Posts by Simon Grigg
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: Friday Fever, in reply to Sacha,
Great story. More, more!
Buy the book! You won't regret it. The first half in particular is some of the most intriguing rock'n'roll biz journalism I've ever read.
-
Hard News: Friday Fever, in reply to Russell Brown,
Fuck. I thought I'd grab The Big Payback via the IPad Kindle app
That's odd - I bought it on kindle for Mac. No issues. Maybe Thailand is ok, or maybe they've just closed a hole. God, I hope not.
-
Hard News: Friday Fever, in reply to Steve Barnes,
So no one’s going to pst Blondie’s “Rapture"
The story of that record is detailed in the The Big Payback - the business history of hip hop which is a must read if you have any interest in the music bizz.
It came from a trip uptown taken by Harry and Stein, led by hip-hop impresario Fab Five Freddy Brathwaite:
What Brathwaite hoped to get out of the excursion was a cultural event—to get Blondie and Chic to do a show together, and put Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five on the bill. Brathwaite’s big gig never happened. But Brathwaite did get his cultural event. Just not in the way he thought.
“We just finished a new record,” Stein and Harry told Brathwaite over the phone. “We have some new things that we can’t wait to play for you.” Brathwaite dropped by the couple’s apartment on 58th Street, and Stein played a song for him on cassette.
It was a funky groove, with a bare-bones bass riff, and church bells accompanying Debbie Harry’s sweetly sung melody: “Toe to toe, dancing very close, / Barely breathing, almost comatose, / Wall to wall, people hypnotized, / And they’re stepping lightly, hang each night in rrrrrapture. ...”
Then, to Brathwaite’s surprise, Harry started to rap: “Fab Five Freddy told me everybody’s fly, / DJ’s spinnin’, I said, ‘My, my.’ / Flash is fast, Flash is cool.” Brathwaite smiled. Debbie had taken their Bronx trip and turned it into a song.
Even after the video was completed Freddie still thought they were taking the piss, until:
[Braithwaite] rode in a car with Talking Heads members Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz. This is the life, he thought.
The radio played, and Brathwaite slowly realized what he was hearing.
“Fab Five Freddie told me everybody’s fly, /DJ’s spinnin’, I said, ‘My, my.’ / Flash is fast, Flash is cool.”
This is Chris and Debbie’s new song, right? Weymouth and Frantz asked. Brathwaite was numb. He could barely get the words out of his mouth. “They played it for me,” he said, dumbly. “I thought it was a joke.” It wasn’t.
“Rapture” was not only a huge hit for Blondie in the spring of 1981, selling over 500,000 copies as the second single from Autoamerican. The song that Brathwaite inspired was also the first record containing rap to reach number one on the U.S. pop charts.
-
Hard News: Friday Fever, in reply to Kumara Republic,
And in fairness
And they were one of those 80's mysteries: horrendous US stadium rock bands created by Englishmen who had made reasonably good records back home early in the last decade. Mick Jones was in the proto-punk Spooky Tooth and Ian McDonald was an art rocker of some note with King Crimson.
-
I can almost forgive Foreigner because without whom:
All over the wonderfulness that was London pirate radio around '85.
-
Hard News: Heads up for music, in reply to recordari,
Go figure
Why not:
Saw Mantronix live twice, at the 1989 and 1990 DMC Champs - man, they were something.
-
Hard News: Heads up for music, in reply to Danielle,
I wish to marry it.
You can't. The Elvis Costello list already did that bit for you.
-
Hard News: Heads up for music, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
(and Paul Young)
What was it with Essex kids and their need to ritually slaughter great soul records around that time (ok he was from Bedfordshire but spiritually he was from Chelmsford)?
-
Hard News: Heads up for music, in reply to Danielle,
The Angels... (you can fill the rest in....)
-
Hard News: Heads up for music, in reply to 3410,
You just knew that, right? I feel small.