Iain Matthews - "Bouncing Around"

"Bouncing Around"

After Plainsong collapsed due to a bandmate's alcohol problem, and with his career now based in Los Angeles, Matthews released several more albums with ad hoc bands: Journeys from Gospel Oak (1972); Valley Hi (1973), produced by Michael Nesmith, (formerly of the Monkees); Some Days You Eat The Bear (1974); Go For Broke (1975). None of these met with commercial success. He bounced from Elektra to Columbia Records, to the small Rockburgh label, where he finally scored a hit single in 1978 with a cover of Terence Boylan's "Shake It", which reached #13 in the U.S.A charts. He had a moderately successful follow-up covering Robert Palmer's "Gimme an Inch". However, the North American rights for his album were held by the small Canadian label Mushroom. Label-owner Shelly Siegel died suddenly in 1979, leaving the label rudderless. The song "Shake It" is heard at the beginning of the 1980 movie Little Darlings. It can also be heard on the radio in the game The Warriors from Rockstar games.

Matthews' official web site states that at this point he "had been struggling for nearly 15 years now and was still living hand to mouth, with nothing to show for his efforts but a string of out-of-print albums, and the loyalty of those musicians and fans who shared his vision." He moved from Los Angeles to then-inexpensive Seattle, where he teamed up with David Surkamp, formerly of the St. Louis band Pavlov's Dog, to form the power pop band Hi-Fi, whose repertoire included Matthews originals, but also covers of Neil Young's "Mr. Soul" and Prince's "When You Were Mine". Neither this nor a return to solo recording in England turned his luck. He worked for a while in an A&R capacity at Island Records and then New Age Windham Hill Records.