Hot Chocolate - Classic Or Dud?

Uber classic : EOAW, Emma, So You Win Again ("..and here I stand again - a LOSER!"), Brother Louie, I'll Put You Together Again, No Doubt About It ("Let me tell you about the other night/it was really frightening") and It Started With a Kiss ("You don't remember me do you/you don't remember me DO you")

**the Real Thing's "You To Me Are Everything" (i cannot understand why Dr C rates that song so highly)**

I could talk for hours about why YTMAE is a supreme distillation of everything that's good about 70's pop-disco - the upful urban hustle pivoting around the bass/drums/wah groove, the warm harmonies, Chris Amoo's gravelly yearning, the best chorus eve - but I haven't really got much time this morning. Maybe later.

Yeah, the entire song calls her Emiline most often, but they title it Emma.

"Emmeline? Emma? Emily? no don't tell me... Erica? .."

Dods OTM abt Errol.

I quite like "So You Win Again" actually, though it stands out far less as an interesting record than the two above. Quite workaday, but decent 70s pop I'd say.

Agree more with Dr C than RC on "You To Me Are Everything"; as well as the chorus itself, one of the greatest after-chorus bits as well, after the first... Not quite one of my few favourites on the fantastic "Pure Groove" compilations, but IMO it is excellent. The intro reminds me a bit of Odyssey's "Native New Yorker", which in its long version is one of the most sublime pieces of urban(e) disco I've ever heard.

Dud: 'You Sexy Thing'; wouldn't be if the next term I heard it was the first. But really, its ubiquity has been grating. It's not a great song IMO either. "Every One's A Winner" is much better, and I need to listen to it again...

Never liked their 70s stuff, but they did a lot of classy singles in the 80s. Love "No Doubt About It", "It Started With a Kiss" and "What Kind Of Boy You're Looking For Girl"

Wow, I came in here to say that was my fave Hot Choccie record. But I liked "I'll Put You Together Again" too so my taste is obviously suspect.

I saw Errol Brown coming out of the toilet of a bar in Soho once. I was surprised how short he was.

Anyway, totally classic.

seeing as Hot Chocolate were huge in Germany, i suspect Geir may well be right (although, being British, the only one of those songs i know is the one about a brother called Louie ...)

Night Ride is my favourite train-themed disco song. and that is saying a lot.

i seem to be hearing a bit of hot chocolate when i'm out these days, including rub n tug deploying 'heaven's in the backseat of my cadillac' last night to pretty devastating effect. still trying to work out if it was an edit or not, because it kicked a lot harder than i remember!

let me take you thayyyyyyyyyyyyere

YEAH YEAH

I always played Hot Chocolate when DJing -- pretty much every time. Usually "Brother Louie" into, say, Earthquake's version of "Emma" (into "Sister Havana" by Urge Overkill, since they also covered "Emma"), or maybe Hot Chocolate's "Emma" original into the Stories' version of "Brother Louie". Or something like that. But yeah, "Heaven's In The Back Seat Of My Cadillac" too sometimes. Or "Rumours." XIV Greatest Hits (RAK Germany, 1977) is awesome. Don't really know their individual albums, though.

(They were always good for playing immmediately after Junior or Linx, too, if I wanted to get a little Brit-soul-conceptual for the people. Not that the people every really noticed, or anything.)

My first EVAH single was Girl Crazy. I still think they are TOPS.

I don't care about the colour of her hair. I don't care about the colour of her skin that she's wrapped in.
All I want is a personality that's righth for me.

Words to live by. The song still makes me happy as fuck every time I hear it or sing it to myself.

xhuxk, do you beat match all this stuff???

'cadillac' is amazing.

do you beat match all this stuff???

Hells no. (Well, by my ears maybe. I just play stuff that would sound good next to each other. That's hard enough as is, without adding numbers to it.)

i was obsessed with the s/t second hot chocolate album last year. so amazing. and so varied. "hello america", "dollar sign", "call the police". "you sexy thing" might have been the smash, but the whole thing is great. i need their first album and some of the later stuff. such a cool group. i might have to dig out my every 1's a winner 12 inch today.

Anyone here ever play out Every 1's a Winner? I did the other night and (thankfully) people loved it...
It was a big slow down but it's got that monster guitar riff that gets everyone in a dancing mood.
In fact, I'd say that Hot Chocolate is a pretty good music-slower-downer-but-party-keepin-on-going pick.

there is a machine in my office kitchen space that makes this (and other things i haven't delved into)
i am trying it for the first time
i feel like i am taking a break on a cold day of ice skating
but i am just taking a break from being super busy not ice skating

"Every 1's a Winner" is sounding REALLY good right now.

actually this cafe has been playing a pretty smoking mix of disco and late soul.

what do you think of this version of it?
http://www.robotsinheat.com/trax/EveryonesAWinner.mp3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbZHSDsK2DM&feature=g-high-u

Not a thread I expected to be posting on ...

But if I love this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcq4s6GfM9s

Heard first via this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo7i_pHEWNg

what do I listen to next?

just work your way through the 70s records and see how you like them imo. 1st album is front-to-back amazing and loads of great stuff after. Saw them live recently and errol brown has not aged a day

I love the tune "You Sexy Thing". I got to know it as back in the 90s there was a surf/punk rock band in Bloomington called Speed Luxury that played that song all the time. I might have heard the Hot Chocolate tune as a kid and it became a more ubiquitous tune later on with advertising and being used in movies, but I got to know it from hearing Speed Luxury's cover live.

Ta.

Yeah the first album is their best album. I also really love Everyone's a winner which is great all the way through. I find most of their other albums a bit uneven but there are some gems hidden away on them. I recently got their 20 Hottest Hits compilation which is well worth getting as they had a bunch of great singles not on their albums which are all on there.

Then Play Long reaches to the sensational and somewhat scary world of Hot Chocolate: http://nobilliards.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/hot-chocolate-very-best-of-hot-chocolate.html

Aw man. Errol Brown has passed.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-32613573

never thought it would come to this :(

these guys ruled

They certainly did... RIP Errol :(((((((

Mindless boogie 'til we drop, don't stop :(

Probably listen to "Put Your Love In Me" the most these days, but I cherish the memory of caning the Revenge Rework of "Cadillac" at a house party before going out to see the touring Horse Meat Disco - who promptly played the same at the peak of their set, much to the delight of our crew.

RIP.

RIP. Such an underrated group and singer.

RIP

I had completely forgotten "Heaven's In The Back Seat of my Cadillac" until this minute, and I'm not sure how I knew it; it wasn't a hit in the US. Probably a promo single I picked up. I had no idea they had so many UK hits!

oh man, that stinks. this band has never gotten its critical due -- and by that i guess i mean any critical due.

i remember sitting in a coffee shop a few years ago, a bit glum over a shitty situation that had come up at work. this song--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQsg6XXGxXQ

--came on, happily very loud, and suddenly nothing else mattered anymore. what a jam.

Ah didn't see this. Saw them a couple of years ago, apparently he died without ageing

Xp they are the only group to have a hit in every year of the 70s & iirc that continued quite a bit into the 80s!

...and as i discovered a few years ago, their LPs are surprisingly solid. some of 'em, anyway.

xpost.

also, shout out to the scene in 'alice in the cities' when the main character is listening to 'brother louie' on the radio and starts cursing when the DJ fades it out early.

RIP the hitmeister, no doubt about it.

:(

Yeah, I need to delve into these guys more. I don't know them outside their biggest hits, but every one I know I love.

Hot Chocolate were amazing. Thanks Errol.

Saw them a couple of years ago, apparently he died without ageing

he left the band in 1986.

a bbc4 clips doc was just on. I'd just left it on as nothingy background to solitary reading but it was great - I'd never realised how consistently good they were, or even what they were, really - the 60s hippie-ish stuff jarred me into attention.

Yeah, I hadn't heard "A Childs Prayer" since it was a hit. Funny how they used to have alternating lead singers until.

I was about to say that "Mindless Boogie" is the only (surely!) hit single to mention Jonestown until I discovered it wasn't a hit!

It was a bit of a hit. 46.

can we talk about "mindless boogie"? is it the creepiest disco song ever?

One of my favourite Hot Chocolate songs to DJ; always thought it was a great bridge between 50s atom bomb songs and "Drop The Bomb"/Green Velvet ("like clones and robots that we are" makes me think of Alice Cooper's Numan/Devo move). Love the stern/cheek-puffing "very strange, very strange".

it reminds me of talking heads

12 inch of this is perfect and timeless

/Saw them a couple of years ago, apparently he died without ageing/

he left the band in 1986.

lol omg

lol seconded

I liked this = she's right, adults don't drink enough of it.

https://theoutline.com/post/7029/hot-chocolate-is-for-grown-ups-now?zd=1&zi=dc662vvf

i've got some Swiss Miss and I think I'll make a cup. it ain't high falutin' but it's really good when made with milk

haha the group AND the drink are classic. God I am tired!

In my new job there are two women in the small team I'm in. Their names are Emma and Emily. I'm dreading December.

"Every 1's A Winner" is in my top 10 fave songs.

i knew someone who worked at a primary (grade for you north american types) school as a teacher. the staff had an end of year bbq party with all the staff invited, not just the teachers.

the school receptionist, a quiet older woman, got in her cups and for all the assembled told a detailed, rapturous story about making love to Errol Brown after a Hot Chocolate concert in the 1970s

Blimey.

can we talk about "mindless boogie"? is it the creepiest disco song ever?

― the late great, Friday, October 9, 2015 10:01 PM (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

had literally never noticed the lyrics to this but im giving it a listen and damn, very dark

Fantastic story, Jim

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