New Man - Bad Boys (1984)

"Bad Boys" by Boston quintet, New Man. This competed on "Basement Tapes" on a certain cable channel that used to show music and now shows fat teenagers who got knocked up. "Bad Boys" made its national television premiere on the February 12, 1985 semi-finals episode, which they won with 48% of the vote. The win got them 1 month's worth of rotation and 5 grand's worth of Fostex doorstops. Four months later, on June 9, 1985, they competed again in finals, where they weren't so fortunate -- 3rd place, 17% of the vote. After they lost out on a "Basement Tapes" grand prize that included a deal with Elektra Records (Sharks won that... and then spent the next 30 years bitching about it), they scored a consolation one with Epic -- which landed them a second video on said cable channel, "Flying Cowboy," in 1987 -- a record deal that was arguably better than what the winners received, as theirs was for a full-length album. The record didn't sell, they were cut loose, the other labels they passed on to go with Epic were no longer interested, and they eventually fell apart, with the frontman later joining Foreigner and the blonde joining RTZ. New Man re-recorded this track for that self-titled album, but here's the original from their self-titled EP.

The "Bad Boys" clip, which was directed by a then-unknown Scott Kalvert and produced by David Horgan -- both of whom would go on to do several other music videos -- received heavy rotation on the short-lived Boston music television station, V66 -- which, coincidentally, went on the air the same day the video premiered on There's-No-Money-To-Be-Made-In-Music-Television-So-We-Don't-Show-Any-Anymore. Filmed in November of 1984, the band premiered it at The Channel on January 23, 1985, just 3 weeks before "Basement Tapes".

New Man was:
Scott Gilman - lead vocals, keyboards, saxophone
Mark Jones - guitar, vocals
Tim Archibald - bass
Bob Gay - saxophone
Brock Avery - drums, percussion

"Bad Boys" written by Scott Gilman and produced by Tony Volante. Video produced by David Horgan and directed by Scott Kalvert.