Bands Who Have Excellent Songs On Late '70s/Early '80s European K-Tel-Style Compilations

[koganbot]

I Have Never Heard Entire Albums By These Bands Who Have Excellent Songs On Late '70s/Early '80s European K-Tel-Style Compilations

Do any of them have albums worth hearing? The world wants to know, or at least I do.

The "I" who's saying this is chuckeddy. He has a feeling some folks on poptimists might be interested in this and might have input for it too, either there or here. The thread starts with these two compilations, but there are many more lists, contributed by Xhuxk and others, and quite a few YouTube imbeds:

Double Dancing (Record 2) (K-Tel Finland 1983)

GARY LOW "I Want You"
FREEZ "Pop Goes My Love" (have only otherwise heard his/their electro-hop classic "I.O.U." before)
STYLE "Dark Eyes"
BLACK LACE "Superman" (talked dance steps, sounds like an English version of Claudio Chechetto's Italian early '80s "Gioca-Jouer," or maybe the other way around)
CAROLA HĂGGVIST "Hunger"
DAVID GRANT "Love Will Find A Way" (Linx-style early '80s Brit soul I guess?)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 11 January 2009 16:59 (2 days ago) Permalink

Disco Fever (K-Tel U.K. 1977)

BROTHERHOOD OF MAN "Angelo" (Second-tier ABBAs, right?)
MERI WILSON "Telephone Man" (top 20 hit in U.S.!)
SMOKIE "It's Your Life" (superstars in this world, I guess. Lots of hits on lots of these compilations; "Living Next Door To Alice" was their only U.S. top 40)

Comments

[koganbot]

And Xhuxk's also revived Mostly German Old Used 45s That Metal Mike Saunders Mailed To Me, with additional 45s.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

i guess everyone has said:

DO NOT GO NEAR BLACK LACE WITH A 40FT POLE

?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

To be fair if xhuxk finds excellence in Superman then he's not going to go far wrong with a copy of Black Lace's Greatest Hits. I guess they made actual albums too!

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, a couple people. I'm not really picking up on *why* I should avoid them, though; everything people seems to hate about them makes them sound GOOD, so obviously the point isn't coming across very well. Here's Mike T-Diva, and my reply:

>>BLACK LACE...came back to plague us in 1984 with the #2 hit "Agadoo," subsequently parodied by Spitting Image for their 1986 number one "The Chicken Song," then another top ten hit with "Do The Conga" and various lesser hits including "I Speaka Da Lingo" (clap clap), "El Vino Collapso" (clap clap) and the aforementioned "Gang Bang."<<

You know, I realize the Brits on this thread despise these guys, quite possibly deservedly. But I just want to say that all of those titles crack me up, and make me wannna check out Black Lace's oeuvre.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

"Gang Bang" features in the (very excellent) British movie Rita, Sue and Bob Too -- abt prole bedhopping in bradford in the late 70s/early 80s: black lace play it in a youth club the main characters are dancing in; it has a special dance, a kind of lubriciously tatty sex-conga, which is simultaneously very creepy and very fitting (rita and sue are schoolgirls; bob is married)

the spitting image parody is much worse and much lamer

are freez the southern freeez ppl?

david grant seems well worth chasing up further, tho i don't recall what else he did

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

b.of man are a fifth-tier abba at best

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

they also released a version of "the birdie song" about 0.00002 seconds after "the tweets" and thus didn't have a hit with it.

i have a very very strange relationship to the music of Black Lace and I'm not sure i have time right now to go into it in any depth, but it involves british holiday camps that were third rate butlinses (most with trailers rather than chalets) and being aged between 8 and 10. suffice it to say that my sister and i learnt an entirely different dance to agadoo at least three months before it charted in the UK

[ijgrieve.livejournal.com]

They weren't 'Haven' holiday camps by any chance? I went to one of those at about the same age (and probably danced to many of the same records!)

In which yr correspondent tries to shake 'I Am The Music Man' out of her head

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, I have listened to Black Lace's Greatest Hits more times than is strictly necessary. This is entirely the fault of my schoolchum Kirst whose favourite bands when we were in 6th form were: Steps, Black Lace, ABBA - and the Manic Street Preachers (especially Gold Against The Soul). Pia-pia-piano, piano, piano. ARGH.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Or not an ABBA-tier at all, usually, it occurred to me. What I wrote later on that thread:

>Actually, Brotherhood of Man's big U.S. hit (among a few smaller ones) was "United We Stand." Which is indeed reprehensible, and doesn't sound Abba-like at all, obviously. (Though "Angelo," which sounds great to me, definitely does.)

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Turns out (as somebody quickly replied on that ILM thread) that David Grant's song sounded Linx-like to me because, doh!, he was the singer of Linx. (Whose first album has been one of my r&b favorites of the past couple decades since the year it came out; not sure about anything else they did, or Grant's other solo work, though.)

Kenny

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Did anyone post on the ILM thread about Kenny (I started reading it but didn't finish)?

They were one of the RAK 'glam pop' (as opposed to glitter rock, before dubdobdee gets too uppity) acts that Martin and Coulter wrote for. In addition to "Fancy Pants", they had a huge hit with the excellent "The Bump" (later, much sampled) and a few other lesser hits.

They made one LP, The Sound Of Super K, which I can't vouch for quality wise. Most of it probably turns up again on the CD, The Singles Collection Plus... (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Singles-Collection-Plus-Kenny/dp/B00004Y2HF/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1231865637&sr=1-1) - this is still in print and I've half a mind to buy this myself.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

haven and hoseasons and other random indie ones as well, yes, never pontins though, too common.

[quick glance at DoB] dude, i was doing this when these records were HOT OFF THE PRESSES, not ten years later ;)

Re: Kenny

[koganbot]

'glam pop' (as opposed to glitter rock...

And also opposed to glam rock, I take it.

Would glam pop be Kenny while glam rock would be Slade and T. Rex and glitter rock would be the Dolls and KISS?

And Bowie would be ?????

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

linx/grant -- once upon a time i knew this but my brain is mush these days

did he become an actor? (i may have made this up entirely)

taxonomic agony

[koganbot]

Pulls out Jobriath album.

duppity dob dee

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

hmmm, i think my categories fall thus (presumably this is why jeff is goading me): glitter is the bubblegum wing of glam, with bolan as the boundary (and everyone else in frank's as glam)

thus sweet are glitter, and so would kenny be, despite what RAK claim on the tin

Re: duppity dob dee

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

= everyone in frank's LIST (except kenny)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

If you like "Angelo" - and I don't hate it as much as a lot of people seem to - you might like "Figaro", which mines a similar ABBA seam.

Re: duppity dob dee

[koganbot]

Except in the U.S. "Glitter" was definitely the name for the Dolls, which would make it the hard rock rather than the bubblegum wing of the movement, except I have a feeling that, the movement being relatively small in the U.S., "glitter" became the name of any old thing vaguely associated with it. E.g., Lou Reed (headline in Times review of Berlin: "This Glitter Is Gold"). Not sure what they Runaways were called. By their time the terms "punk" and "metal" might have been colonizing everything else.

So Gary Glitter would be glam, right? Or is he glitter? (Hard for me to draw a big line between Slade and Sweet.)

[mcarratala.livejournal.com]

Nope: he became the Fame Academy chap with the annoying wife (and if you're a fan of really rotten TV - or just freelance - you might have spotted him on The Wright Stuff*).

(*For our foreign chums: morning TV show in which D-listers discuss the day's news as distilled from mid-market ultra-rightwing papers).

[mcarratala.livejournal.com]

His monster hit, incidentally, was Could It Be I'm Falling In Love with Jaki Graham in 1985, which was certainly massive down here in the suburban soul heartlands.

Re: duppity dob dee

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

glitter = glitter (he's the source of the term, i suspect)

slade gave thought to albums as collections of songs; sweet not so much

by this token the runaways probably are glam: tho protopunk (uk timing) is a better bet

joan jett in particular came and hung out with the lesser pistols, rats etc -- and her whole career since is neo-glam metalgum hurrah

Re: duppity dob dee

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

And what about Alvin Stardust (who I don't think I've ever actually heard)? David Essex (maybe none of the above)? Nick Gilder (too Canadian, and possibly too late)?

Glam/glitter distinction is news to me, too. I always thought they were the same thing. (And right, Sweet and Slade seem like they should be on the SAME side, if anything. Though when Sweet got *less* bubblegum (as in, writing their own songs), does that mean they also got less glitter and more glam?

Now I'm obsessed: Mott the Hoople I guess would be glam, right? And Hello and Smokie...glitter? (I'm not even sure, really, which ones would have been considered bubblegum in the first place. On that ILM thread, somebody explained that Smokie were Chinnichap's explicit attempt at an *album rock* band, but fans just kept only buying their singles anyway!)

Re: duppity dob dee

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

>slade gave thought to albums as collections of songs; sweet not so much <

But again, they did later in their career, though, right? (At least by the time of *Desolation Boulevard* -- huge at my high school in Michigan by the way, and also a great LP -- if not earlier.)