Danny Pearson - Barry White Presents Mr Danny Pearson

Now here's another entry in the Barry canon. If you look this one up anywhere it claims some silly backstory where young Mr P was camping out outside Barry's offices and was given the opportunity to record this album. Not sure I quite buy that one. Anyway, this album came out in 1978 on White's new Unlimited Gold label. It's interesting to hear the Barry White/Gene Page groove machine with such a different vocalist. The opening track What's Your Sign Girl was the closest the album came to spawning a hit, and while it's a tired concept, it's a lot better than Roberta Kelly's dreadful Zodiacs. Elsewhere, several of Barry's past glories get a good revamping - the Love Unlimited hit Walkin' In The Rain... is joined by new versions of two other of their tracks, Say It Again and Is It Really True, and Barry's own Honey Please Can't You See also gets the revival treatment. Thanks to La Magie De La Funk for this one...

1. What's Your Sign Girl
2. Is It Really True Girl
3. Walkin' In The Rain With The One I Love
4. Let's Go Dancin' (Let's Go Disco Dancin')
5. Honey Please Can't You See
6. Say It Again
7. I'm So Glad I Got You Baby
8. There's No One For Me But You

What's your SIGN?

Diana Brown & Barrie K. Sharpe - The Masterplan

Here's a vinyl I'd been meaning to rip for ages. I bought this on a Hot Tracks vinyl in a record fair in Oxford way back when as I loved this song and also Deee-Lite's 'What Is Love' which was on the same 12". It was a minor hit (#39) in the UK in mid-1990. I don't know which of the mixes the Hot Tracks mix is based on (it describes itself as 'The Master Mix by Glen Cattanach') but I've never come across a similar mix anywhere else. I didn't realise until investigating it today that the track was written and produced by one-time Dead Or Alive cohorts Tim Lever & Mike Percy. What a coincidence!

The MASTERPLAN

Pointer Sisters - So Excited

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...

1. I'm So Excited
2. See How The Love Goes
3. All Of You
4. Heart Beat
5. If You Wanna Get Back Your Lady
6. I Feel For You
7. Heart To Heart
8. American Music

bonus tracks:
9. Nothing But A Heartache (b-side, original 1982 issue of I'm So Excited)
10. I'm So Excited (12" version)
11. If You Wanna Get Back Your Lady (12" version)

Let's get EXCITED!

Pamela Fernandez - Kickin' In The Beat

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...

Kickin' In The Beat (extended dance mix)

Normal disco service will be resumed shortly!

June Pointer - Baby Sister

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).

1. I'm Ready For Love
2. I Will Understand
3. To You
4. New Love, True Love
5. I'm Ready For Love
6. You Can Do It
7. Always
8. My Blues Have Gone Away
9. Don't Mess With Bill

READY?

Barry White - I Love To Sing The Songs I Sing

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!

I Love To Sing The Songs I Sing (6:12)

Chaka Khan - Naughty

And here's Chaka's follow-up effort from 1980. Opener 'Clouds' sees Chaka pulling off another Ashford and Simpson disco stormer. Maybe it falls slightly short of the peaks scaled by 'I'm Every Woman', but hey...that's a hard act to follow. I first heard it as the EPIC Clivilles & Cole remix on 'Life Is A Dance'...what a track. Elsewhere Chaka does her own takes on 'Move Me No Mountain' as previously recorded by Love Unlimited and the Gregg Diamond Bionic Boogie groover (with one Luther Vandross on vocal duties) 'Hot Butterfly', here retitled 'Papillon'.

1. Clouds
2. Get Ready, Get Set
3. Move Me No Mountain
4. Nothing's Gonna Take You Away
5. So Naughty
6. Too Much Love
7. All Night's All Right
8. What You Did
9. Papillon (aka Hot Butterfly)
10. Our Love's In Danger

It's gonna RAIN