Oh no, not again! Just for the sake of completeness, and then I promise NO MORE! (probably). I don't have much more to say about this than I've already written in the post about Baby Sister, so how about we just get on with it? Oh a couple of things: Heart Beat was cowritten by one Michael Bolotin before he anglicized up his surname and became the big-haired nightmare that was Michael Bolton, but don't let that put you off, it's a decent song. Unlike American Music, which continues the tradition of the previous Black And White album of having a virtually unlistenable final track...
Here's something completely different. Someone asked me for this on a forum and it was so good to hear it again I thought I'd share it with you... Well we're getting dangerously contemporary here - this track originally came out in 1992...
Now here's an album that had always intrigued me until I recently first got to hear it. It was issued in 1983 between the Pointer Sisters' So Excited album and their mega blockbuster Break Out. Another Richard Perry production, I was wondering if it was in the fabulous synth overload style of the latter or whether it was in the more traditional pop style of the former. It's probably more reminiscent of So Excited. The sisters' own cowrite New Love, True Love recalls something of the energy of previous numbers they'd penned such as I'm So Excited and We're Gonna Make It. There's a whole lot of the Prince sound going on on I Will Understand following on from Sisters' carbon copy cover of I Feel For You from So Excited. There's also an interesting parallel to draw with sister Bonnie's late-70s solo albums in the Motown influence. Norman Whitfield cowrote and coproduced the opening track Ready For Some Action, where you can hear a Papa Was A Rollin' Stone thing going on, and there are also covers of I'm Ready For Love (Holland-Dozier-Holland/Martha and the Vandellas) and Don't Mess With Bill (Smokey Robinson/The Marvellettes; presumably a jokey reference to June's oft-thanked husband William Whitmore).
One of my favourite tracks from Barry White's late-70s work is the title track to his 1979 album I Love To Sing The Songs I Sing. It's a poppy number with a simple lyric ("I love to sing the songs I sing/And I sing the songs I love to sing!") and cooing back-ups presumably courtesy of the ladies of Love Unlimited. I read somewhere that much like Donna Summer's Back In Love Again from her I Remember Yesterday set, this is Barry's homage to the 60s sound of Motown. My only criticism of the track was that at just short of three minutes, it's over way too soon! So just imagine my disco delight when I found that it had been issued on a promo 12" in an extended mix!
Oh let's have another one! What a peculiar cover. This is someone else's (thanks whoever!) rip that I've cleaned up. Not sure that the intro to the first track is quite right and I had to shave a bit off the end of 'Blues Concerto' because of a couple of skips. Hey ho. But you do get the long versions of 'My Sweet Summer Suite' and 'Strange Games And Things' as bonus tracks. The latter was only issued as a promo 12" originally and was something of a holy grail for afficionados of Barry's groove.
Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I've been redecorating the hallway and it's turned out to be a large task...Anyway, here's a little of Barry White's special orchestral smoochy soul in the form of 'White Gold', the second (or third if you count the 'Together Brothers' soundtrack) Love Unlimited Orchestra album. I don't think this quite scales the heights of their 'Rhapsody In White' debut, but it's still a good'un. It's worth it just for Barry's priceless intro to 'Spanish Lei'. Barry lets various collaborators get more of a look in on the credits here, including contributions by Ray Parker Jr, Gene Page and Tom Brock.
10...9...8...7...6...5..4..3..2..1! Now here's some proper disco courtesy of Dan Hartman. The 'Instant Replay' title track single was massive and made Dan an instant disco star. The follow-up 'This Is It' (no relation to the Melba Moore song of the same title) is here to in an epic 14-minute mix with 'Countdown'. 'Double-O-Love' and 'Chocolate Box' see a more funk-rock direction and then it's time for a couple of slower numbers to close the album out. Hartman attempted to repeat the disco formula with follow-up album 'Relight My Fire' but the album, which is probably a superior disco album, disappointingly failed to gain the same commercial success.
I must have bought this album at some point for the sake of completeness and never really listened to it - there were no hit singles from it and tracks from it rarely turn up on compilations. But reading some reviews while writing about the sisters' other albums, I became intrigued by its good reviews - some even going as far as to say that it's a candidate for their best album. And now I've listened to it a few times I can see their point. Well, it's 1979 and the world has gone disco crazy - so what do the Pointer Sisters do? They make an album of rock covers. No wonder it wasn't a great success, not even making the US top 50 albums. But it is an excellent album - the songs suit the sisters perfectly: plenty use is made of Ruth's deep and bluesy voice and June makes a great Keef Richards on the cover of the Stones' 'Happy' (draw your own parallels)! Others to get the treatment are Bob Seger ('All Your Love'), The Band ('The Shape I'm In), Graham Parker ('Turned Up Too Late') and Springsteen again ('The Fever'). There's not a duff track in sight...and I'm saying that even though, like Chris Lowe, I don't LIKE rock music!
