By Chuck Darrow
Some eight years ago, the Hershey’s corporation cleverly built a TV ad campaign around “I Melt with You,” the 1982 hit single by the British band Modern English, which is one of the acts hitting Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City Friday night as part of the Totally Tubular Festival tour. The bill also includes such MTV-era hitmakers as Thomas Dolby (“She Blinded Me with Science”), Bow Wow Wow (“I Want Candy”) and Wang Chung (“Dance Hall Days”).
While Neil Young may thumb his nose at having his music co-opted by Madison Avenue and Wall Street, artists who do allow their songs to be licensed for advertising campaigns can find the benefits quite significant—as in cha-ching!—because seven-figure licensing fees have long been common when such blue-chip companies are the licensees.
And as it turns out, that goes double for the Modern English original members and co-composers of “Melt with You” as Hershey’s, has resurrected it for its current marketing campaign. Not surprisingly, it’s a situation that pleases the song’s creators, and not just for the compensation they surely received from the global confectioner.
“The song is almost subliminal now,” offered bassist/band-co-founder Michael “Mick” Conroy from his Dallas hotel during a recent phone call.
“You know, people are packing their kids off to school or going to work or doing whatever they do at home, and in the background, there’s this: ‘I’ll stop the world and melt with you.’ And then they might be humming it for the rest of the day.
“And our hope is that someone might hear that song on the TV and then think, ‘Oh, I wonder what they’re up to.’ And then find out that we’ve got a new LP [“1 2 3 4”] that we recorded last year, and maybe go to a record shop and buy it.”
In its current configuration, Modern English boasts three charter members–Conroy, lead singer Robbie Grey and guitarist Gary McDowell—who, save for about six years’ worth of breaks scattered through the decades, have been playing together since 1979. In a world known for its towering egos and high-profile personality clashes, it’s a pretty remarkable track record. So, what’s the secret?
“I joined this band when I was 15, so it’s a ‘man-and-boy’ thing,” said Conroy. “We’re all from the same town in England, Colchester, so we know each other.” But, he continued, that history doesn’t mean the three founders are joined at the hip.
“It’s like a marriage,” he reasoned, “you can go days about talking to each other, but purely because you think, ‘Well, I haven’t really got anything to say today.’ It’s like an ‘if you’ve got nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all’ kind of thing. But like a marriage, even more important than love, you gotta like the person.”
“We travel all over the world with each other, but we don’t sit next to each other on the plane generally. But the thing is that when we’re together playing music, something happens.”
For many of the participating artists, the Totally Tubular road trip is a reunion of sorts which, Conroy suggested, adds to their enjoyment of the project.
“Most of us all know each other. We’ve toured with Men Without Hats a couple of times in the past, so we know them. And Modern English did a tour with Thomas Dolby in the eighties, so we know him as well. And we’ve played with Tom Bailey [of The Thompson Twins].
“It’s like a traveling circus. It’s good fun.”
For tickets, go to ticketmaster.com.
Deep Purple? Yes!
The summer is definitely going out with a bang for fans of 1970s classic rock. On Aug. 30, the double bill of Deep Purple and Yes are checking into Ovation Hall at Ocean Casino Resort.
While this is a great pairing, it is somewhat surprising: Deep Purple, is one of the “founding fathers” of the high-decibel format known as “hard rock,” while Yes helped create and popularize the style of music known as “progressive—or prog—rock.”
Nonetheless, it should be one of the summer’s—and year’s—most memorable shows.
For tickets, go to ticketmaster.com.
Tip of the week
By and large, musical tribute acts tend to emphasize either classic rock artists (e.g. The Beatles, Tom Petty, Led Zeppelin) or pop megastars (The Bee Gees, Michael Jackson, Taylor Swift). But on Saturday, a couple of older acts will be in the spotlight as Caesars Atlantic City hosts “Roy Orbison & The Everly Brothers Reimagined.”
For tickets, go to ticketmaster.com.
Chuck Darrow has spent more than 40 years writing about Atlantic City casinos.
