Friday Nite Retro

Good evening and welcome to this weeks edition of Friday Nite Retro - where everybody knows your name, but won't tell your real age or the contents of your iPod! According to my friend Jack, I'm the only person who liked these guys? Is that true?? Help me out here!

Brothers Mike and Ali Score formed A Flock of Seagulls in 1979 in Liverpool, England. Mike played keyboards, guitar, and sang lead vocals, Ali played drums, and their friend Frank Maudsley played bass. The band took their name from a line in the song "Toiler on the Sea" by The Stranglers, which appears on their album Black and White. The band added guitarist Paul Reynolds and began writing songs, playing clubs and trying to land a record contract. They became notable in the 1980s for their MTV video for the song "I Ran (so far away):


I Ran


The two follow up songs actually did better worldwide, but never matched the initial success of "I Ran" here in the US.

Space Age Love Song


Wishing


The More You Live, The More You Love


Mike Score's distinctive hairstyle has been mentioned, copied, and parodied many times in the media, most notably in the American television sitcoms Friends (by Chandler and Ross, during their college years, when they joined a new wave band) and That 70's Show. It has also been referred to in movies such as Pulp Fiction and The Wedding Singer.

A Diet Pepsi commercial shows a man telling us that he wants to feel young again, then it shows a montage of the man with Score's hairstyle while the song "I Ran (So Far Away)" plays, but finding out it's a bad idea.

In the song "Albuquerque" by "Weird Al" Yankovic, the song's main character encounters a hermaphrodite with a "Flock of Seagulls haircut" in which they both get involved in a violent scuffle for ownership of a 'lucky, lucky autographed glow in the dark snorkel.':



In a Supercuts commercial, a man enters a hair salon. After a few moments he notices that the only hairstyle given is Mike Score's famous haircut. (In the background, the sound of seagulls can be heard.)

When Danny Pintauro came out of the closet, The Daily Show blamed the Flock of Seagulls haircut on Who's the Boss? as the instigator of his orientation.

In the film The Wedding Singer, Adam Sandler's character approaches an air steward who is sporting a Mike Score hairstyle. The steward says "Do you like Flock of Seagulls?" with Sandler's reply, "I can see you do."

In an XM Satellite Radio TV commercial, the logo's wavelengths take different shapes; one of which is Mike Score's hairstyle as the guitar riff for "I Ran (So Far Away)" plays on the background.