Breaker's Revenge

It wasn't only Italo Disco for me.  Though you know I like to keep that the spice for my blog.  But I also loved freestyle and Electro very much.  But in a way I felt more like a visitor feeling something and liking it but it not necessarily coming from inside me.  I am after all Italian and not black or latino.  On top I grew up in suburban Connecticut I surely was not street in any way.

These are the images from the Italian import of the classic Arthur Baker tune Breaker's Revenge.  But they are the same as you'd find on the U.S. version with those incredible edits by Tony Moran and Albert Cabrera (The Latin Rascals), load vocals by Galvin Christopher and all those wonderful Arthur Baker touches.  Though this song was on the Beat Street Soundtrack it surely transcended anything that film gave.  I  love this piece of the film where the Rock Steady Crew breakdance to it.

GET SOME REVENGE
Even though The System, Grandmaster Melle Mel & The Furious Five, Jenny Burton, Africa Bambaataa etc. were on this soundtrack there really weren't any hits.  But it did get play in clubs like The Funhouse and The Roxy.

Honey to a bee Tina b a Freestyle Electro Masterpiece

Produced and arranged by Arthur Baker and John Robie and edited by The Latin Rascals need I say more?  Tina Klein had the great fortune to marry Arthur Baker and he did what he could to promote his wife.  But she was good, damn good.  Her voice can be heard on classics like Africa Baambataa's Jazzy Sensation and Nothing's Gonna Come Easy before her signature record Honey to a Bee was released in 1984.  She was a member of Goon Squad and Rocker's Revenge to boot.

I will be forever in debt to Matthew Drudge for turning me on to this song.  He is undoubtably the biggest freestyle fan I have ever met and his obsession with John Robie was well documented.  

But he unlike me didn't friend him on Facebook.

get your hands on the bee

NEW AXEL V EXTENDED EDIT

Tina b. also appears on the Beat Street soundtrack.

January, February was O.K. but it was no honey to a bee.

We'll buzz around and around until we come alive

let's fall in love

like honey to a bee

you've got a love who stick to me

like crepes, cakes and wine

ooh your love is right on time

like honey to a bee

like honey to a bee

your love is right on time

busy busy like a bee aha aha  your love stung me

busy busy like a bee aha aha your love strung me

my name is Tina b coming straight from the hive 

I need some honey to keep alive

you look to me like  a real hum dinger you better watch or I'll lose my stinger!

busy bee busy bee busy bee

An Anna Domino Retrospective.....TAKE THAT AND SO MUCH MORE

Though my blog is not really about this type of music I need to herald the fact that it too was an instrumental part of my life.  For a few years in the 80's Anna Domino's music had a big impact on my life.

Belgian super talent Anna Domino released her first single in 1983.  Trust, in Love on the Belgian label  Les Disques Du Crepuscule.  The next year came Rhythm which I've included in a deluxe zip.  I've only chosen her songs which were released on 12 inch for this zip. ANNA ZIP ALTERNATE ANNA ZIP

Later that year marked a departure for Anna.  She did a duet with Luc Van Acker for the seminal Chicago label Wax Trax Records called Zanna.  He's a fellow Belgian artist, producer and studio manager.  It too is in my zip.

The following year in 1985 came Take That.  This is most likely her best known record.  The mix produced by Alan Rankine really brought her into that Synth Pop sound.  It was a big hit on seminal alternative station WDRE and could be danced to at alternative clubs.

Summer was released in 1986 and was off the album Anna Domino which also featured another favorite track of mine called Drunk.  Australian D.J. Betty tells me this record was big down under.  This is the album where she covered the classic The Hunter Gets Captured By the Game.  1986's twelve inch of Summer includes a great mix by the legendary Arthur Baker.  I've included that in the zip too.

1987's Tempting was the first single off my favorite Anna album This Time,  the second single Lake was also a gem.  I've included both of them in the zip.  In 1988 This Time was like the soundtrack for my life.  I must have listened to it hundreds of times.  It was that perfect mix of moody and cheerful that gets me going.

In 1988 came an e.p., Colouring in the Edge and the Outline with the sublime Luck and Clouds of Joy to name a couple.  This was another one that got some major play in my N.Y.C. East Village apartment.  1989's compilation L'Amour Fou was another album that I listened to a great deal.  It featured most of the best songs, though for some reason Take That wasn't on it.

By 1990 her last album was released called Mysteries of America.  I have to admit that by then I wasn't really following her career the way I had for the past few years before.  I was listening to a lot more house music and going out too much and being a lot less introspective.

In 1996 a more complete retrospective came out called Favorite Songs from the Twilight Years 1984-1990.  By then she had really fallen off my radar.  But not long after that I won an Ebay auction from a Japanese vendor and it completed my collection and brought her back in my mind-set.

Finally 2004's Dreamback (The Best of) came out.  If you love Anna like I love Anna then this is the one you really need to truly complete your collection.

INSTINCTUAL by IMAGINATION paired with LEEE JOHN'S SENSUALITY

Instinctual was Imagination's only #1 hit on the U.S. dance charts.  It was not among their bigger hits in Europe however.  Released in 1987 it tore up the dance floors in New York City clubs and featured the sound that David Morales and Frankie Knuckles would increasingly pump in their DEF MIX productions and remixes.

download Instinctual

Arthur Baker productions often gave me a certain sense of joy at the time.  Instinctual reminds me of a very happy time.  I was fresh out of University and trying to break into the New York scene and I truly lived to go out.  It was huge on the dancefloor at clubs like Boy Bar on St. Marks Place and Whispers at The Pyramid on Sunday nights. 

LEEE JOHN

Leee John's ferocious vocals and super flamboyance will always be one of my favorite musical memories of the 80's.

His 2009 comeback single was called Sensuality.  It was a remixed version of an earlier released single.