“It was a crime, it was such a disgrace
You really shattered my world.” – The Flirts

The previous post dedicated to Foreigner and featuring their hit “Juke Box Hero” lead me down a rabbit-hole of sorts. A rabbit hole of some of the more popular juke box related songs of the 80’s and in turn to one of the more forgotten girl groups of the early 80’s.

Occasionally I come across these nostalgia-laden music boxes in and around different locales. For instance, there is a pizza joint I frequent in Oklahoma City called Bella’s. They have one that holds cds, and the small restaurant reminded me a little of this video and maybe the only reason I would ever have of writing about a little known girl group called The Flirts.

Formed by record producer Bobby “O” Orlando, perhaps the most popular semblance of the group (there would be numerous versions throughout the years) consisted of Chicago native Rebecca Sullivan, New Yorker Andrea Del Conte & west coast’s Hope Rayman (San Fernando). It is those three that you’ll see in maybe their most popular video. It’s the one I remember the most anyway.

The actual jukebox in the video below appears to be a 1978 NSM Music Prestige E 160 (similar to the one above) that held up to 160 45’s. Sometime around 1951-52, the three founding members, Herman Nack, Gerhard Schulze, and Wilhelm Menke formed NSM in Braunschweig, Germany mostly to handle their expanding juke box distribution  business. At this time, jukeboxes were more popular in Germany than anywhere else in the world, and the three began handling the distribution of Seeburg jukeboxes in the early 50’s but started producing their own jukeboxes beginning with the Fanfare 60 model sometime around 1956. NSM Music continued on until being acquired by AMI Entertainment Network in February of 2017.

“Little things remind me of you
Cheap cologne and that damn song, too.”

After not seeing this video since the 80’s, I did enjoy a look back at it today. I especially enjoy all the old people staring at the trio as they walk down the streets of NYC surely thinking to themselves who the hell or what the hell is going on! The fashion is pure 80’s in this video and the famous “House of Oldies” record store since 1969 makes an appearance in the video as well, but I’m not a NYC guy so I couldn’t tell you if it’s still there or not.

“Don’t put another dime in the jukebox
I don’t want to hear that song no more”

From their 1982 “10 Cents a Dance” debut album (yes kids, jukeboxes once cost 10 cents per song), this is the video for a song that made it up to #28 on the U.S. dance charts – “Jukebox (Don’t Put Another Dime).”

Here’s a “live” version of them singing the song on American Bandstand back in the day when it was perfectly acceptable to gush over how beautiful the women were (“is that a redhead or is that a redhead!?”), or how well they “moved.” Dick Clark was in the perfect voice in the perfect time period for this show.

And if you just can’t get enough of these Flirts and cringy interviews, you can check out MTV’s own Mark Goodman with them from around the same time (Rebecca apparently did not co-write any of these tunes, Mark! Someone fed you some bad facts!).

As always, thanks for reading.

sincerely,

the80’s