Giorgio - From Here To Eternity

Fresh from the futuristic sound of Donna Summer's I Feel Love, her producer Giorgio Moroder carried on the sounds of the synthesizer and produced this sizeable hit from 1977. It was released in September 1977 and reached number 16 in the UK charts. The single was mixed down from a 6 minute album track to produce this single version which was big in the discos along with Donna's single!

The track isn't really remembered that much, I hardly ever hear of people talking about it but it seems the album it came off (named after the single) seems to have been such an influential album in late 70's electronic music. It was one of the first electronic tracks I had heard (along with I Feel Love, Kraftwerk's Autobahn and Jean Michel Jarre's Oxygene) and it is what really got me into the sounds of synths and electronic music, that is why I still really love this single. Try and listen to it if you can! Here's the scan of the single

Toyah - It's A Mystery

This track formed part of an E.P called Four From Toyah. Released early in 1981 it was Toyah's breakthrough hit single after several years of building up a large fan base. It wasn't like anything she had released before and was weary of releasing the single as she didn't want to upset the fans, but it was the record company that suggested to Toyah that she recorded a cover version. It's A Mystery was in fact a cover version for another band and she wrote the lyrics for the track.

The single hit the charts and peaked in the UK at number 4 of 1981 and came from the album Anthem and having a hit album and single, gave her the boost she needed and began several years of successful releases in the UK. At this time, there wasn't always a video released with chart singles so she would appear on Top Of The Pops to promote this single, but her later singles all came with good videos. Here's the single cover

The Human League - Dare

I really love this album. This was the first CD I ever bought, even before I had a player to play it on! I bought the vinyl copy as a picture disc in December 1981 and played it several times and just thought it was a great pop album. It contains four hit singles, The Sound Of The Crowd, Love Action, Open Your Heart and the worldwide smash Don't You Want Me. It was released in October 1981 and later in 1982 in America and couldn't be any different than the previous two albums by the band.

The original line up of The Human League, split up in late 1980 (the other 2 members went to form Heaven 17) and with Phil Oakey guiding the band wanted to be more of a pop band than the electronic group the old band was. Virgin wanted hits from the band so they recruited Suzanne Sully & Joanne Catherall to salvage a European tour. Virgin put them with producer Martin Rushent and the result was Sound Of The Crowd which was a decent hit reaching 12 in the UK charts, Virgin were happy and making the album went ahead.

Love Action was released in the summer of 1981 and climbed to number 3, Open Your Heart reached number 6 and was used to market the albums following release. Dare went straight to number 1 in the album charts and at the end of 1981 Don't You Want Me was released. This song ended up being the biggest selling single in the UK in 1981 and also the Christmas number one of that year too! Not bad for a song that Phil Oakey didn't think was a hit, they even put it at the end of the album as they didn't think of it that much, it ended up being a worldwide smash!

The Human League rode the success of the album well, but came the day they had to follow it up. Not many bands can follow such a successful album and they realised that. I remember watching an interview with Martin Rushent and he said it was an album of the time, one that just came together. When it came to record the follow up they struggled as they didn't know how they came up with Dare, it just happened! Martin Rushent was working on remastering Dare and rumours of extra unreleased tracks that were recorded for the album were getting sorted, but Martin died before the project was sorted and I read that his son was concidering taking on the project, fingers crossed he does! Here is the classic album sleeve, an idea taken from Vogue magazine!

The Playlist

I've just finished making a playlist on Spotify featuring all the songs that are on this blog. There are some tracks missing, because they are not available on Spotify. So far there's around 4 hours worth of music! Enjoy it. Here's the link http://t.co/mbfAdq9r2U

Randy Crawford - One Day I'll Fly Away

Randy Crawford was probably known before this as the vocalist on a disco smash Street Life by the Crusaders. More known as a jazz singer, Randy released this soul hitting single in September 1980 in the UK. Such a smash, it raced up to Number 2 in late September and became her biggest hit single. strangely I don't think this single did anything in her native America but did really well in Europe too. She had another couple of hits with Rainy Night in Georgia and You Might Need Somebody after the success of One Night with further minor hits but had a further hit later in the 80's with Almaz.

Here's the single

Spandau Ballet - To Cut A Long Story Short

To me, this single is the start the New Romantic movement that broke big in the UK at the end of 1980. London band Spandau Ballet would be one of the many groups that used to hang out and occasionally play at Blitz night club (which many say was the birthplace of the New Romantic scene).

Spandau were making waves in the music biz and after a record company bidding war, they signed to Chrysalis Records, who gave them their own label, Reformation. The single To Cut A Long Story Short was released in November 1980 and climbed to number 5 within a couple of weeks of release. The video was a band performance and gave many a view of what the New Romantics was all about, smart clothes, guys in make up and a catchy tune.

This single helped the band have a long and worldwide successful career up to the breakup in 1990. They since got back together in 2009 for reunion shows of which the first London show sold out in 20 minutes and had to add extra dates!

Here's the single

Sweet - The Ballroom Blitz

Let's start 2014 with a huge worldwide hit and a great power single

Sweet released this single in September 1973 after having huge success in the year with Blockbuster and Hellraiser. 1973 and 1974 were to be the band's biggest years and made some great singles in these years. Glam rock was in full force and there was no stopping the band, or maybe there was!

The track was partly influenced by an incident where the band were playing a gig in a ballroom in Scotland (the birth place of Brian Connolly, the lead singer) and were forced off stage due to bottle throwing from fans. Ballrooms and club were what venues were around in those days (a throwback from the 50's & 60's pre rock n roll days). Sweet didn't help the fact that they used to piss the fans off by not playing early hits as Sweet wanted to be a rock band not a bubblegum band they were more know for. The single was never featured on any album release in the UK (except Greatest Hits) but was featured on the US version of Desolation Boulevard

The single peaked at number 2 in the UK, a position that Sweet were used to but was really annoying as a lot of Sweet singles stuck at number 2 and was only Blockbuster that got to the top. Here is the single in all it's glory!