When I was 11, 'Super freak' by Rick James was my air guitar favourite. The 1981 hit single was produced and performed by Rick James and features background vocals from Motown labelmates The Temptations, featuring James' uncle Melvin Franklin.
The single reached number 2 in the Dutch Top 40. The song is also well known because it was sampled by MC Hammer in his 1990 hit 'U can't touch this'. That being a hip hop track, it was of course unlistenable.
My collection: 7" single no. 1782 Found: November 7, 1992 Cost: 2 guilders Tracks: 'Super freak' / 'Super freak (instrumental)'
Band leader Billy Corgan reportedly worked nonstop after his band's Siamese Dream tour and wrote about 56 songs for the Smashing Pumpkins' 'Mellon Collie and the infinite sadness' album. As the Mellon Collie sessions came to a conclusion, '1979' was just a couple of chord changes and a snippet of a melody without words. When the time came to choose the songs that were to appear on the album, producer Flood said that '1979' was not good enough and wanted to drop it from the record.
This inspired Corgan to finish it in four hours. The next day, Flood heard '1979' once and decided immediately to put it on the album. The song features a sample of Corgan's voice repeated throughout. During recording, Corgan was singing "ooh" as the melody line, so he and Flood decided to record him singing to a tape. The pair electronically manipulated several samples and looped them against a drumbeat. The single was the band's first international big hit, peaking at number 16 in Australia and the UK and number 12 in the US Billboard Hot 100.
My collection: 7" single no. 2834 Found: Record fair, February 8, 1997 Cost: 10 guilders Tracks: '1979' / 'Bullet with butterfly wings'
Sugar Minott was born as Lincoln Barrington Minott on May 25, 1956 in Kingston, Jamaica. He began his singing career in 1969 when he joined the African Brothers, along with Tony Tuff and Derrick Howard. After five years, the group broke up and Sugar Minott started a solo career.
He had several hits in his native Jamaica, until in 1981 'Good thing going', a cover version of a song originally performed by Michael Jackson, was picked up for distribution by RCA and reached number 4 in the UK Singles Chart in March 1981, leading to an album of the same name. Minott never equalled this success again.
Taken from their 1983 album 'Tango', 'Elettrochoc' is probably the most frantic track of Matia Bazar's lengthy career. The operatic vocals of singer Antonella Ruggiero are supported by a high energy synth backing. I was very impressed when I heard this single for the first time, and even to this day it never fails to excite me.
For some time in the Eighties I had a hobby creating remixes out of existing recordings by bands. This single lent itself to this purpose excellently: the instrumental version on the B-side is rather different from the vocal version on the A-side.
The recording sessions for 'Summer night city' began in early 1978. Abba's new Polar Music recording studio had opened in May, but had not been ready to use initially, so the primary backing track had been recorded at Metronome Studio. A 43-second ballad-style introduction to the song had been edited out to improve the overall quality, but nothing seemed to work. Allegedly, mixing the single took at least a week, far more than it took to mix any other track in ABBA's recording history. A reluctant Abba decided to release the song as a single in September despite their disappointment with the track as it was.
Although the band was critical of their own song, the record-buying audiences were impressed. The single topped the charts in Finland, Ireland and Sweden and peaked at number 5 in the UK and the Netherlands.
The B-side medley was actually a remix of the original 1975 version that had been issued on the German charity album 'Stars im zeichen eines guten sterns'. It was a medley of the traditional songs 'Pick a bale of cotton', 'On top of old smokey' and 'Midnight special'. The recording is unique because it's the only cover version(s) that Abba have ever recorded in the studio.
My collection: 7" single no. 2299 Found: Record fair, Amsterdam, May 27, 1995 Cost: 2 guilders Tracks: 'Summer night city' / 'Medley: Pick a bale of cotton/On top of old Smokey/Midnight special'
The Motors had their debut live performance at the Marquee Club in March 1977. That same month, they recorded three songs for John Peel's weekly BBC Radio 1 show. By May they had been signed to Virgin Records, appearing in another John Peel session in September of the same year.
Their first single was 'Dancing the night away', which reached number 42 in the UK singles chart. Two big hits followed. In 1978 the band released 'Airport', which proved to be the band's biggest seller. The follow-up, 'Forget about you', was released two months later and reached number 13.
Released as the first single from the Divine Comedy's 2006 album 'Victory for the comic muse', 'Diva lady' peaked at number 52 in the UK singles chart. It was released on two different cd-singles as well as this 7" vinyl single, which included a small poster and an exclusive track on the B-side.
The album is unique in the Divine Comedy catalogue - and in the catalogue of most recent popular music - in that Hannon's original aim with the album was to record it entirely in two weeks, with the minimum of overdubbing. As such, almost all of the music on the album - much to the chagrin of the classical players involved on almost every track, and the Divine Comedy band itself - was recorded in live takes.
When I was 11, 'Super freak' by Rick James was my air guitar favourite. The 1981 hit single was produced and performed by Rick James and features background vocals from Motown labelmates The Temptations, featuring James' uncle Melvin Franklin.
