Sudden Impact (screen grab) By Lyndsey Parker, Yahoo Music: In 1991, college student and future pop-culture critic/VJ Dave Holmes saw Boyz II Men’s “Motownphilly” video on MTV, and the moment — actually, an extremely specific moment, at the video’s 2:38 mark — ended up haunting him for the next three decades. It was a fleeting glimpse of Boyz II Men’s labelmates Sudden Impact, but as Holmes jokes to Yahoo Entertainment, “It was neither sudden nor an impact. Thirty years later, we’re still trying to figure out what happened.”
Holmes explains, “Sudden Impact were a boy band that was under the wing of Michael Bivins of New Edition and Bell Biv Devoe, who in the early ‘90s had a development deal. He discovered Boyz II Men. He discovered Another Bad Creation. And the third act in his three-artist production deal was a group called Sudden Impact. In the video for ‘Motownphilly,’ Boyz II Men’s debut, each [Bivins protégé] gets a little featured moment at the end; I call it ‘The Michael Bivins Extended Cinematic Universe.’ And there, against a black seamless background, underneath their name, which is in lights, I see it: ‘Sudden Impact.’ There’s these five guys, in five white button-down shirts and five neckties, and they look at the camera and they point right at the camera. It’s like, ‘Here we are! Here comes Sudden Impact!’
“And that was the only thing they ever did. And as a young pop consumer, I wanted to know what the deal was. We were at the height of New Kids on the Block’s fame. So, it’s like, ‘Sudden Impact are gonna be huge!’ And then they didn’t happen. It was like seeing a really good trailer for a huge movie, with a bunch of your favorite stars in it — and then the movie just never comes out.”
So, why did Sudden Impact’s cameo have, well, such a lasting impact on Holmes, when it was so brief? “I think probably because it was so brief. And because I have a mind that seeks those kinds of things out; I am obsessed with popular culture and music and all of that stuff,” Holmes chuckles. “I was just kind of frustrated. Those [college years] were formative times for me, and through the repetition of that video, I kept seeing them and kept wondering. And the fact that I do have a mind that holds on to such things really prevented me from having a normal life — but did lead me to the life that I have now, which I’m really proud of.”
It also led Holmes to create perhaps the most specific podcast ever, Waiting for Impact — a true crime-style, 10-part investigation to find out what happened to Sudden Impact after they appeared in one of the biggest MTV hits of the early ‘90s, yet never became MTV stars themselves. The fact-finding mission was not easy, because, as Holmes explains, “This moment happened right before the internet, so Sudden Impact came and went and did not leave a trace. Nowadays, there would be a fan site that would still be halfway active. But this was a cold case.”
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Read the rest of the mystery here:
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/mystery-of-missing-90-s-boy-band-sudden-impact-finally-solved-012148809.html
Photo: Sudden Impact in Boyz II Men’s “Motownphilly” video (Photo: YouTube”
Mystery of Missing ’90s Boy Band Sudden Impact Finally Solved: ’30 Years Later, We’re Still Trying to Figure Out What Happened’
