Song of the Day 9/23: Robert Hazard, “Change Reaction”
Forty years ago, Robert Hazard was the biggest thing on Philadelphia’s music scene. Hazard, born Robert Rimato to an operatic tenor who lived in Delaware County, played folk, country and even reggae before turning to electro-pop New Wave music in the late ’70s and assembling a backing band, the Heroes, who adopted the matching-suit-skinny-tie style of the time. They proved their popularity when their self-released eponymous EP topped 100,000 in sales.
Hazard’s most famous song, the only one to reach the national charts, was “Escalator of Life,” which had a killer hook and a danceable groove, but Hazard sang it with such a Bowie/Brian Ferry-inflected baritone that I thought it was a novelty record. This song also made the MTV playlist, and better reflects what the band sounded like.
Hooters drummer David Uosikkinen re-recorded the song with In the Pocket, a collection of Philly musicians who play music from their past projects.
Hazard died in 2008, age 59, in a Boston hospital after an operation for pancreatic cancer.
As a young teenager in the early 1980s, I spent a lot of time listening to WMMR, which gave airtime to Robert Hazard and the Heroes, the Hooters, Beru Revue, the A’s, and Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers. I’m still listening to Pierre Robert as much as possible, by the way.