Pop Music

The Greg Kihn Band, the Berkeley bar band that scored a handful of Top 40 hits in the early 1980s with infectious power-pop anthems like “The Breakup Song (They Don’t Write ‘Em)” and “Jeopardy,” will be appearing tonight at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach.

Singer-guitarist Kihn, a Berkeley record-store clerk, founded the group in 1975. A year later, the band signed with the tiny independent Beserkley Records label and gradually built a national nightclub following through incessant touring and strong FM radio air play of songs like “For You” and “Rendezvous,” both written by Bruce Springsteen.

It wasn’t until 1981, after Beserkley had signed a distribution deal with mighty Elektra Records, that the Greg Kihn Band finally cracked the American Top 40 with “The Breakup Song.” The group immediately graduated from nightclubs to major arenas, and more hits followed, including “Jeopardy” in 1983 and “Lucky” in 1985.

But once a bar band, always a bar band--and more than two years after their last big hit, the Greg Kihn Band is once again playing nightclubs all over the country.