Here's the third and final set of notes. As predicted, the Bryan Adams track has been taken down, but there's still an extended "Glenn Rivera ReStructure Mix" on YouTube which doesn't fuck around with it too much. When the vocals finally appear at 5:02, it sounds as if the remixer has pitched them back down to a more natural level.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2VbPwUgtLk
Shobizz was a one-off disco project (one album, one single) from Rupert "Pina Colada" Holmes. JH had a low tolerance of "disco" chix (there were always slightly sneery quote marks around "disco"), but I don't mind them so much - this has a bit of a Voyage feel, and it's pretty if lightweight. The unusually early break could have been a bit more fleshed out, though.
Delores Hall's "Snapshot" marks the first credited appearance by Mark Kamins (co-producer), well ahead of his 1980s hot streak, kicked off by Madonna's "Everybody" in 1982; it's his only 1979 credit, after which he re-appears just once in 1981, before getting going properly the following year. Hall was more of an actress than a singer, most notably in the original cast of Hair, and she didn't release any more records after 1979. "Snapshot" was included in one of the Disco Discharge comps, but otherwise remains unremembered. There's some nice organ work in the break, some tight brass, she belts the song out in proper diva style, and the "automatic camera noises making some of the beat" are an effective novelty, but this kind of zingy fare was retreating back into the gay clubs, and it was about a year too late to have stood a chance of making a wider impact.
"Monkey Fever" isn't Zack Ferguson's best known track - he did a little better with two cornier dittys ("Skate Board Dancin'" (1978) and "Aa Aa Uu Aa Ee" on the flip of this release) - and although it lacks their overt cringiness, it's still too blandly Euro (Italian in origin) for my tastes. I'm slightly reminded of Chemise's infinitely better "She Can't Love You", and the backing track does have some promise, but the Chic-esque backing singers ("you must be joking!") easily outclass Ferguson's weedy vocals.
France Joli "wowed the gays on Fire Island" when she stood in for an unavailable Donna Summer in July, performing to an audience of around 5000 (YT has some very rough footage of the show). According to someone on YT who was there, she arrived by helicopter and descended from it while performing "Come To Me", but that could have been an "enhanced" projection on their part; such were the times. Joli's biggest hit by far, the song plays with the Donna Summer formula very adeptly - the slow start, the yearning melody, the epic feel - but I can't find any info on the mystery singer who voices the "lonely man".
JH was good at arranging his reviews in decreasing order of importance, and I do sense a drop-off in quality after France Joli. "Ooh La La" is the title track from Suzi Lane's only LP, produced by Giorgio Moroder, but she's better remembered for its other, much stronger single, "Harmony". Harold Faltermeyer co-wrote the former with Moroder, while Pete Bellotte co-wrote the latter, and all three had worked together on Donna Summer's Bad Girls, but maybe they'd already used up most of their best material and ideas. "Harmony" still bangs, though.
Chameleon are another one-off project, produced by Fred Wesley. "Get Up" is the nearest we've had to straight-up P'funk, but - shock confession - my appetite for P'funk is quite small, and this doesn't connect with me at all.
Like the Paul Lewis single, George McCrae's "Don’t You Feel My Love" is another Howie "KC" Casey/Richard Finch production, but they co-wrote this one as well, and it's got that whole Sunshine Band sound. McCrae, Casey and Finch had been working together ever since "Rock Your Baby" five years earlier, but to diminishing returns, and this formulaic one-off single was their final collaboration.
The bassline from Michele Freeman's "Tumble Heat" re-appears, whether by accident or design, on Harlow's fantastic "Take Off" in 1980, and it propels this cut very effectively. She's yet another one-album-only act - the disco era wasn't kind to artist development - who once again emerged just too late.
And here's another one: Germany's Kathi Baker, whose album was recorded in Berlin. This 12-inch changes hands for decent money (around £33 for the German release), perhaps because - unlike the LP version that's embedded on the blog - "Fa La La" abruptly segues into "Dance To The Music", a non-album track (not the Sly Stone song), at 4:07. I'm not blown away by either song, or either performance, although the dubby final 30 seconds briefly lift it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KADJeIHsadY
Helen Reddy's puny confection is disco bandwagon-jumping at its most ill-fitting and desperate, so let's move on.
Having appeared on a few compilations in recent years, as well as some bootleg re-releases, Needa's only release, "Come On And Rock", is now highly collectable and sells for around £100 in its original 1979 format. The groove is solid, the bass is (ahem) "nimble", the intermittent rock guitar gives it edge, and the lead vocal is more commanding than the trite lyrics deserves, making this the strongest of the post-Joli bunch.
Opening with a "Psycho Killer" bassline and a "Last Night A DJ Saved My Life" guitar, "Have A Real Good Time" shows early promise before dissolving into bog standard corny zinginess (albeit with a brief spoken section from the "disco" chix that just about counts as proto-rap). Michael Zager co-wrote and produced; it's a pity he didn't do an instrumental dub, as there are some elements here that could have worked in a different context.
FLB were more usually known as Fat Larry's Band, and the appalling "Hey Pancho It's Disco" is no "Act Like You Know", or "Boogie Town", or indeed "Zoom". It's not even camp, it's just dire. Fucking hell, we're scraping the barrel now.
JH ends his import reviews with Bohannon's creation for Caroline Crawford, who had regular work as his lead singer (she's on "Let's Start The Dance", for instance. It's a typical Bohannon funky chug, which once again gets a better vocal performance than it deserves.
― mike t-diva, Friday, 17 September 2021 15:11 (two years ago) link