Living Colour Says MMR Saved the Band During Make or Break Moment
Living Colour founding member Vernon Reid is very active on Twitter. This week he shared a fact about the band’s first single, clearing up that it was actually “Middle Man,” not “Cult of Personality” as many people (and Wikipedia) may think:
Cult was our Hail Mary-Middle Man only got enough college radio play to put @LivingColour in a van for long night drives. If Cult didn’t work, we MIGHT have had one more shot, but I SINCERELY doubt it. Cult Of Personality was our 2nd & LAST dice roll. It came up 7.
— Vernon Reid (@vurnt22) July 15, 2020
Thanks to YOU
The band put everything on the line with that song and if it didn’t work out that could have been the beginning of end for the New York based rockers. Twitter user @laughingat45 replied to the factoid with an interesting question, did MTV or FM radio break the song first during that college tour? The answer blew the minds of the new generation of MMR employees, we never knew!:
WMMR in Philly broke the song, & it immediately got phones. It got added in Boston by Oedipus, it was a breakout . Chicago. WNEW in NY. We did the video with Drew Carolan directing to seize the momentum. I remember the playback of the vid thinking I’d never seen anything like it. https://t.co/hw0U5FOVxl
— Vernon Reid (@vurnt22) July 15, 2020
Flashback to Living Colour’s 2013 performance at Camp Out for Hunger:
