Everything is better when it comes with a ‘four to the
floor’ beat.
Or so it seemed for a short while in the early 80s, when the
British charts were deluged with discs featuring a medley of hits stapled
roughly to a disco rhythm. The trend started back in 1976, when the Ritchie
Family scored their biggest hit with The Best Disco in Town, which incorporated various pop hits of the day.
In1977 Disconet, a DJ subscription service that put out
discs exclusively for club and radio use, issued The Original Beatles Medley, official recordings by the lads, snipped and
stapled together over a disco beat. Although the Disconet 12” has long been
believed to be a bootleg, Disconet was a legitimate operation and that all of
the medleys they produced (including those for Elvis and Michael Jackson) were
officially sanctioned. However for one reason or another – presumably because
Apple hated the rough and ready medley that Disconet’s Ray Lenahan produced but
that capitol seemed to endorse – the Original Beatles Medley soon vanished and it quickly became a collector’s
item. Pirate copies appeared and, in an effort to fill the void, Atlantic
records issued the dreadful Disco Beatlemania, which featured a covers band imitating the Beatles
over that relentless disco beat rather than snippets of the original
recordings, and EMI France issued the similar Unlimited Citations by Café Crème.
Then, in January 1981, as the world was recovering from the
shock of John Lennon’s murder, came Stars on 45. Another Beatles medley, this time recorded by a studio band put
together by former Golden Earring member Jaap Eggermont, Stars on 45 was a huge international hit – Number 1 in Holland
and the USA, Number 2 in the UK. Suddenly the floodgates were open, and anyone
who was anyone had a disco medley of their songs issued, either by their own
record company (remember Squeeze and Squabs on Forty Fab?) or by cover acts climbing on a very lucrative
bandwagon, such as Platinum Pop
by This Year’s Blonde (Blondie). There was even the Royal Philharmonic
Orchestra whose Hooked On Classics (Parts 1&2) was a massive UK hit, and spawned it’s own imitator
in the guise of the Portsmouth Sinfonia and Classical Muddly – itself a Top 40 UK hit!
It was endless: Lobo’s Caribbean Disco Show, Tight Fit’s Back to the 60s, Gidea Park’s Beach Boys Gold and (Four) Seasons of Gold and so on. Unsurprisingly EMI, the company that
owned so many of the original recordings that were being plundered, decided to
get in on the act with official medleys from the Hollies (Holliedaze), the Beach Boys and, naturally, The Beatles (The
Beatles Movie Medley).
There are many, many records I could have chosen from this
era to illustrate just how awful it was, but this obscurity is a prime example
of how any tu’penny ha’penny band could, and would, sell it’s soul for a stab
at chart stardom.
Antmania is,
obviously, a medley of hits by Adam and the Ants (then at the
height of their popularity). However this is not an officially sanctioned CBS
release (although, by a quirk of fate, it was distributed by a company owned by
CBS), rather it’s a cover issued on the tiny Eagle Records label in 1982 by the
otherwise unknown Future Heroes... a band that clearly knew nothing whatsoever about the post-punk, new wave stylings of Mr Ant and his crew.
To get an idea of what Future Heroes were actually like,
flip the single over for Hold On, a
poor disco/funk number written and produced by Dave Myers. Information on
Future Heroes is impossible to find: I do not know, for example, if the Dave
Myers that wrote and produced this dross is the same Dave Myers of Hairy Bikers
fame (although I’m trying to reach him to find out). He produced a number of
non-hits around 1981/82 then seemed to disappear. This was, unsurprisingly, the
only single issued by Future Heroes.
Still, here it is, a sad footnote in a sad period for pop
music.
Enjoy!
No comments:
Post a Comment