Buster never heard that well-worn playground advice…
Welcome to that ultra rare fifth Monday of February that is sponsored by the calendar quirk we like to call leap day. That means me and my homeponies can bust out even more funky rhymes from the Dusty Vinyl Archive to make this miserable month seem just a little better! In honor of this extra day we get to enjoy that will just delay your New Years Eve plans by 24 hours, Scratchy and her musician’s apprentice Sponkies will be digging out a bonus song for your leaping listening pleasure! That’s a two-for-one earworm BOGO you won’t find on any other blog!
Chances are if you were a musician lucky enough to get two of your songs to crack the Casey Kasum level of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, you’ve at the very least cemented your legacy in the history of pop music and will never need a fake ID to get into a post-Grammys party. The corporate radio shaped collective memory of the masses, however, has at least as many gaps in it as a Watergate recording… and one of those eras that got left in the cassette tape dust was the late 80’s. Unless you were a hair metal band or an American Idol judge, chances are any work you did around the fall of the Berlin Wall is about as well remembered as a night of heavy drinking…
I don’t remember having all that Zima last night!
While at least most people of age can recall the likes of Debbie Gibson, Tiffany and New Kids on the Block (Even if it pains them to do so), some late 80’s flashes in the pan couldn’t even make it to the grunge days before they got enemaed from our brains. Such a Fleeting (see what I did there?) fickle fate befell a singer by the name of Kevin Paige. Whoozat, you’re saying to yourself? Well, he only had two freaking songs become U.S. Top 40 hits in 1989/1990…
“Don’t Shut Me Out,” which peaked at #18:
And “Anything I Want,” which made it to #27:
How do you have two hits like that, and end up with a crappy little Wiki page like this? It’s embarrassing! Artists who are still playing the bar scene have more info about them on the internet than Kevin gets 25 years after he was rocking out mainstream radio across the country. I don’t care if people think him and his music are too cheesy to be worth the neurons to recall… there’s artists from his same era who still get the fame, fortune and forty year old groupies despite the fact that they weren’t even half as talented as Paige…
And that’s counting the dead guy…
Like most forgotten artists of the 80’s, Kevin has since sunken to the lowly levels of doing Christian music. Thankfully for him, squirrels and unicorns have great memories… and the staff at the DVA has not forgotten Kevin Paige’s awesome double disc contribution to the pop music of my generation, and hope that this tribute will help rekindle his much deserved two-hit wonderdom. Thank you Kevin for doing anything you wanted!
Something tells me this post isn’t going to help out my fledgling career…
I’ll be back next Monday to give some other starving artist their just due…
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
Given me a serious case of “ear worm” with Don’t Shut Me Out……The 80s……gosh…..seems like AGES ago – oh yeah – it was, wasn’t it?!
Pam
I hate to think it was that long ago, but all my favorite songs as a kid are now 30 years old! Rock and roll wasn’t even that old back in the day…
I loved the intro of don’t shut me out… and the song was great too… it sadly was no song for the dance floor more for car driving… and I was too young to drive a car that time… oh man :o(((
All of those nice ladies with the lingerie managed to dance to it quite nicely. Or maybe they had a different song playing and just dubbed Kevin Paige over it…
Never heard of this guy. I can say that after a mere 29 sec of listening to Mr. Paige’s music, I am not a fan. This, of course, in no way means that he won’t still go on to be a fabulous entertainer. In fact, usually when I don’t like a musician, the rest of the world goes ga-ga over him or her.
Never fear, as when your entire catalogue ends up in one of my Monday posts, you have pretty much failed as an entertainer…. or at least didn’t do anything for anyone to remember you by. A lot of my late 80’s taste in music grates the ears of others, which is probably why it became forgotten in the first place….
Ba ba ba ba baby, don’t you lose my number…
Are you lip synching again?
You know it!
I remember Don’t Shut Me Out! I liked it too, but I don’t remember Kevin Paige’s name. I’m not sure I ever knew it. I think he would have made a more lasting impression if he had chosen a one word band name. Something that would stick in people’s memory even if they didn’t want it to, like Winger. I so wish I didn’t remember Winger!
One of his contemporaries from the era, Dino, did just that… and I don’t think he’s any better remembered these days either. Except by Mecca Radio, which plays “I Like It” quite a bit. Winger, Stuart Stephenson’s favorite band, will always get a pass from me for “Seventeen”, which is one of my favorite hair band songs ever….
True. I remember the name Dino but not anything else about him/them. I have to admit I liked Seventeen. It’s mostly Kip Winger’s face I wish I didn’t remember. Something about that guy really bugged me! Maybe it was his perpetual 5 o’clock shadow.
Neither one of those songs rings even the faintest of bells.
I suspect the big headphones were a bigger reason for the success of that song! 😀
LOL!!! The bigger the headphones, the better the song!
Did you know the WWE diva Paige was named after him? (Note: I have no idea if this is actually true)
Since I don’t watch WWE, I’ll have to see who this is….
I think you’re right. She definitely looks like a fan of Kevin’s work…
She’s very pale
Only two paras on his wiki page? It’s a travesty! I didn’t think much of his songs, mind, though back in “the day” I would probably have thought they “rocked, dude”.
Had Wiki existed back in the day, I’ll bet he’d have had a page at least as long as Bieber’s. Maybe if the internet didn’t exist, Bieber would have already been forgotten about as well…
I am so glad I found your blog….so many memories I’ve recalled browsing your great posts! Thank you!
You’re welcome! I love preserving these moments in lame pop culture history for people to enjoy today!