ExpatMichael's opinion of anything relating to disco, Italo disco, funk and boogie music. Promotion for my Ebay and Discogs stores which concentrate on the sale of Disco, Funk, Italo Disco, Hi NRG, New Wave, morning music, sleaze and anything pressed on vinyl. There's a link to my Ebay store on the bottom of the page, right under the counter widget. Thanks for visiting and feel free to leave comments. Follow my twitter and join the Disco Vinyl Fan Page on Facebook.
Certainly in a nod to the 1981 John Carpenter film a band named themselves Escape from New York and came out with the incredibly infectious single Save our Love in 1983. A nice hybrid between electro and italo disco and a real influential record that year.
instrumental
Their next single a year later Fire in my Heart was equally brilliant. More on the italo disco sleaze tip. It was very rare and would fetch hundreds of dollars on eBay so in 2016 it was re-pressed. Here I have an edit.
The band had previously been known as Airstrip-One. They were decidedly more new wave then.
State of Grace was a low key British trio that put out a few hot records and then sort of disappeared.
David Inglesfield had previously been a drummer in a new wave band. Pat Thomas was attending the London College of Fashion and was a mate of David's sister. Adrian Thomas was the other lead vocalist.
THATS WHEN ZIP
Their first release Walking the Rhythm was a flop but their follow-up was 1982's That's When We'll be Free became a Paradise Garage classic and was also heavily spun by Tony Humphries and David Mancuso shooting all the way up to #16 on the Billboard Disco Chart. It was licensed all over the world and found some success. That's When Edit
But to me their gem is their third single Touching the Time released on PRT records U.K.. "Oom pow pow ba um pa dum pow pow pow" yeah it sounds corny when you try to write it but just listen to how fierce it sounds. These cats can sing and the instrumentation is primo. To me it simply sounds classy. This is another track which epitomizes what's called Modern Soul and the bidders on Ebay go crazy for this one. I've seen it shoot over $200.00 many times. This is one of those songs that when I'm in the mood I will just put on replay and listen to 20x in a row and gets chills up my spine every time.
Their last single Hello Wintertime was released in 1984 and though not a bad song sort of went a bit too pop for my tastes. It doesn't have the impact of the two singles before it and it doesn't surprise me that they parted ways after it was released. Though it easily could have been a smash, it wasn't. So the record company had by then lost interest in them as none of their releases ever made much money. They never even got to release a full l.p.
I was only 14 when Eyes of Laura Mars came out and I was blown away by it. Especially with the photoshoot scenes. It was certainly unlike anything I'd seen before. And the use of Michael Zager Bands, Let's all Chant in this scene above particularly. I was crazy about that record.
The soundtrack for the movie was great too. There was a particularly strong theme song by Barbra Streisand called Prisoner: Love Theme from The Eyes of Laura Mars that was not one of her biggest hits but a great tune all the same. It also featured Native New Yorker and Shake Your Booty two huge disco records at the time.
Let's all Chant is on the soundtrack album for The Last Days of Disco and has been used in many commercials and a few films. Many dance records have sampled it.
Another fun fact about Let's all Chant is that there were 2 version one which went "Ooh-ah, Ooh-ah Let's all chant," and another that went "Ah-ah, eh-eh, let's all chant" I was really only familiar with the first version at first cause that was the one on the single edit and the one which got all the radio play in New York City. The song is unique because it features both vocal hooks and a classical chamber music break in the middle. It's nowhere near as bubble-gummy as it may seem at first.
The single actually went to number #1 on the U.S. disco chart, and broke the U.S. Top 40. It had the notable fortune of having been the song to knock Cerrone's, Supernature out of the top spot. In the U.K. Ireland, Holland, Switzerland, Belgium, France and Italy it even made the Top 10. Belgium giving it its best showing with three weeks at #2. It went on to sell 5 million copies, 700,000 copies in the U.S. alone.
In 1988 Gazuzu released Chant for You (Chant for Me) which features elements of Let's all Chant and La Bionda One for You, One for Me and Pat and Mick did a Hi Nrg cover which hit #11 on the U.K. pop charts.
This is the kind of song that is the reason why I blog. Six minutes and 40 seconds of upbeat joy!
And the fantastic thing about this Italo Disco record is that it's not even Italian. Gazuzu were a Dutch group who also had some cool releases as X-Ray Connection. Go Go Gorilla is one of the songs that is so inspired by other songs that sometimes you practically think you're listening to something else. You close your eyes for a minute and you get transported there. O.K. I'll tell you if it doesn't come to you quickly it's One for You, One for Me by La Bionda which also happens to be in my last blog.
It features chants, deep masculine gorilla groan like vocals, bad language, and to top it all off a refrain where the female singers just keeps repeating "kill me, kill me."
This is actually their second release, the year before in 1982 they released Drums on Fire. In 1987 Chicago house superstar Mickey Oliver also did a remix of it. Many of the early house acts were extremely influenced by Italo Disco and WBMX in Chicago played a lot of it.
