On the Dark Side - John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band (1984) 1/17/24

ee if you can follow this one:

Today's Great Song of 1984 is by a band from Rhode Island that played behind actors who played a fictional New Jersey bar band in a 1983 film called "Eddie & The Cruisers." starring Michael Pare' and Tom Berenger.

Wait, it gets even more confusing....

Film Director Mark Davidson gave Music Director Kenny Vance a copy of an original song written for the film and asked for his opinion.

Kenny hated it. He thought it didn't sound "authentic enough" for a band from New Jersey, and set out to fix it--thinking originally it should sound like something Bruce Springsteen might do.

.But after he read the film script, he changed his mind and wrote it for a band he'd once heard at the famous Bitter End Nightclub: "John Cafferty and The Beaver Brown Band." He felt John's group was "Eddie & The Cruisers" personified.

Mark gave his approval of the concept, so Kenny contacted John Cafferty, who thought he could give "On the Dark Side" a "Mitch Ryder & Detroit Wheels Sound to it.

So now, in addition to a Springsteen/New Jersey Bar band from Rhode Island, , we have touches of Detroit Rock & Roll...but everyone agreed, so the film was shot, and the song was recorded and released as a single from the soundtrack.

Not much happened--at first. The film was NOT a success at the box office, and in 1983, "On the Dark Side" peaked at just #64 on the Hot 100.

In 1984, however, everything changed. HBO debuted on pay cable, and one of the films they ran repeatedly was -- you guessed it--"Eddie & The Cruisers."

Before long, the soundtrack had sold 25,000 new copies, and the single was re-released. THIS time, it reached #1 on Billboard's Hot Rock Tracks Chart and #7 on the Hot 100!

So in the end, "On the Dark Side" ended up up "on the "bright side" for John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band--as a Great Song of 1984! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgIsyoxZ7Uw

Tomorrow: John's comeback!