The B'zz
BBC Rock Hour 415 Version A
London Wavelength's Broadcast Week of April 10, 1983
Recorded at:
Bogart's
Cincinnati, OH
March 2, 1983
01 Sylvie Simmons - Intro
02 The B'zz - Jet Action
03 The B'zz - Too Much To Ask For
04 The B'zz - Tonight
05 Commercial - Jensen
06 Commercial - U.S. Army Reserve
07 The B'zz - Sad Sally
08 The B'zz - Caught In The Middle
09 The B'zz - I Don't Know Why
10 Commercial - Certs
11 The B'zz - Higher
12 The B'zz - Are You High Tonight
13 The B'zz - When You Love
14 Commercial - Jensen
15 Commercial - U.S. Army Reserve
16 Commercial - Certs
17 The B'zz - Make It Through The Night
18 The B'zz - So Hard To Find
19 The B'zz - Get Up Get Angry
20 Sylvie Simmons - BBC Rock Hour 415 Ver. A Outro
Runout grooves: unknown
No scans of the disc labels
We have 200 dpi scans of the cue sheet
From the Sam Eliot's Mustache Collection
Brought to you by the Collective for Live Music
 |
Vacuum tubes are
for amplifiers. |
Why didn't I know about the B'zz? They had talent, songs, a major label contract, and good management support.
I think it's bees. People don't like bees. They say they care deeply about bee extinction, but when a bee flies through their open car window on the freeway, they go nuts.
Bees just don't work in media. In the wake of Spiderman, Harvey Comics tried B-Man, a bee-themed superhero, and he flopped.
Yeah, people are scared of spiders, too, but Charlotte's Web. Come on, you cried at the end of the book, and you never cried for a dead bee.
And Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie didn't set the world on fire, either.
And so to the B'zz.
The first thing is they are "the bees." I'd been pronouncing B'zz as "the Buhzz." That's a problem: deejays must be able to say your name. When was the last time you heard an Eximperituserqethhzebibšiptugakkathšulweliarzaxułum album on the radio? Like, uh...never, man.
Next up: band history.
The B'zz came together from two different bands: the Boyzz were a biker bar band from Chicago; hard macho rock with Southern Rock influences. They had an LP on Epic in 1978 named "Too Wild To Tame." If you want to sample it, it's on Youtube. Sounds pretty good to me, by the way. The Boyzz were part of the induction class this year for The Illinois Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The Boyzz contributed guitarist Michael Tafoya, Anatole Halinkovich on keyboards, and bassist David Angel to the new band.
The other group that contributed members to the new band was the touring version of Steppenwolf. They'd lost original singer John Kay in 1972, but the band had carried on. From a recent version of Steppenwolf (after a short stint in a band named the Pack) came singer Tom Holland; drummer Steven Riley had also been in Steppewolf with Holland.
While they were based in Chicago, the B'zz spent significant time in Los Angeles. In 1981 they played L.A. night clubs like the Troubadour, Hop Singh's, Golden Bear, Madame Wong's West, and the Palomino. They played the larger Perkin's Palace in 1982, opening for the Henry Paul Band. The review said, "The opening act, B'zz, ran through a furious heavy-metal set with the spirit - if not the showmanship - of early Van Halen...the band gave a few signs that it could go quite a way with its antiquated but volatile sound."
I found a great article by Robert Hilburn on the work that went into making this band a success, with the B'zz management team investing $250,000.00, and Epic Records putting $125,000 into recording. I ran those numbers through an online inflation calculator which says that in 2026 dollars, that's $840,000.00 in management support for the group, and $420,000.00 in recording costs.
Every bio of the band mentions that they were the ONLY UNSIGNED BAND IN THE HISTORY OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE TO APPEAR ON AMERICAN BANDSTAND, so I'm required by rock and roll law to say that, too.
With Dick Clark giving them the green light for national television exposure, they were signed by Epic Records. Their album debuted on the Billboard charts at #38.
It was all for naught, unfortunately.
The rest of this comes from a Facebook post about the band by one Ken Voss on the Illinois Music Archives.
"Ultimately, with labels issuing a barrage of new artists trying to find the next big hit, The B’zz got lost in the pile. “It was just bad timing,” recalls Angel. “We weren’t hard rock, we weren’t new wave, we weren’t pop. The label couldn’t decide where to place us.” A year later, The B’zz were history."
But failure in the marketplace doesn't mean the work wasn't any good, and this story could have ended differently.
One of the fun things about these radio shows is increasing the number of songs available from the artist. In the case of the B'zz, they had one album with nine songs. The BBC Rock Hour show adds another seven songs to their discography.
There's another live show from the Galaxy Theater March 3, 1983 with six songs up on Moshpit.com, which adds "Gloria" to their legacy. I also found a newspaper listing that says the B'zz did a WMMS-FM "Coffeebreak Concert" at the Cleveland Agora on March 30, 1983. I haven't down a copy of that, but it is to be hoped that somewhere, there's a tape.
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Anatole Hanlinkovich left the Boyzz, picked up the stage name, Tony Hall and had a career in television writing soundtracks. The score for early ‘90s TV series “America’s Most Wanted" was his work.
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