the Cren sounds really captivating.

Nick (02:40):

It is, yeah. Hugely calorific.

Rick (02:44):

Hey, sometimes you need that to get the day going,

Nick (02:46):

Right? Sure, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I love over here in the states that eating a donut is considered to be Well, yeah, why not? Whereas in the UK it’s very frowned upon.

Rick (02:54):

Yeah. How about you, Nick? You got anything from your travels?

Jack (02:59):

Well, actually near my house is my wife’s Brazilian, and so she’s obviously opened up various Brazilian type cuisines to me, which is lovely. But there’s a, well, actually it’s just shut now, which is really disappointing. There’s a place called Little Brazil, which is just around the corner from where we live that we have used in the past to get birthday cakes for big occasions like that. And they just make amazing stuff. I mean, just walking to that place.

Rick (03:29):

Well, how about with your wife’s rack around Brazil? Are there special baked goods that maybe you have a certain times of year or for holidays that she creates or maybe

Jack (03:39):

Finds a way? Well, there’s this friend of hers that delivers, she cooks bakes stuff and cooks stuff and brings it over. You sort of ring her up and go, we need some of this or some of that. So then she’ll just turn up in the middle evening with all this wonderful stuff. So yeah,

Rick (03:56):

Those are good friends to have.

Jack (03:57):

Oh, she’s totally in touch with the whole resilient network in London. That’s awesome.

Rick (04:03):

That’s awesome. Alright, let’s talk since we talk travels, Jack, is there a place when you see a tour stop, you see the schedule of where you’re going, or maybe there’s a happy place that’s a holiday vacation spot for you? What is that location? Is there one in the world? You’re like, wow, I can’t wait to get back there?

Nick (04:20):

Well, I guess during the last 10 years I spent quite a lot of time traveling in Italy, and so all things Italian really appeal to me and certain cities. I know it’s a tourist cliche, but Venice is my favorite place on earth really. But places like Florence and Sienna and the smaller towns as well, like south of Naples are fabulous. Simona comes from a little village just outside of Naples and some of the food there is just stunning and let alone the scenery.

Rick (04:47):

So you’re a wine guy, Jack, is what I

Nick (04:49):

Hear. A wine guy, red or

Rick (04:50):

White?

Nick (04:51):

Red, I guess. Yeah. Although some whites are obviously beautiful.

Rick (04:54):

Absolutely. Absolutely. Alright, Nick, we’re going to talk music with you. So we’re going to kind of dial back the time capsule a little bit. What was your first album? Do you remember your first album or maybe a record back then?

Jack (05:06):

That I bought?

Rick (05:07):

Yeah. Yeah. And how old were you? What’s the setting?

Jack (05:10):

I think it was the Dave Clark five Glad All Over.

Rick (05:14):

That’s a

Jack (05:14):

Great song. I persuaded my dad to, actually, I didn’t pay for it because I was so young, I didn’t have any money. So yeah, Dave Clark, five Glad All Over. Then the first album I got was Hair, the Other Soundtrack to Hair.

Rick (05:26):

Very interesting.

Jack (05:27):

Yeah.

Rick (05:28):

But you have good hair though, by the way, Nick. You do have good hair, so it’s kind of fitting. I was influenced by the album. Yeah. How about you, Jackie? You have one of those memories?

Nick (05:36):

Yeah, I mean like Nick, I had no money, so I relied on my parents buying me things, but they bought me Please, please Me, the first Beatles album, which I listened to obsessively I missed out on with The Beatles. I think that came out fairly soon afterwards and couldn’t afford that. But then I think I bought all the, well, got my parents to buy me all the Beatles albums as they came out. Wow. So yeah, it was a Beatle journey for me very much.

Rick (06:01):

Well, I remember my dad had the Beatles red album growing up, and I was a young kid. I was probably nine years old, so this is late seventies, and I won a contest, I think through the Orlando Sentinel Group in Florida, and I won the Beatles Blue album. So that was kind of exciting. All right. This is way before cassettes and our digital stuff today, but still great music. Well vinyl’s come right back. It

Nick (06:23):

Certainly has as we are celebrating with our own release.

Rick (06:26):

I know. So you want to talk about that real quick? Give it a little plug.

Nick (06:30):

I thought we’d segue into that. Yeah,

Nick (06:33):

He’s a pro career retrospective, career retrospective called Clear Light Dark Matter. It’s released as two vinyl albums or two CDs and Album one is the hits from Don’t Let Go Through Two Space Junk, which is a track we did in the nineties, but that became a big success through its use on a show called The Walking Dead. And then album two is rarities outtakes, some demos. And that takes you from, isn’t it about time? We were on tv, which is the first single that we released in the uk, a little independent thing, a very kind of post, well actually not post it was punk. And that takes you right up to a new remix of Everybody Have Fun Tonight by Eric Cuppa.

Jack (07:16):

Wow, that’s fantastic. And there’s also a live version of The Fire and the Twilight

Nick (07:20):

Breakfast

Jack (07:21):

Club we did for Breakfast Club. So we also recorded a live album last year in at the Elma Cumbo in Toronto, which is going to be coming out soon, which we are really pleased

Rick (07:32):

With. And you get that digitally too.

Jack (07:33):

So we thought we’d put Fire in the Twilight, the live version instead of the original, if you know what I mean. So it’s a kind of bit of extra texture.

Rick (07:42):

Well, I’ll tell you, I grew up in that era, a breakfast club. I was probably sophomore in high school, and now I’ve got a son who’s now going into his junior year, and we just watched a breakfast club a couple of weeks ago. We talked about that song and talked about that scene. I think they’re dancing the library,

Nick (07:58):

Running through the

Rick (07:58):

Causing a ruckus as they said.

Nick (08:00):

Exactly.

Rick (08:02):

Alright, so let’s go to the big question. People always want to ask you about the name Wang Chung and how it came about. I did some research on it. It was spelled differently. It actually means Yellow Bell, but what was the inspiration of how you got to the name right? That’s always the biggest curiosity with bands and how they’ve kind of become who they are. It was your fault, wasn’t

Nick (08:22):

It? Yeah, yeah. I mean, choosing a band name is, maybe it’s choosing a restaurant name or inventing the CR in or whatever. But yeah, so you go through all sorts of ridiculous things and eventually you get to something that becomes a sort of placeholder. And I think Wang Chung was that. I found it in a book I was reading at the time, and Nick was kind of like, yeah, okay, that sounds good. I guess Susie and the Banshees had this slightly oriental thing going on. There was a bank called Japan at the time. All sorts of bands were going slightly Oriental. So we took it a bit further. And I think at the time we didn’t really attribute much significance to the name. And obviously when we got to everybody Whang Chung tonight, any pretense of Chinese philosophy was out the window. Really?

Rick (09:06):

That would’ve been hard to say with the intellectuals, right?

Nick (09:10):

Wang

Rick (09:10):

Chung. It just,

Jack (09:11):

Yeah,

Nick (09:11):

It’s all part of that.

Jack (09:12):

It had a sort of quirkiness left field kind of what a ridiculous idea sort of element to it. Absolutely. Which kind of appealed to me anyway. And I’m sure to Jack

Rick (09:24):

Very

Jack (09:24):

Much so.

Rick (09:25):

I mentioned the intellectuals, you also were the 57 men. Is it weird going through those changes and kind of segueing into, if you look at the Tree of Wang Chung, right, if it’s a tree in the branches and it goes off to the Human League and bow. Wow. Wow. And you’d mentioned Adam Ant the Heaven 17. I mean, isn’t it wild? The family tree for Wang Chung is pretty robust. Yeah,

Nick (09:48):

The connectivity is interesting. Yeah, I think in those days in London there was a kind of scene, if you like, not that the bands were in any way hanging out together particularly, but there was a circuit of pubs and clubs that you played. And so when Nick and I first got together, I effectively joined his band, the Intellectuals, and we did a bunch of demos and then did some gigs during that time. You’re hoping you’re going to get spotted and signed, but didn’t work out that time. 57 Men was a different approach with getting Glen Gregory to sing rather Than Us. That didn’t work out either. Then we sort of slimmed it right down to a three piece. It seemed viable. Wang Chung. And then we did get signed. Well, we sort of got a little record deal to begin with. Isn’t it about time we were on tv? Was that, but from that we progressed to the big time.

Rick (10:38):

Well, Nick was there a moment as the band started to grow and rise and you gain that kind of popularity, whether it’s an MTV play or a certain location where you had a concert where you guys looked at each other and were like, boy, we made it. This is pretty cool.

Jack (10:54):

Yeah, I mean, I think we’d spent quite a few years knocking on the door and not quite getting through it. And it got to the point, where’d caught a record deal with Arista Records. We’d made our first Huang Chung album,

Rick (11:10):

Which we, but it was spelled differently too, by the

Jack (11:11):

Way, right? Yeah. H-Q-A-N-G. That was the original spin, which no one could pronounce, which is why we changed it. So we were proud of the record, but it just didn’t quite connect enough to, I mean, the record company expected big hits and all that

Rick (11:27):

Pressure,

Jack (11:28):

Pressure. I think we both felt that our time was running out a bit, that the record company was going to maybe drop us. And it was around that time that two things happened. One, Jack wrote Dance all days. And the other thing was that I met what was to be our future manager, who I thought, who was not really in the business, but I thought had something about him. So we got him on board.

Rick (11:53):

People are important, aren’t they?

Jack (11:54):

Yeah. And they’re very important. He really energized the whole thing. So that helped us to sort of, well get out of the Arista deal, get signed to Geffen Records in America, thanks to David Massey, the manager.

Rick (12:08):

Fantastic by the way, dance all days. We can’t sleep on that. What a great song. Fabulous song. Thank you. And it carries on and carries on today.

Nick (12:15):

Yeah, it does.

Jack (12:15):

Really does.

Rick (12:16):

Did you ever imagine, here we are, you’re on an eighties tour right now. Jack and Nick are here from Wang Chung, and they’re on tour with Ritz Springfield, Paul Young, you’ve got John Cafferty and the other John. You’ve got John. Wait, right. So you’ve got quite a collaboration here of eighties acts. Did you imagine 40 years ago that all of a sudden here you are and the tunes are just as well received or even more so?

Jack (12:40):

No,

Nick (12:41):

Absolutely. You don’t. Absolutely not. No way. But it’s pretty cool what you do imagine back then because you are in the thick of it all and it’s quite pressured, I guess you just see the end coming all the time. Do you know what I mean? So you’re sort of fighting against that in a sense, just keeping afloat. So you don’t really think about posterity and stuff?

Jack (13:00):

No, I just think we just wanted to be successful, communicate with as many people as we could, and hopefully keep making records and choice, just have

Nick (13:10):

The experiences, I think. And we were very fortunate to have some great experiences in the studio with producers like Chris Hughes and Ross Cullum and Peter Wolf, and then working with William Freakin the director, which was an incredible experience.

Rick (13:24):

So I was thinking about it, and I don’t want to date all of us, but as a 55-year-old guy, we are in a certain age bucket now. So here I am in high school, I hadn’t been to many concerts, and now I go to probably 10 to 12 a year if probably our team here, Tricia and Connor are saying a lot more. But I go to a lot more concerts nowadays than I did when I was in high school. But my first big concert, and you guys are going to remember this was grad night, 1987, Orlando, Florida. So I graduated from high school and they bust all the high school kids from all across the state to Disney. And we had the run of the whole park for the night. But you had great musicians and guess who was there? And if I remember right, I think Bobby Brown was there, orange Juice Jones, glass Tiger, who had a big moment in Wang Chung. I mean, it’s kind of ironic. That was my first big concert. And that was you guys.

Jack (14:15):

That was incredibly surreal experience for us. I mean, because we played not only we played Disneyland and Disney World.

Rick (14:23):

Oh, you did both.

Jack (14:24):

We had to

Rick (14:24):

Orlando and

Jack (14:25):

Had three sets a night starting after the basic close and all the students turned up. So the

Nick (14:31):

Sets were sort of like 11 at night, three in the morning, and

Rick (14:35):

These are in the morning,

Nick (14:36):

Four in the morning,

Rick (14:36):

Raving 17, 18-year-old kids. This was your scene.

Jack (14:41):

You literally get a bit bonkers. But then we were playing in front of the Magic Castle, so our dressing room was in the cars.

Rick (14:51):

Was it really

Nick (14:53):

Disney’s office?

Jack (14:54):

Yeah.

Rick (14:55):

Really? Wow. I mean, these are stories you don’t get told, but I think that’s pretty awesome.

Nick (15:01):

And you’d had the whole experience of being in the underground bit of the

Rick (15:05):

Park. We hear about it, but I’ve never been in, so you guys saw and

Nick (15:07):

The guy with a Mickey Mouse costume on with his head under his arm and people looking despondent in the canteen and stuff.

Rick (15:12):

You can’t have two Mickey Mouses on the same. There’s no two Jack Hughes or Nick. Well, that’s very true. Nick run around

Jack (15:17):

Here past these rooms in the Labrinth underneath, and there’d be like a room about 200 Mickey Mouse costume hanging on a rail and stuff like that. That’s pretty creepy

Rick (15:28):

Boy. The day before cell phones, right.

Jack (15:31):

But it was great. We went on all the rides in between sets and stuff, so it was good.

Rick (15:37):

So I want to take us back to Dance Hall days. Jack, I’ll come back to you in a minute on that. But there’s a story here about Nick and your bass guitar that maybe the sound, there’s something there, but they felt like they needed to tweak it. And you’re taping this at Abbey Road Studios, so can you give us a scoop on that? That’s really interesting.

Jack (15:56):

Yeah, well, just being at Abbey Road Studios for Chuck and I as big Beatles fans, that alone was an amazing experience. And we were in Studio two, which is the studio the Beatles recorded in, and it was all still unrenovated, so it felt very authentic.

Nick (16:15):

It was just like it, as you see it in Get Back with the big acoustic panels and the control room upstairs.

Rick (16:23):

Did you watch the documentary and all that? Yeah, religiously. Oh yeah, yeah, religious.

Jack (16:28):

So I’m a left-handed bass player, and it wasn’t sounding quite right, the bass sound on the draft. So the engineer, Ross Cullen sort of goes, guys just wait here. I think I’ve got an idea. So he sitting there and suddenly this guy walks in with holding a base saying he’s from the base rental company.

Rick (16:49):

Of course there’s no such thing, right? And

Jack (16:51):

Then we were like, oh crap. Oh Jesus, it was Paul McCartney himself.

Rick (16:57):

That’s a good sign.

Jack (16:58):

So that was amazing. I mean, just to be able to play that instrument. It just had that magic sort of vibe about it. And we

Nick (17:06):

Were all completely starstruck, but we think it was the Yamaha Bass. Yes, Yamar. It

Rick (17:11):

Wasn’t Jack. Have you met Paul before that? I mean, it’s

Nick (17:13):

A thing. Not before that. No, I was totally speechless to meet him in, it’s slightly embarrassing. What do you

Rick (17:17):

Say?

Nick (17:18):

I’m sure you crossed

Rick (17:19):

Past many times since then, right? Not really. No. No.

Jack (17:22):

We were starstruck, I think is a simple way of putting it. And then I remember Linda McCartney coming in, I had the bass on my lap waiting to play. Linda McCartney came in inside catching up with Ross. They were chatting away. I was like, I want to play a special thing. And sure, that thing helped. Danceful days become a big hit. Absolutely. That the Paul McCartney connects Sound is stellar.

Rick (17:47):

Alright, so Jack, let’s talk a little bit about, I kind of gave you a little sneak preview, but IBIE for the Baking World in the US is the biggest show. It’s the International Baking Industry. Exposition happens every three years, so you got to hit it right then you’ve got two down years and then you got to do it again. We’ve had some fun over the last few exhibitions for AB Maori and we’ve done virtual reality. We did an art gallery last time. We did a British invasion. We had the red bus. I mean it timed weirdly because the queen had just passed days within days. So we all wore black ribbons, but we did a trip down Baker Street in London, so very near and dear to your heart.

Rick (18:26):

But this time we thought, hey, let’s have some fun. Let’s take people to a new place, the eighties. So that’s what our whole theme is going to be like. But as part of that is the Rocking Pint, which is it ends the first day of the trade event of the trade show. We’re talking 20,000 plus people and they’re going to be ready to rock with you guys. And people were excited. And you talk about the demo, the demo of your average person is probably in their fifties at their show. So they know your music and they love your music. So why is it important to play? You’re doing a tour now, but to do some of these special one-offs. Why is it important to stay connected that way?

Nick (19:02):

It just is important to stay connected, I think. And the physical presence of us doing the music, I think is a special thing for people and for us too. The music gets reborn every time you play it. The records are great, but they’re stuck there in the past. And to an extent, Wang Chung is about the past. It’s about a nostalgia thing, but the opportunity to perform it in the present is a great thing. Revitalizes everything.

Jack (19:30):

And to be able to hear people testify, what it means to them, the songs to hear the fans actually say what part of their lives it formed or the meaning it had for them. That’s all very,

Rick (19:46):

Do you get a chance to talk to people about that? Like the relationships or they spark certain memories with friends or a girlfriend now your wife or whatever. Right, exactly.

Jack (19:54):

They want to share whatever. Yeah. And that’s really lovely. And it makes you feel, God, it was kind even more worth it. You know what I mean? So I think we’re very lucky to be able to sort of keep it alive in that way.

Rick (20:08):

You’ve made an impressive impact.

Jack (20:09):

Plus they’re bringing their kids as well.

Rick (20:12):

Absolutely.

Jack (20:13):

I mean, younger people are getting sort of engaging with it as well, which is wonderful for us. And we seem to get quite a lot of action in TV shows and commercials and video games. Our stuff gets synchronized into those. So again, younger people will discover it. They’ll hear something in Walking Dead or Grand Theft Auto or whatever it is, and they’ll check it out.

Rick (20:41):

So we’re talking here with Jack and Nick from Iconic band Wang Chung today. If you’ve got a question, maybe after the fact that you want to know and you want us to send it to us, you can send us an email at the oven light@abmaori.com and we’ll get you a response. We might even send you some baking swag, but if you’ve got that question you’ve always wanted to ask the guys, we can make that happen. So let’s talk about one of the other guys in your set. Is it a neighbor of ours? We’re based in St. Louis, Missouri is our good friend, Alan Hunter, right? One of the original MTV VJs, one of the first five. Do you have any memories that maybe we can give him our time about or MTV days or playing on the beach or music videos? I mean, the music video generation was really important. You had to come up with something really creative and do something different. Do you remember one of your videos you’re like, why this is the one? And it was really important for us.

Nick (21:32):

Well, I guess Nick and I both grew up in the seventies really. Or with the bands in the seventies who were very, it was all about the music and not terribly visual apart from the actual gigs themselves, I suppose. So yeah, it took an adjustment, I think for us to embrace the idea of music videos and speaking personally, I don’t think I was aware that it was such a huge, impactful kind of method of getting your music across. Just thinking in the UK, MTV didn’t arrive until later, and the UK just had one show a week on tv, ostensibly on the BBC called Top of the Pops. And we got to do that a couple of times with Danceful days. But I understood there that the impact of people seeing you and relating the music to the visual made all the difference for your sort of presence and records sales as well.

Rick (22:19):

Are there any MTV videos that you recall? You’re like of other bands and you’re like, boy, that’s iconic. I mean, obviously there’s Thriller, right? Tom Petty did some really incredible ones. The Allison Wonder and Land, right? Don’t come around here no more. Some others, do you remember a few of them? You’re like, wow, that’s just mind boggling at the time.

Jack (22:36):

I love the Peter Gabriel Sledgehammer.

Rick (22:39):

Oh yeah, the Train. And

Jack (22:41):

Yeah, all that sort of animation was brilliant. And talking heads videos were always good, weren’t they? And we liked them anyway, but

Rick (22:48):

Absolutely. Yeah. Well everybody had fun tonight. Did some really interesting video work, right?

Jack (22:52):

Yeah, I mean we were pleased to that. Godly and Cream wanted to, who directed it that they were from 10 CA band that we’d liked or I’d liked. Do you like? We both liked them. Okay. So they had a quirky alternative way of thinking about things. So when they heard everybody a fun night, they wanted to do the video, which was great for us to get them to do it. And their take on it was quite refreshing It. It was like, don’t look all happy,

Rick (23:25):

But it cuts. And how you moved around the visual.

Jack (23:29):

Well that’s sort of neurotic because the way they cut it and everything was great.

Rick (23:32):

It was very

Jack (23:32):

Good. But the performance, they didn’t want us to have fun tonight. They wanted the opposite. So it was a kind of, I think it worked really well. That video.

Rick (23:41):

Let’s go back to a couple of Hawk Pan questions. So if you had a choice here, would you rather be attending a championship football match? We’ll say you’re football in the UK or watching opening night of a new play of a hot play, Hamilton, whatever it is. What do you choose? Would you rather be at the sport or do you rather be at the social music and performance?

Jack (24:02):

If I’d written the play than I’d probably want to be at the play. Otherwise a hundred percent. I’d want to see my team.

Rick (24:07):

Who’s your team?

Jack (24:08):

My team is Arsenal.

Rick (24:09):

Arsenal. Oh boy. Are we going to fight here? I’m a Spurs fan.

Jack (24:13):

Oh

Rick (24:13):

God. Hey. But we won the Europa Cup, right? And then we fired our manager.

Jack (24:17):

That was the worst final I’ve ever seen in my life.

Nick (24:22):

I’m definitely at the theater or the opera or whatever. I don’t get soccer or anything else sporty.

Rick (24:28):

Is there a certain performance or something that stands out and you’re like, wow. Oh, all

Nick (24:33):

Sorts of stuff? Yeah, I mean, one of my favorite things to do was to just look over the what was performing in European cities and choose an opera or a play or whatever, and just spend a weekend in that city, go see the opera. And that was a great way of amusing myself for a

Rick (24:49):

While. Yeah, great theater district in London we saw to Kill Mockingbird a couple of years ago. And

Nick (24:54):

Yeah,

Rick (24:55):

London’s breathtaking.

Nick (24:56):

Good for theater. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I remember seeing Jeremy Ions in a play called Embers, which was almost like a sort of solo performance room.

Rick (25:03):

Yeah.

Nick (25:03):

That was mesmerizing.

Rick (25:05):

Outstanding. Yeah. Alright, let’s go to the next one. Cars or motorcycles or none of the above, what’s your preference mode? Transportation or a bike?

Jack (25:13):

I mean, I think bikes are sort of quite appealing from a romantic point of view, but the idea of actually driving one is I would never do it. So I would totally injure myself. And I don’t particularly care about cars

Rick (25:30):

Or do you have a certain car you’re like, boy, I just, have you gotten into the EV thing or do you still like a hot rod, like a

Jack (25:36):

60, 70? Not caring at all. Don’t care. No, don’t care.

Rick (25:38):

Okay. You just want to get there and go?

Jack (25:40):

Yeah.

Rick (25:40):

Jack, anything? Do you have a passion in that?

Nick (25:42):

I would go for cars rather than bikes

Rick (25:45):

For

Nick (25:45):

Sure. Although bicycling, I did quite a bit of that. I lived down in, I still have a house in the countryside in the UK with lots of bike rides around and that’s a beautiful way to just, is

Rick (25:55):

There an iconic, I mean, the British iconic car is the Jaguar XKE.

Nick (25:59):

Yeah, I don’t really have that stuff going on. I quite like big old cars for sure. As opposed to, are

Rick (26:04):

We talking like Bentleys and Rolls-Royces or what? Yeah, thing. I’ve got an Nick, like his style.

Jack (26:11):

That’s actually the only car I’ve actually got excited about was the James Bond’s, Aston Martin. I’d like that

Rick (26:17):

One. The old one or even the newer one with Daniel

Jack (26:19):

Fre. The one DB six is?

Rick (26:21):

Yeah.

Jack (26:21):

Oh wow. I got excited about that.

Rick (26:23):

How can you not? Beautiful.

Jack (26:26):

I’ll take that.

Rick (26:27):

All right. I like the James Bond reference. That’s a good one. Alright, so here’s your question and finally we’re going to answer the question today. And I’ve been wondering about it because for years where people were always saying, Hey, everybody was kung fu fighting, everybody was having fun tonight, or is everybody just Wang ching all the time? Are you amazed at how the popularity of that song is just caught on? Because there aren’t many bands that have their names in their songs. Right.

Nick (26:53):

At the time it was very unusual and kind of frowned upon, I think. But over the years, I think a few people have said it’s like marketing genius, basically.

Jack (27:03):

I think we were the godfathers of rap music.

Rick (27:06):

Oh, I like it. I like it. Well, a lot of people would say Blondie and Rapture and some others, but

Jack (27:12):

Well, the self-reference thing.

Rick (27:16):

Alright, so we got one final question here. So we talked about eighties movies and we talked about the Breakfast Club. You mentioned to live and die in la. Is it remarkable to have that staying power with these films? But songs are so important to films and how they carry on and they pass from generation to generation?

Nick (27:37):

It’s an interesting thing. There’s a thing on X at the moment. Vernon Reed, out of Living Color posted a thing about, so the Thread was best eighties movies of all time. And he posted up to Live and Die in la and a whole bunch of people were sort of responding to that. And then he sort of made this remark about the song being a particular evocation of Los Angeles in 1985 and the fact that it’s written from the female persons, the song is from her point of view. Now, at the time I wasn’t aware that I was doing that, but a few people have said that to me. And I do see that it is when you look at it from the outside, an interesting way into that movie as opposed to trying to convey the more aspects of it.

Jack (28:22):

Which was particularly interesting because William Freekin, the director of the French Connection and Exorcist and the UN to live and die in LA didn’t want any songs, did he? Oh really? He didn’t want songs? No, he just wanted instrumental music.

Rick (28:37):

How could you have it without the song? It

Nick (28:40):

Works out. But that was, we wrote, because we didn’t see the movie before, we wrote all that instrumental music, which again seems counterintuitive.

Rick (28:47):

Well, that’s one of those questions, how many times do music artists actually see the movie or even know that much about it before they write it? I mean different than Ghostbusters and Ray Parker Jr. But you know what I mean. You don’t usually have all the facts, do you? That’s true enough.

Jack (29:01):

It’s usually the afterthought, isn’t it? The music. Whereas with this, I think it was almost the other way, well, not completely the other way around, but he certainly, I mean he shot the whole sequence to when he heard to Live and Die in la, the song he actually shot a sequence to so he could put the song into that bit of the movie.

Nick (29:22):

And the sequence is the presidential motorcade and helicopters and exploding to and stuff. So it’s not a cheap, not a little bit that he tacked onto it.

Jack (29:31):

That just doesn’t happen usually. Absolutely.

Nick (29:34):

We had a really lovely experience of doing a q and a with him in London probably in 2018, something like that. And at that point he was really generous in the way he was expressing that he cut a lot of the movie to the music. Now, I don’t think all of the movie is cut to the music, but certain scenes definitely go on perhaps longer than they would do in order to allow the music to play out, if you know what I mean. And I think that gives the film a certain kind of thing that movies where that have a more conventional score, they get bogged down in the storytelling and the plot. The plot, the plot. Whereas Dale’s got this slightly more impressionistic sense about it.

Jack (30:11):

It’s very integrated into the movie.

Rick (30:14):

So we’re wrapping up with our good friends, Jack and Nick from Wang Chung. And maybe one final kind of question or how do people stay in touch with you? You talked about some of the new albums finishing up an eighties tour and then coming to IBIE, September 14th, five o’clock be on the floor. It’s going to be rocking, but are there other ways they can stay in touch with you and hear more about your music or what’s new?

Nick (30:36):

We have Facebook, Wang Chung official, and we run that account and Instagram too, so you can get in touch with us on those things.

Rick (30:43):

Fantastic.

Nick (30:44):

X to a degree, but I’d stick with Facebook. There’s

Rick (30:47):

A lot of social media, isn’t there? Yeah, yeah.

Jack (30:50):

Just having, meeting people like yourself, doing interviews, meeting people.

Rick (30:55):

So everybody, that’s it for today. I tell you what A great episode of the Oven Light. Again, thanks. Many thanks to Jack and Nick from Wang Chung for sharing their stories and their backgrounds. Love having you guys on the program meeting you face to face. It’s a

Jack (31:08):

Pleasure. Lot. Good to meet you.

Rick (31:10):

So for now, hey, the Switch is off the oven, light’s off. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time.

Intro/Outro (31:17):

We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of The Oven Light. Until next time, when we discuss more about the wonderful world of baking, technology trends and more, the switch is officially off. Goodbye for now. See you next time.