by G. Jack Urso
One big attraction
for Hot Hero Sandwich’s appeal to its
young audience was the music performances. Disco, New Wave, Rock, and even
Latin Jazz found its way to Studio 8-H and Hot
Hero managed to snap up some of the top names of the era, including Sister
Sledge, Eddie Money, Joe Jackson, Rex Smith, Stephen Stills, The Little River Band, and
more.
In the years
just prior to the debut of MTV in 1981, just one year after Hot Hero Sandwich, teen interest in
music videos was at an all-time high. Midnight
Special, Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert,
Pop Clips, Friday Night Videos, and others, primed the late Baby Boomer/Gen X
crowd for this genre and Hot Hero
Sandwich was in an excellent position to capitalize on it. As noted by Paul
O’Keefe in his interview
for the Hot Hero Sandwich Project, “Studio 8-H was originally the radio studio
for the NBC orchestra. It had very good acoustics for a TV studio.” Additionally,
Hot Hero Sandwich shared crew with Saturday
Night Live, which by 1979 had four solid years of recording acts for that
show, so the performances for Hot Hero were
filmed by top-notch technicians who needed only one or two run-throughs to nail
down the acts on video. These taped performances are on par with anything SNL produced.
As for the
performances themselves, Hot Hero Band producer Felix Pappalardi acknowledges in a Nov. 24,
1979, Record Word article, due to all
the neon on stage, a loud hum was created when the amplifiers were turned on,
so the performances were lip-synced, though it does appear that vocally the
singers were still belting it out and the musicians hit their notes on target
and on time.
All clips are hosted on the Hot Hero Sandwich Central YouTube channel. For all performances by the Hot Hero Band, please visit the article, Hot Hero Band Video Clips.
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On Studio 8-H:
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In addition to the performances on Studio 8-H, Hot Hero Sandwich also produced short
films and animation (by Jerry Lieberman Productions) for a variety of music
genres.
Animation and Short Films:
- Episode 1, “I'm Only Sleeping”: Originally The Beatles version, replaced with a cover version by Go Fret due to a limited copyright release.
- Episode 8, “When I'm 64”: Originally, this clip used the versions by The Beatles, here replaced with a cover version by the 101 Strings due to a limited copyright release.
- Episode 10, “Ebony Eyes”: A tribute to Black girls and women set to Stevie Wonder's “Ebony Eyes,” overlayed with a woman doing snippets of "Phenomenal Woman," and another poem (“I’m Gonna Draw Me a Black Madonna”).
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UPDATE: The Hot Hero Sandwich Project has moved to its new home at www.hotherosandwich.com. All new posts after July 2024 will be posted only to www.hotherosandwich.com.
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