JMG: Blog Year Ten
JoeMyGod@gmail.com
Gay culture, short stories, politics, and fabulous disco trivia.
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Gothamist today points out this 1983 episode of New York Dance Stand, a public access show filmed (this time) at the famed Danceteria. On the playlist: Malcolm McLaren, New Order, Freez, Human League, Klaus Nomi, Yello, Men Without Hats, Gang Of Four, Ministry.
Labels: 80's Flashback, dance music, nightlife, NYC
Thirty years ago this week disco/R&B star Linda Clifford enjoyed what would be her final of four Billboard dance chart toppers with Don't Come Crying To Me. The track was written and produced by Michael Gore (Lesley's brother) who was hot off winning two 1980 Oscars for writing and producing the Fame soundtrack title song. Gore is also revered among show queens as the co-author of 1988's Carrie: The Musical, which remains the most infamous flop in Broadway history. TRIVIA: Linda Clifford was Miss New York 1966.
Labels: 80's Flashback, dance music, disco
Joan Jett's cover of the 1975 flop by British power pop band Arrows pulled her from the Runaways pack and into the hearts of baby dykes worldwide. One of those baby dykes was my clubbing pal Razor (real name: Dorothy), who emerged from Jett's backstage to show me her hickey'd neck after I'd waited out front through a lackluster performance by that night's headliner, Iggy Pop, who'd actually berated the audience for not applauding more vigorously. With seven weeks at the top, I Love Rock N Roll tied with Ebony And Ivory (shudder) for 1982's longest running #1 single.
Labels: 80's Flashback, gay artists, Joan Jett
One of the first and definitely the cheesiest of the beefcake pop music videos that would follow. Video bars were still in their infancy, but I vividly recall how the entire room would stop for this. The final scene always delivered a shout.
Labels: 80's Flashback, Olivia Newton-John, pop music
1. "When I Think Of You" - Janet Jackson
Labels: 80's Flashback, pop music
After The Fire, Der Kommissar, 1983. One year after Falco took his (mostly) German-language version of Der Kommissar to #1 in most of Europe (but only #72 in the U.S.), British prog-rockers After The Fire recorded a (mostly) English translation, taking it to #5 U.S., #47 UK. Falco's hit came during an unprecedented (and unrepeated) string of U.S. hits by German artists, when English and German versions of songs by Nena, Trio, and Peter Schilling garnered heavy American radio play and rotation on MTV. I loved the "Neue Deutsche Welle" (new German wave) while it lasted and was properly annoyed when After The Fire's tepid cover far outsold Falco's innovative original. (And don't even get me started on Laura Branigan's version.) But I do have a fond memory of meeting four guys from Kent State who'd decided they needed a "song of the trip" for their 14-hour spring break drive from Ohio to Fort Lauderdale and only played After The Fire's Der Kommissar for the entire time. I met them poolside at the Marlin Beach and after about three plays of the song on our way to dinner that day, I boldly ejected the cassette. "Nooooooo!" Anyway, a group called "After The Fire" seems appropriate for today's 80's Flashback selection.
Labels: 80's Flashback, dance music, UK
Klymaxx, The Men All Pause, 1984. It wasn't until their fourth album that the all-female Klymaxx scored their first hit single, taking the hilarious The Men All Pause to the Top Ten of the R&B and dance charts and into the repertoire and hairstyles of drag queens worldwide. The ladies saw similar success with the equally amusing follow-up, Meeting In The Ladies Room, but it was their next release, the ballad I Miss You, that introduced them to the pop charts, hitting #5 and creating a decades-long run as one of the most requested radio dedication tracks. The group ended their chart presence in 1990 having scored a total of three pop Top 40 hits and seven Top 20s on the R&B chart. In 1990 lead singer Berndatte Cooper ("riding in my Cooper's limousine") had a minor solo hit with I Look Good. Since then the band's members have been mired in internal legal disputes over ownership of their trademarked name. Slap me, somebody slap me.
Labels: 80's Flashback, music
The Flying Pickets, Only You, 1983. In 1980 Vince Clarke was going through two divorces, one with his wife and one with Depeche Mode. It's not known which divorce inspired Only You, but when Clarke's former band declined to record it, he brought the track with him to Yaz/Yazoo. As the new band's first release, in 1982 he and vocalist Alison Moyet took it to #2 in the UK and #67 in America, where the single's b-side, Situation, was also released separately as a 12", hitting #1 on Billboard's dance chart. The following year British acapella group The Flying Pickets (whose name indicated support for England's striking miners) covered Only You, taking it to #1 for five weeks in the UK, where it remains a Christmas-time radio classic. In 1984 the group returned to the UK Top Ten with an acapella cover of the Marvelette's 1967 smash When You're Young And In Love, but the act never had another hit. The Flying Pickets' Only You remains the UK's only acapella #1 hit single. Bobby McFerrin's 1988 single Don't Worry, Be Happy is the only such song to reach #1 in the states, but purists point out that McFerrin's track employs multiple overdubbings and cannot be performed live. Only You has been covered by many other artists, including Judy Collins, Rita Coolidge, and Enrique Inglesias. My favorite version is the one below. Dig the groovy hairstyles.
Labels: 80's Flashback, UK, Yaz, Yazoo
The Singing Nun, Dominique (Disco Version), 1982. In 1963 Belgian nun Sister Luc-Gabrielle (real name: Jeanine Deckers) became a worldwide sensation as The Singing Nun when her album of original songs (recorded to be souvenirs for visitors to her convent) topped the charts across Europe. In the U.S. Dominique topped the pop charts for four weeks in December 1963, partially aided by the assassination of JFK as radio stations turned to softer and religious-themed selections. After a treacly 1966 biopic starring Debbie Reynolds (which Deckers denounced as complete fiction) and a failed second album, Deckers left the nunhood and became a birth control advocate, releasing the controversial single Glory Be To God For The Golden Pill, which also failed. In 1982, after a decade-long battle with the Belgian government over back taxes for income Deckers claimed had been taken by her former convent and her manager, she released the below disco version of Dominique in desperation. The single failed, despite its camp allure to gay men, who had become fans of Decker after she came out as a lesbian. (Full disclosure: I too bought the 12".) Three years later she and her partner of ten years committed suicide together by overdosing on downers.
Labels: 80's Flashback, Belgium, Catholics, lesbians
Fun Boy Three featuring Bananarama, It Ain't What You Do (It's The Way That You Do It), 1982. After reaching only #92 UK with their first single, 1981's Aie A Mwana (a cover of Black Blood's Swahili-language 1975 proto-disco hit), Bananarama teamed up with former Special's members Fun Boy Three for this cover of Ella Fitzgerald's 1939 recording. It Ain't What You Do proved to be their breakout, reaching #4 in the UK and introducing both groups to American audiences via the below clip, which garnered decent MTV play but yielded scant sales. Banararama teamed up again with Fun Boy Three on their next single, a cover of the Velvelettes 1964 hit, Really Sayin' Something, this time as the lead vocalists, again reaching the UK Top Ten, but again failing to hit the U.S. pop chart. After a couple of more UK successes, their American chart breakthrough finally came the next year with Cruel Summer, which topped out at #8 in both countries. Bananarama has scored 23 UK Top 40 hits to date, but only three in the U.S., including 1986's #1 cover of Shocking Blue's 1970 smash, Venus.
Labels: 80's Flashback, pop music, UK
Jermaine Stewart, The Word Is Out, 1984. The slender, effeminate Stewart first gained notice for his flamboyant dancing on Soul Train, leading to gigs as a backup vocalist for Shalamar and Culture Club. Co-written with Culture Club bassist Mikey Craig, The Word Is Out, Stewart's first single, was taken by gay audiences as a coming out anthem of sorts, even though its accompanying video hinted of a relationship with an older woman. Stewart returned to the Top Ten in 1986 with his cautionary HIV-related We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off, which reached #2 UK, #5 U.S. pop. Over the next decade he scored several more R&B Top Ten hits in the states, but had his biggest successes in Europe, where 1988's Talk Dirty To Me was one of the year's greatest sellers. Sadly, Jermaine Stewart succumbed to AIDS-related liver cancer in 1997. Just a few years earlier, I had seen him perform at South Beach's Paragon, after which he joined an exuberant group of banjee boys for a dance floor vogue battle. Yet another beautiful and highly talented gay artist lost. So many, so many.
Labels: 80's Flashback, dance music, gay artists, HIV/AIDS
The Clash, The Magnificent Seven, 1981. The third single from the band's epic 1980 triple album Sandinista!, this was one of the Clash's least commercially successful releases, reaching only #34 on the UK pop chart and failing to chart in the U.S. at all, other than reaching #21 on dance. But aside from being my second-favorite Clash track ever (after Hitsville UK), The Magnificent Seven is worthy of noting for being the first ever original rap single by a major white act. Lyrically, the track is a condemnation of consumerism and wage slavery, familiar territory perhaps, but damn if that baseline doesn't still get me out of my chair almost 30 years later. I've always regretted never getting to see The Clash in concert. The closest I ever came was running into Joe Strummer on the beach in Daytona sometime in the early 80s. "Wassup, mate?" JMG: (Awed silence.) The end.
Labels: 80's Flashback, dance music, rap music
a-ha, The Sun Always Shines On TV, 1985. The second hit single from their debut album, Hunting High And Low, this track didn't do quite as well as 1984's Take On Me, which went to #1 in a dozen countries, including the U.S. But it did reach the Top Ten in many places, even bettering the #2 peak of Take On Me in the UK, staying at the pinnacle there for two weeks in early '86. Here in America the track petered out at #20 on pop, but it was the astonishingly great extended 12" mix with its huge crescendos that turned the song into a big-room club classic. I'll never forget the crowd's reaction to the track early one Easter morning at South Beach's Paragon. The band continues to draw arena-sized crowds in many places, especially its native Norway where they've notched 24 Top Tens including 8 #1's, but plans to split after a 2010 world tour.
Labels: 80's Flashback, dance music, Norway
Chaka Khan, I Feel For You, 1984. Lots of folks covered this track from Prince's 1979
Labels: 80's Flashback, Chaka Khan, dance music, Prince
Bucks Fizz, I Hear Talk, 1984. Named for the drink that Americans call a mimosa, the UK's Bucks Fizz burst onto the scene in 1981 when they won the Eurovision Song Contest with the deliriously silly Making Your Mind Up. But it wasn't until three #1's and 12 Top 40 singles later that the band came to U.S. attention when I Hear Talk became a beloved standard at many gay clubs, in particular at NYC's legendary Saint, where it became a linchpin of morning music sets, a status the track enjoys to this day. The band was involved in a terrible tour bus accident just as the single was released, severely injuring several members. With little promotion, I Hear Talk languished on the UK charts, reaching only #34, although a stateside release of an extended 12" mix brought them their only U.S. success. The performance video is here, below is the club mix. It takes a few minutes to really get rolling, but it's a lovely wait. One of my all time 80's favorites, by far. Pure joy.
Labels: 80's Flashback, dance music, morning music, Saint disco
Boy Meets Girl, Waiting On A Star To Fall, 1988. While writing chart toppers for the likes of Whitney Houston and Bette Midler, real life couple George Merrill and Shannon Rubicam released several singles of their own before this slice of pop perfection broke through, hitting #5 in the U.S. and #9 in the UK. The duo had first offered the track to Whitney, who refused it, and to Belinda Carlisle, who recorded it but never put it on her album. Merrill and Rubicam divorced in 2000 and continue to record, but never again reached the Top 40. The track got new life in 2005 when dueling dance remixes were released by Cabin Crew and Sunset Strippers, both of which garnered considerable club play. The remixes are pretty good, but I have a very fond memory of blasting the original in a rented convertible full of boys while tooling around the streets of Atlanta one summer weekend.
Labels: 80's Flashback, pop music, songwriters
Sheila B. Devotion, Spacer, 1980. French pop singer Anne Chancel took this Chic production to the top five of most European countries and the top of the American dance charts, selling five million copies along the way. Most of you tender kittens will know Spacer as the basis for Alcazar's 2000 smash, Crying At The Discotheque. It was a great year for Chic's Niles Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, who in 1980 also produced landmark albums for Diana Ross (Upside Down, I'm Coming Out) and Sister Sledge (Got To Love Somebody), as well as their own underrated Real People. For a laugh, go back and listen to Sheila B. Devotion's first big disco hit, 1978's cover of Singing In The Rain, which is one of the more amusing French-accented attempts at an American standard. I'm singing in deh reeeeennnn. Trivia: In some countries, the act was billed as Sheila and Black Devotion, the name of her backup dancers.
Labels: 80's Flashback, Chic, disco, France
Roni Griffith, (The Best Part Of) Breakin' Up, 1982. OK, so it's summer of '82 and I'm at T-dance at Backstreet, Fort Lauderdale, watching the fabulous Sharon Redd. At the end of her set, DJ Bob Miro booms out in his unmistakable game show host voice, "Neeeeeeext Sunday! Rrrrrrroni Griffith will be here with her coconuts!" And the following weekend I drove down from Orlando by myself and stayed at the miserable Berlin Bear (next door to the Marlin Beach), just to hear Griffith perform this insanely silly cover of an old Phil Spector hit for the Ronettes.
Labels: 80's Flashback, disco, Fort Lauderdale
