Little Brett, Big City

Behold my first professional headshot in the Fall of 1988. It could also double as an 80s print ad for Clairol hair mousse. (Big fan!) The photo was on the back page of the MoundVue employee magazine I created as that semester's PR intern at EG&G Mound Laboratory, a Department of Energy facility in Miamisburg, Ohio. They basically made parts for nuclear weapons for the federal government. At least that's how I boiled it down. I never learned the real details because I worked outside the "perimeter."  All employees had to have a high-level federal security clearance. But due to a backlog in requests and approvals, mine never arrived the entire semester. So I was stationed in a small office building outside the main gates with about two dozen engineers, researchers and IT analysts.  They didn't have much to do since their jobs depended on access to classified information. I however was busy creating a 32-page internal magazine. So I had lots of employees to int...

This week in 1989, Tone-Loc was blocked from the #1 spot on Billboard's Hot 100 by Paula Abdul and her first hit song "Straight Up."  Sharp-eyed readers will note that this is the third mention of Abdul on this blog, something I never would have guessed when I launched this.  Anyway, Tone-Loc's "Wild Thing" rocketed into the hearts of music lovers around the world thanks to a classic hip hop move: Borrowing an element from something that was tired at the moment and re-inventing it for new audiences.   In this case, the song's guitar riff and drum roll were instantly identifiable from Van Halen's "Jamie's Cryin'" off their first album in 1978 (!) According to Wikipedia (the primary research resource here at "Little Brett, Big City"), the Van Halen management team allowed the sample to be included in "Wild Thing" for a flat fee of $5,000.  But apparently the band members hadn't heard anything about it. Drummer...