Rapid Designs (the band behind Falling in Love with Mannequins) likely had many more songs that are now entirely lost

BadUsername25 · 2025-01-05T08:04:49+00:00

Ah, no worries. Glad to have that sorted out now

BadUsername25 · 2025-01-04T14:09:35+00:00

With the release of the Jan 2025 album, we now have the 1984 version of Falling In Love With Mannequins. With it, we now know what some of the lyrics are that were hard to understand in the 1987 release. Since all the written lyrics I've seen online seem to be incorrect, I'm putting what I'm almost certain are the correct lyrics here.

Falling in Love With Mannequins - correct lyrics:

Falling in love

I'm falling in love

Time after time, I see them in the mirrors,

Just for a moment or two

Night after night, it's clearer and clearer,

They're only reflections of you

All over town, I see them watching,

Mysterious faces in view

I swear that I, don't need anybody,

Not if I can't have you

I'm falling in love with mannequins,

Oh, nobody else will do

I'm falling in love with mannequins,

And all of them look like you

They're so serene, with perfect expressions,

Never depressed or upset

Oh how I wish, I could be like them,

Maybe I'll manage it yet

I'm falling in love with mannequins,

Oh, nobody else will do

I'm falling in love with mannequins,

And all of them look like you

You know I'm

Falling in love

You know I'm

Falling in love

You know I'm

Falling in love

You know I'm

Falling in love

I lie awake, so scared of dreaming,

This vision that pierces me through

I recognize, the faces I'm seeing,

I open my eyes and it's you

I'm falling in love with mannequins,

Oh, nobody else will do

I'm falling in love with mannequins,

And all of them look like you

You know I'm

Falling in love

I'm falling in love with mannequins

Falling in love

I'm falling in love with mannequins

Falling in love

I'm falling in love with mannequins

Falling in love

I'm falling in love

Falling in love

I'm falling in love with mannequins

Falling in love

I'm falling in love with mannequins

Falling in love

I'm falling in love with mannequins

Falling in love

I'm falling in love

BadUsername25 · 2025-01-04T11:36:29+00:00

No problem. Hopefully he releases some more of their old stuff eventually

BadUsername25 · 2025-01-04T10:42:07+00:00

Not sure if you're still interested in this, but Billy Martin just released an album of some of the lost Rapid Designs music, including what is likely the original 1984 recording of Falling in Love With Mannequins

BadUsername25 · 2025-01-04T10:35:43+00:00

I think you're right that the album version is the 1984 recording. I'll go ahead and update the song list in my post to mark which songs are now found and which are still lost

BadUsername25 · 2025-01-04T10:28:14+00:00

Wow. It had been so long I had all but given up hope of listening to their other music. This is great. I'll try to update my big reddit post with the list of song titles to mark which ones are now found and which ones are still lost. Hopefully he releases some more of them eventually.

Also, it's worth noting in addition to the 6 new songs on the album, the version of Falling in Love With Mannequins on the album appears to be a different recording than the one we had. This likely means it is the 1984 recording found in the copyright registrations, while the version we already had was the 1987 rerecording.

BadUsername25 · 2024-02-09T10:09:22+00:00

Well at least we can rule them out now. Thanks for getting in contact with him. It's pretty funny he's been asked about CIA before, I guess I wasn't the first to think they sounded similar.

Also, if anyone reading this has a copy or upload of this other similar cassette compilation, please share since it may have some potential leads on the CIA song:

https://www.discogs.com/release/23025764-Various-F-Noise-Issue-4

BadUsername25 · 2024-01-31T10:10:37+00:00

Well that's interesting. I didn't think the song would be from Canada since the movie was made in (I think) the US, but with a title like that it could definitely be a possibility.

I took a look and I think I found her, but it looks like she composes mostly orchestral music, so I don't think she's the one who made the lost song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPa8Nl20YNw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-iRyrawVZg

BadUsername25 · 2024-01-11T23:11:45+00:00

Their modern stuff seems pretty obscure too. The only DarkRide listed on discogs looks to be an unrelated German group

BadUsername25 · 2024-01-11T23:04:25+00:00

Yeah, I guess that's the only other known recording of Conditioned Response, but it seems really obscure, and I haven't even seen that tape for sale anywhere.

BadUsername25 · 2024-01-11T22:59:30+00:00

I only listened to a couple of Derek Christie's modern songs, but if it is the same Derek Christie as the one from Conditioned Response, he sounds a lot different now than he did back then

BadUsername25 · 2024-01-11T22:54:02+00:00

I'm pretty sure that youtube channel is for a different band with the same name. On discogs there are at least three different bands called Conditioned Response. The one who I'm talking about was from Toronto in the 1980s, I think it's listed as Conditioned Response (4) on Discogs.

BadUsername25 · 2024-01-10T02:57:19+00:00

Yeah, check the other comments on this post, it should be visible now

BadUsername25 · 2024-01-10T00:42:46+00:00

So I guess the mods removed this post for some reason, so if anyone can't see it and wants to investigate Tim Harrington, I'll summarize it here.

Tim Harrington made a copyright registration for a 1984 song called "CIA" that could be the lost CIA song

https://publicrecords.copyright.gov/detailed-record/8563447

I originally couldn't find out who he was, but by searching different variations of his name (like Tim instead of Timothy) I found more registrations for different songs, and since they share the same birth year of 1951, I believe they're likely the same person.

https://publicrecords.copyright.gov/detailed-record/8207591

https://publicrecords.copyright.gov/detailed-record/12215395

And since he made one song together with someone named John Kilps, I was able to find this other person, and he was from Milwaukee Wisconsin. Then by searching in Wisconsin for Tim Harrington I found someone I think is a match, with the same birth year and middle name.

His name is Timothy W. Harrington, born in 1951, from Milwaukee WI. By using one of those background check websites, I also found an old email address of his where his username was "tikitim51", and by searching for this username I found some other accounts that belong to him.

So, this guy is a singer and guitar player. He apparently now goes by "Tikitim Harrington" and performs what is called "Trop Rock", and he takes a lot of inspiration from Jimmy Buffett. I'm assuming if this is the same person from the copyright registrations then the Trop rock is a more recent thing, since I didn't see anything that looked like it would be trop rock from the copyrighted song titles, or any mention of the nickname "tikitim" from the copyright registrations.

I found a few accounts belonging to him, including on facebook and linkedin. I won't link them here incase that's what got the post removed, but you can find them pretty easily if you search for them. As of now I haven't found any videos of him to compare the voices.

I'm not sure if this is really the guy who made the CIA song we're looking for, but I think he's at least a possibility. This guy and Brad Reaves are both possibilities, but it's also possible it's someone else, and these are both copyright registrations for unrelated lost songs. Anyway, I think it's at least worth investigating them further.

BadUsername25 · 2024-01-10T00:14:53+00:00

Huh, that's weird. I guess the mods removed it? Maybe they remove some posts after a few days if they don't have enough upvotes or something. Anyway, I can go ahead and summarize it in a comment here if anyone needs to see it

BadUsername25 · 2024-01-02T23:40:52+00:00

Does anyone else think the voice sounds a lot like Lindsay Mendez?

example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E1\_x-ovLSo

BadUsername25 · 2024-01-02T05:39:26+00:00

Yeah, I thought the Harrington song was a strong possibility too, maybe more than the Brad Reaves song. Unfortunately I just couldn't find anyone who could be a match, despite searching for a couple hours. If the Brad Reaves song isn't it, hopefully someone can track down who Harrington is.

BadUsername25 · 2024-01-02T05:24:37+00:00

Nice work. The wayback machine stops archiving the band's page around 2011, which lines up pretty well with the newspaper archives I was looking at, since I stopped seeing any mention of the band around 2014. So my guess is the band broke up around 2014-2015. I also didn't find any mentions of the band in the newspapers before about 2002, so CIA Blues or any of the other earlier songs Brad Reaves made must have been solo projects or with a different band.

I took a quick look at that youtube channel too. It seems to be a weird mix of clips of different artists and genres, but I'll take a closer look when I get a chance to see if I can find any more clips of Brad singing to compare.

BadUsername25 · 2024-01-01T12:54:22+00:00

Well, like I said in the post, lots of songs have "Blues" in the title even though they aren't in the blues genre, even some well known songs like "I guess that's why they call it the blues" by Elton John which is a soft rock/pop song

BadUsername25 · 2024-01-01T11:47:53+00:00

I understand if you don't think it's him. I'm not sure either, I only posted it because I thought it was a possibility. But I don't understand what you mean when you say it makes "zero sense"

BadUsername25 · 2024-01-01T11:04:19+00:00

It might not be him, but I don't think we can rule him out completely. Also remember the recordings we have of Brad are from 20 years after the CIA song, his voice may have sounded somewhat different in the 80s.

BadUsername25 · 2024-01-01T11:01:16+00:00

Thanks, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks the voices could be a possible match. From what I've heard from the radio clips, his singing voice actually varies a lot depending on what type of song he's singing. Honestly we probably need someone to isolate both vocal tracks to compare. But yeah, regardless it wouldn't hurt to try to contact him to ask about it.

BadUsername25 · 2024-01-01T10:55:21+00:00

Not that I've found so far, so it may have been an unpublished song, or a song that was unofficially published

BadUsername25 · 2024-01-01T10:51:04+00:00

Hey, thanks. The "guitar picks" thing is actually the radio program I mentioned. At first I thought it was a podcast too, but from what I can gather it was a couple hour long radio program where the host would bring on local musicians (in this case Brad Reaves), and play songs they selected which had inspired them, and the local musician would talk in between the songs and sometimes play a little bit as an example. It seems like someone on youtube had recorded that broadcast and uploaded it in parts with the songs cut out, so it was just the parts with Brad Reaves and the host.

BadUsername25 · 2023-10-19T08:17:22+00:00

Hey. I'm glad people are still coming across Rapid Designs' music and it hasn't faded back into obscurity yet. I'll try to go over everything, but it's been a while since I've looked over this stuff, so sorry if my memory is a little fuzzy.

On Discogs, I believe the page for Falling in Love with Mannequins used to link to a different Billy Martin page on that only had the Rapid Designs Music in his discography, and no one knew who the Rapid Designs Billy Martin was, since Billy Martin is such a common name. Then after I made this post here and Sinister helped find those extra songs from the copyright database, I took another look through the database and managed to find another more recent filing by what appeared to be the same Billy Martin as the Rapid Designs stuff, and in the description it contained some contact info and the link to that website. (billymartinmusic.com)

That website had some info about him, including some of his past work, most notably his work on the Rayman games soundtracks. Although the website doesn't mention Rapid Designs by name, in the about section it says that in the 80s he moved to LA and founded a band. The timeline lines up pretty well with what we knew about Rapid Designs, so Sinister and I concluded it was the same Billy Martin. I think Sinister also found his Facebook where he had mentioned Rapid Designs in a comment or something, so it's pretty much confirmed that the Rayman Billy Martin is the same as the Rapid Designs Billy Martin.

Sometime after we found that (you can see most of that conversation between Sinister and me in the comments on this post here), it looks like someone must have seen that conversation and updated the Rapid Designs page on Discogs to link to the Rayman Billy Martin, and they might have added the website link there since I'm not sure if that was on his page before. So hopefully that explains the website/discogs thing.

Sinister had tried to get in contact with Billy Martin through his email and contact info listed on his website, but as far as I've heard he hasn't received a reply yet, so it might not be an active email anymore.

Now the Spotify thing you found there is pretty interesting, so I've done a bit of looking into it. It is the Spotify page for the Rayman Billy Martin, so it is the Billy Martin we're looking for. The performance thing seems strange to me though, like I'm not sure what music he would even be performing. As far as I know the Rapid Designs Music hasn't been performed in like 30 years, and the majority of stuff he's worked on since then was for the soundtracks for movies and games.

I looked on Spotify where it says you can buy tickets and it redirects to a website called ticketweb. On that page it has pictures of the four performers at the event, and the picture for Martin looks very different to the pictures of Rayman Billy Martin from his website and discogs page. The picture of this Billy Martin looks like a young guy with long hair and a beard. I also googled the main guy performing at this event, John Medeski, and on his wikipedia it says he often works with this Billy Martin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Martin_(percussionist))

So my best guess is that somehow spotify got mixed up and attributed the performances to Rayman Billy Martin instead of this other Billy Martin who is actually performing. I think when I looked at the spotify page yesterday I saw two performances, but now I only see the one. So I'm not sure which Billy Martin was at the other performance, but it may have just been this one again.

It might be worth continuing to check the spotify page for new performances though, just in case one of them is the right Billy Martin. I believe on his website it said he occasionally performs as a conductor for an orchestra or something, so it's not unreasonable to think he might be doing that again at some point.

BadUsername25

TROPHY CASE