One Hit History: Chad Cochran Nerds Out on Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me With Science”

Chad Cochran, AKA Cowtown Chad, is a noted rock photographer and visual artist from Cleveland. His latest project, I Didn’t Want to Tell You, focuses on normalizing the conversation about mental health.

This week on One Hit History, Chad nerds out with Sloane over his favorite one hit wonder — “She Blinded Me With Science” originally released in 1982 by Thomas Dolby. Part of Dolby’s appeal is over his pure love of music in all its forms, which eventually led him away from the stage and into being an audio professor, and founding a technology company that created the iconic and polyphonic Nokia ringtone that was part of the soundtrack for the 90s.

List of links

• Chad Cochran AKA Cowtownchad


• I Didn’t Want to Tell You featured in No Depression print magazine


• Thomas Dolby “She Blinded Me With Science”


• “She Blinded Me With Science” US long version video


• One Hit Wonders playlist on Spotify


• Thomas Dolby’s profile at Johns Hopkins University


• Challenging Audio to Take the Next Step


• The Nokia ringtone


• Max Headroom


• Science! Guy is Magnus Alfred Pyke, TV presenter and scientist 


• Outtakes, sneak peeks, and bonus episodes

Music mentions

• Oingo Boingo


• Foreigner


• Soft Boys


• Chic/Nile Rodgers


• Orleans


• Roger Waters/Pink Floyd


• Def Leppard


• George Clinton


• Duran Duran — Annie Zaleski (author of Duran Duran Rio book)


• Flaming Lips


• Talking Heads

Don’t forget to give One Hit History a five star rating! 

Transcript

Sloane Spencer

I should maybe not tell a funny story on myself. So I got into a huge bar disagreement with somebody about “She Blinded Me with Science” because the person that was talking to me kept insisting that it was by Oingo Boingo, and I kept saying, “It’s Thomas Dolby!” And I was like, ready to get in a fist fight in a bar with some huge dude that this was Thomas Dolby and not Oingo Boingo. I should probably be way more embarrassed about that than I am….

This is Sloane Spencer.  Y’all might know me from my decades in radio, and you might know me from my pioneering podcast, long form interview, conversations with “musicians you don’t know you love yet” called Country Fried Rock. And also I’m an adult living with ADD — and that means that when I get inspiration, oh my God, I’m going to do four things, and I’m going to do them all in the next 48 hours.

And that is where this new podcast is. It’s called One Hit History, where I talk with music people about their favorite one hit wonder. So of course I hit up some of my favorite friends first to get us started. (I also like alliteration. If you don’t know that already.) You can support us on Patreon at patreon.com/onehithistory, where you’ll find bonus content and episode outtakes — and no, I’m not afraid to make fun of myself.

Or just listen on our website OneHitHistory.com or your favorite podcast app. It seems a little silly, but especially for a new program like this, those five star ratings and reviews really help.

So we’re going to chat with Chad Cochran. You might know him better as CowtownChad, a noted rock photographer and visual artist, been around the scene for quite some time with some amazing work and an incredible multimedia project called “I Didn’t Want to Tell You.” Let’s have him tell you a little bit about what’s going on these days.

Chad Cochran

Right. And Hey, thanks for having me. I’m excited to do this One Hit Wonders. It’s one of those things that I’ve always found completely fascinating. So when you messaged me and said something about this, you didn’t have to say anything. I was immediately ready to go.

Sloane Spencer

So I appreciate that about you and the fact that you are one of the people that I can text, like this five sentence text, and like, “Hey, by the way, you don’t have to answer me til later.”

Chad Cochran

Thank you. Yeah, and you as well. I know that we both use each other as sounding boards and I always appreciate that very much, so very much.

Sloane Spencer

So Chad Cochran, what project are you working on these days?

Chad Cochran

So the big thing I’m working on right now is I’m switching studios. So not as much projects as I normally am working on.

I can say that I’m excited that I picked up some work and it’s exciting to hopefully be towards the back end of the pandemic. And people are starting to have little more normalcy in their lives and touring is kicking back in. And so that’s making people get back on the road, which means they’re usually passing through or gives me the opportunity to also travel down to Nashville, which I was just recently at AmericanaFest and did a bunch of portraits down there.

But yeah, the big news is I had a wonderful experience at 70th street studios in Cleveland for a few years. And great news is that I have kind of outgrown the space. So I need a place that’s a little bit bigger and I want to get more into creating my own backdrops and my own things that are incredibly unique.

And I was a little bit limited with my ability to do that at that studio. And so starting in December, I will be moving to the east side of downtown Cleveland. It’s a great area and I’m excited to start something.

Sloane Spencer

This is exciting news and perhaps a great way to incorporate some of that visual art that you, how I first got to know you.

Chad Cochran

Absolutely very cool stuff.

Sloane Spencer

So Chad Cochran is known primarily as CowtownChad and Cowtown is the alternate name for Cleveland, so you can look him up real easily online: CowtownChad.com. We’ll talk more about what y’all can do if you are interested in reaching out to Chad at the end of the program. So let’s jump right in to One Hit History here.

What’s your favorite one hit wonder?

Chad Cochran

So the deep breath is needed because there were so many to choose from. Like, I love this subject. It is so good. Like that’s what I told you. Like when you messaged me, I’m like, I totally want to do this. Because I grew up around kind of like that yacht rock, one hit wonder type music, like Orleans, although Orleans had a couple of songs, but like Fireball, like those kinds of bands, like immediately came into my head because that was more like growing up in my parents’ era.

I tried to do it in more of a formative time. So I instead switched to the early and by early, I mean, very early MTV era. And I went with, “She Blinded Me with Science” by Thomas Dolby.

Sloane Spencer

You’re talking my language!

Chad Cochran

… and I did a little homework. In my brain, but I kind of knew how old I was when that came out. And I kind of remembered that. So I would have been around 10 or 11 when that song came out