The Hawks

This five-piece Midwestern power pop outfit—keyboardist Dave Hearn, guitarists Dave Steen and Kirk Kaufman, bassist Frank Wiewel, and drummer Larry Adams—boasted four capable songwriters and lead vocalists who competed for space across the group’s pair of full-length releases, with Adams the sole member excluded from the writing roster. On their two Columbia outings, the 1981 self-titled debut and the 1982 follow-up 30 Seconds Over Otho, each of the principal creators secured album real estate, Hearn edging out the others by a narrow margin. Neither record managed to ignite the charts, prompting Columbia to drop the act, after which the musicians disbanded. The group thus joined the roster of early-eighties bands felled by the era’s notorious two-album contract pattern, a list that also includes the Elektrics, the Deserters, the Laughing Dogs, and Four Out of Five Doctors.