The Innocents are a new wave band consisting of Michael Hurt, Thomas Newman, Tony Kowalski, Marten Ingle, and Chris Kaye.
They released on album on Boardwalk Records in 1982.
They were the subject of a one-hour NBC documentary called "Rock and Roll Dreams" which aired on February 21, 1982.
Michael Convertino, also known as Michael Hurt went on to compose music for films and television shows. He composed music for Tim Burton's 1984 short "Frankenweenie", Hollywood Vice Squad, Faerie Tale Theatre, Children of a Lesser God, The Santa Clause, Christmas Snow, Mistress, The Hidden, Bull Durham, Queen Of Hearts, Jungle 2 Jungle and many more.
Thomas Newman also went onto compose music for films and be a conductor. His work is featured in Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi, Less Than Zero, Scent Of A Woman, Corrina Corrina, The Shawshank Redemption, American Beauty, The Green Mile, Erin Brockovich, Finding Nemo, Six Feet Under, Poseidon, Avatar, The Help, Saving Mr. Banks, Finding Dory, A Man Called Otto, Elemental and many more.
Marten Ingle went on to found Fish Ranch Records, Fish Ranch Music and Fish Ranch Studio. He also worked with the Ellen Birath Band, Marty Gras and The Flamingo Lightning Orchestra, The Willys, Zebra Crossing and ZIP.
The Innocents are one of the many overlooked artists from the new wave era who are a band you've gotta hear. Like many great artists, they weren't promoted as they should've been and that's why they have a small audience. If you haven't heard of these guys, check them out.
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I’ve been looking for a copy of that NBC special for decades! Must be a copy out there somewhere!
I was the drummer
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GFOas2QYP3wiNNiG3PjjMGukvPpJokVq/view
First off, this is really bad and the title should be “A Rock and Roll Nightmare” or how to instantly ruin a bands career. We initially refused to do the opening scene of us running down the street like idiots saying we got a deal. They were trying to turn us into the Monkees when we were in fact serious musicians. Tommy and Michael had both received their MFA’s from Yale University in Music. Our management insisted we do the shot but promised it would be cut from the show. They lied. Scott Rudin, who is now a famous Broadway and Film producer and was also a friend of Tommy's, was the original producer of the T.V. show. He hired D.A. Pennebaker, who is a legendary music documentarian who directed Bob Dylan's Don't Look Back, and Monterey Pop. He came in and shot our band in his style for several days. Apparently Dick Clark who was in charge of NBC's Project Peacock, thought that the footage was too raw for primetime T.V. and replaced Rudin and Pennebaker with a commercial TV director hack named Kevin Eggers, who turned our band into The Monkees and titled the show Rock and Roll Dreams to fit a prime-time audience. In addition, the T.V. show was specifically designed to come out after the record release so people (especially radio stations) would not judge us as a "TV Band" made up of actors like The Monkees. As it turned out, unfortunately, Dick Clark had a slot to fill in his show and decided to move us up in the schedule, so our album was now going to come out after the T.V. show aired, which the band was completely against. As predicted, when the album came radio DJ's wouldn't play it because they didn't think it was cool to promote a TV Band. Which is ironic because in this day and age, Music, TV, and Film Stars are all over TV promoting stuff. That was not the case prior to MTV. So with the death of Neil Bogart, which shut down the label and pulled us off tour, and this issue with Dick Clark, our band collapsed. Tommy and Michael were having musical differences. They both wanted me to join their separate projects and I was the drummer in a new band Michael was putting together which included Marty, but that turned unstable so I continued to work with Tommy as we were close friends and I was also dating his cousin Melissa Newman. We worked together for several years on a project we called Children of 13 as his father Alfred died when he was thirteen, and my father left my family when I was thirteen. He and I recorded a lot of music, but then he got a manager for doing music for TV and Films. I played on the score for his first movie "Reckless" (it was also Scott's first movie as a film producer) as well as Grandview U.S.A. his second movie. Unfortunately, I wasn't cut out or interested in studio work and wanted to join another band, so we slowly parted ways.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m3qL9xK2gCdQZnqdxCzlRKl5iKde9LW5/view?usp=drive_link
Here's the full Bandstand from January 1982.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fcIJ2as4fD1xtt7vhm9QRxfYCFFpk-pL/view?usp=drive_link