BTW One Hit Wonder Day is on the 25th of September... http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,6645784%25 5E12284,00.html Nostalgic blink at fleeting stars Glenn A. Baker's Freeze Frame: One Hit Wonders 11am, Music Max AAAAAAH, the one-hit wonder. That band or artist who bursts out of nowhere, hijacking our attention with a catchy ditty for a few weeks, and then vanishes just as quickly, remembered only as a footnote to music history. Often, the one-hit wonder is not viewed as a fleeting fancy that was fun while it lasted, but there was no lasting attachment, rather the collective version of attributing your decision to date a person to being afflicted with a temporary mental illness, reducing the song to joke "what were we thinking?" status. However, as Glenn A. Baker notes in this entertaining program, perhaps the one-hit wonder is in fact the perfect embodiment of pop music – an artist who shines brightly for a moment before being disposed of, the next brightly shining star taking the top spot. And if you're a believer in the old Oscar Wilde philosophy that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about, then being a one-hit wonder can keep you in public discourse far longer than your career would warrant. Take, for instance, Vanilla Ice (although technically he's a two-hit wonder – there was that now forgotten Play That Funky Music – and thus he's ineligible for this show). His biggest hit Ice, Ice Baby, was released in 1990 and he still remains the butt of many a joke 13 years later – I can think of at least three songs in the past five years that have dissed him: Offspring's Pretty Fly (for a White Guy), Eminem's My Dad's Gone Crazy and Korn's All in the Family. A current poster advertisement for Up & Go's Vanilla Ice drink implores passers-by to "Join the Vanilla Ice Fan Club". It's not as if anyone is still talking about the critically acclaimed Concrete Blonde, who were pretty big the same year that Vanilla Ice rocked his mike like a vandal. Like Rodney Dangerfield, the one-hit wonder don't get no respect, no matter how deeply they burn into our brains and Baker comes not to bury them, but enjoy. I didn't know quite what to expect when I sat down to watch Freeze Frame. Obviously, given it's a locally produced effort for a pay-TV channel, we're not dealing with the sort of budgets that get poured into the US-produced series Behind The Music, which assembles all the players of a past musical act and invites them to talk about where it all went wrong and the drugs they took on the way. On the other hand, Baker knows his stuff and is passionate about it. The result is a simple format: Baker introduces a song by putting it in a historical context or offering an interesting bit of trivia about the artist, plays the clip, and moves on to the next song. While One Hit Wonders is a fun meander down memory lane, it does have the slight problem not found in earlier Freeze Frame episodes, such as Roots of Metal. It casts such a wide net, your attention inevitably wanes in certain parts. As a Gen Xer, my music tastes got started in the late 1970s, so while I enjoyed bopping along to Nena's 99 Luftballoons, the '60s Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band interested me little other than to wonder whether I would enjoy them more if perhaps I hooked up with their dealer. And it's also a shame that Baker's One Hit Wonders stops at the start of the '90s – I was looking forward to re-acquainting myself with Young MC, Kris Kross and Shampoo. But with any sort of music list, contention is inevitable and if we're talking one-hit wonders, I would have included The Timelords' 1988 hit, Doctorin' The Tardis, which took two of the most memorable samples – Gary Glitter's Rock 'n' Roll and the Doctor Who theme – to create an uber great song. Perhaps it's because you could argue that they weren't one-hit wonders because they had further hits in the '90s, when they changed their name to the KLF or even that Doctorin' The Tardis was more a novelty record than a true one-hit wonder. But then with programs like these, arguing is just part of the fun. -Kerrie Murphy ------------------------------------------------------------------------ HAVE YOUR SAY We welcome your comments on this story. We may publish your comments and reserve the right to edit them. To submit your comments to the editor you must provide your full name, location and a working e-mail address. Your e-mail address will not be published.