Kajagoogoo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kajagoogoo was a British pop band best known for its first single, "Too Shy", which reached number one in the UK Singles Chart and number five in the U.S Billboard Hot 100 in 1983. The single was produced by keyboardist Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran and Colin Thurston who was, at the time, Duran Duran's in-house producer.

The band was founded in Leighton Buzzard, south Bedfordshire, UK in 1979 as a four piece avant-garde instrumental group called Art Nouveau, with Nick Beggs on bass guitar, Steve Askew on lead guitar, Stuart Neale on keyboards and Jez Strode on drums. Art Nouveau released a track called "The Fear Machine". The single sold a few hundred copies, and was played on the John Peel show, but the band could not get a record deal.

In 1981, they advertised for and auditioned lead singers, and finally chose Christopher Hamill. He made his profile, and therefore that of the band, catchier by using an anagram of his surname for his stage name, becoming Limahl. The name of the band was then changed to Kajagoogoo. Writing out the phonetics of a baby's first sounds gave them "GagaGooGoo". With a little bit of "casual" alteration it became Kajagoogoo.

The band attracted the interest of three record labels (and Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes) while performing at the Embassy Club in London. The band was signed to EMI in July of 1982, and Rhodes was signed to produce their first album, White Feathers. In between they supported Birmingham new romantic band Fashion on tour. The debut single "Too Shy" was released in January of 1983 and went to the top of the charts (before any of Duran Duran's singles had done so, Rhodes noted ruefully). Follow-up releases "Ooh to Be Ah" and "Hang on Now" both reached the UK top twenty as well.

The band fired Limahl in 1983 after a huge disagreement, with Beggs taking over as singer, but the hits dried up completely. In an attempt to gain some credibility and lose the bubblegum image they relaunched as Kaja in 1985. This version of Kajagoogoo was failure, and they broke up for good in 1986.

Limahl enjoyed a brief successful solo career, scoring a hit with the movie theme song "Never Ending Story" in 1984. Limahl continued to record, without much chart success; eventually, his records were not released in either the U.S. or the UK — his last album, 1992's Love Is Blind, was only released in Germany [1]. The band briefly joined forces again on VH1's Bands Reunited (26 January 2004, Season 1, Episode 6).