COMPUTERIZED LOVED by TANGO and you don't pronounce the ED at the end of words that way...O.K.!!!!

Refreshed Zip

One of my pet peeves as an ESL teacher in Rome is to get students out of the habit of mispronouncing words that end in ED.  Clearly TANGO was not one of my students.  But then again part of the charm to Italo Disco for me is the way many of the artists mangle the English language.  That's probably one of the main reasons why so many of these highly danceable and fun songs remained incredibly obscure in the states.

DON'T BE FOOLED THIS AIN'T NO TANGO

This release from 1985 has a lot of the qualities that I enjoy in an italo disco tune.  From vocoders and sound effects to a super catchy melody and fun off kilter lyrics.  Stargo is a great italo label.  They don't have many releases but the few I know I enjoy  a lot like Live is Life by Stargo but they are after all just a subsidiary of the italo disco giant Disco Magic records.  The vocalist Roberto Zanetti also sang my beloved Capsicum (another Stargo release) and he wrote the fabulous Don't Cry Tonight by Savage, and in fact most of the other Savage hits as he was a member of that band in addition to using several other aliases.

YOU CAN FACEBOOK FRIEND HIM...MAX ALREADY HAS

On and On (FEAR KEEPS ON) Deca Dance Italo Disco Holy Grail

DecaDance was my favorite record store in Downtown N.Y.C.  It was small but Dennis always catered to my needs.  He always made me feel special and listened to.  And I loved that walk down Christopher Street.

But did he name his store after one of my favorite Italo Disco Songs of all time?  I never had a chance to ask him that.  Maybe because my obsession with Italo Disco hadn't even started yet.

You see I spent a lot of time back and forth to Italy in the 80's and I got to dance to a lot of great Italo Disco and I heard other great Italo on the radio, on mix shows and even on the RAI in live performances.

But when I was in Europe I wasn't collecting vinyl.  I sort of would put that hobby on hold.  It just didn't make sense carrying records around while I was dragging all that luggage and staying in super cheap places just to make my money hold out.  And you really could back then, Ibiza, Barcelona, Madrid, Milan, Vienna, etc. all on a couple hundred dollars and a dream.

I mean granted I do remember buying I want You by Gary Low at El Corte Ingles in Barcelona but that song was under my skin.  It wasn't just coming at me at 4 AM on some dance floor but it had permeated my whole being.
DON'T FEAR MY DOWNLOAD

So in the past 20 years through other friends who were actually spinning in those years before I started to in the early 90's I have been introduced to so much incredible music that I regularly lose my mind over some song or another.

And well On and On (Fear Keeps On) is simply on of those tunes.  To me it's full-on Italo Disco perfection.  It has it all.  It isn't so super spacey but the lyrics might as well be out of 1984 (the book).  That delivery which is so much more new wave then disco, that instrumentation that is as if Joy Division were meant to be a dance band.  All put together to me it's both ominous and infectious and a pure Italo Disco joy.  1983 as I've mentioned before in other posts is the peak of this sound.  One after another of the best all time Italo Disco records came out that year.  Which also happened to coincide with the longest period of time in the 80's that I spent out dancing in the Roman clubs.  So the music and the sound and the feeling are my everything even now.

I'd have to assume that the period means a lot to the guys of Italo Connection because their interpretation of On and On is both futuristic and respectful at the same time.