Planet P Project

After his time handling keyboards for Rainbow during the 1970s, the Californian musician Tony Carey moved to Germany and launched a solo career. Early in the following decade he notched modest chart entries with tracks such as “I Won’t Be Home Tonight,” “A Fine, Fine Day,” and “The First Day of Summer.” He simultaneously established a partnership with German producer Peter Hauke that operated under the name Planet P Project, a venture in which Carey supplied every composition and performed nearly all instrumental parts. Their self-titled 1983 debut blended the era’s synthesizer textures with echoes of the progressive rock that had preceded it. Thanks to frequent MTV rotation, the single “Why Me?” gained traction at album-rock stations, reached the Top Ten there, and crossed into the pop listings; a second cut, “Static,” also secured moderate AOR play. The follow-up, issued as a double album titled Pink World in autumn 1984, proved still more expansive. This ambitious concept work extended the musical approach of the Planet P Project debut while exploring Cold War anxieties prevalent in the mid-1980s. Although it drew less notice than its predecessor, the track “What I See” registered a minor radio response. Ultimately, the stronger commercial performance of Carey’s 1984 solo album Some Tough City—whose two Top 40 singles were again “A Fine, Fine Day” and “The First Day of Summer”—prompted him to set Planet P Project aside.