This week (August 25, 2009) the legendary Smokey Robinson released the album Time Flies When You're Having Fun which is a self-produced and written CD of mostly new material & collaborations with other artists. This is the 69-year-old Robinson's 23rd album released since he went solo from the Miracles back in 1972. As a member of the The Miracles and as a solo artist, Robinson has delivered 37 Top 40 hits for Motown between 1960 and 1987. He also served as the company's Vice President from 1961 to 1988. Robinson is one of my all-time favorites and he even had some bigtime hits in the 80s including "Being With You" (1981), "Just To See Her" (1987) and "One Heartbeat" (1987).

The band ABC recorded a tribute song called "When Smokey Sings" that referenced Robinson's influence on the music industry. The single peaked at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. In an interesting occurrence, for the week of October 3, 1987, the song dropped to #8 as Smokey Robinson's own single "One Heartbeat" was peaking at #10. That instance of having a tributor and tributee in the Billboard Top 10 at the same time was a rarity if not a unique event. With Smokey's new album release, I decided to make this week's Flashback Video "When Smokey Sings" by ABC...

ABC is a British new wave band led by singer Martin Fry. They had two other hits during the 80s that I quite like as well, "The Look of Love" from 1982's The Lexicon of Love and "Be Near Me" from 1984's How to Be a Zillionaire. "When Smokey Sings" was on the 1987 album Alphabet City and was the band's last single to chart in the U.S. Currently, ABC is touring the U.S. as the headliner of the 2009 "Regeneration Tour," which also features Terri Nunn of Berlin, Wang Chung, and The Cutting Crew. I have always liked the band's sound and the fact that they paid tribute to one of my all-time favorites in Smokey Robinson just makes them that much better.

That will do it for this issue of Kickin' it Old School. Thanks for reading. If you are interested in reading any of my other 80s related issues, please click there for a summary of those. If you want to see the past issues of Flashback Videos, just type that into the Google Search Box at the top of the right hand column and it should give you a list of all of them. You can also always click on the Archives in the upper left hand column or use that Google Search Box to find any past issues or topics you may have missed. If you are a fan of Kickin' it, PLEASE CLICK ON THE FACEBOOK LOGO in the upper right hand column. This will take you to the Fan Page where I ask you to then click on "Become a Fan". Even if you are not a Facebook member yet, please consider joining and registering as a fan at that page. You can also now follow Old School on Twitter by clicking on the FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER LOGO also in the upper right hand column. This will take you the page and you can just click on the box that says "Follow". Let other 80s fans know about it as well! Peace and much love.