SSQ – Big Electronic Beat (US 12″)
Posted by DjPaulT on 25th March 2010
BURNING THE GROUND EXCLUSIVE
1983
1983 Front Cover
SSQ was a 1980s synthpop outfit formed from t
he already-in-existence band Q (named after the James Bond character).
The original Q project was composed of Stacey Swain as lead singer, Jon St. James on guitars, and Dan Van Patten and John Van Tongeren on vocoder and synthesizer. In 1982 the band reformed with two new members, drummer Karl Moet and synth player Rich West, alongside the official lineup of Van Tongeren, St. James and Swain. After the reformation, St. James was forced to change the name of Q because of copyright problems (famed producer Quincy Jones reportedly had “established use of the ‘Q’ moniker”). Swain explained in a 2006 radio interview that the band was renamed SSQ after Jon St. James “was fishing in a lake ‘no bigger than a bathtub’ and made a joke that the boat was the ‘S.S. Q,’” referring to the current band Q. St. James had another reason for the name: “SS” stood for “Stacey Swain”, who had become the most recognized of the band’s members.
“Big Electronic Beat” was the second single released from SSQ’s debut album “Platback” on Enigma Records in 1983 the song also appeared on the soundtrack of the 1984 comedy “Hardbodies”.
The new lineup carried on with Swain under the name Stacey Q, and they acted as musicians on her first two albums, Better Than Heaven and Hard Machine. They went on to success with dance-pop tracks like “Two of Hearts” and “We Connect”. Rich West, Karl Moet and Skip Hahn were collectively credited as “SSQ” on the credits of albums and singles released as “Stacey Q”. The backup members also recorded some material without Stacey Swain on vocals. One such track, the hip-hop-inspired “Pleasure Dog”, was featured on The Enigma Variations Vol. 2.
RELEASE/PRODUCTION INFORMATION
Label: Enigma Records (3)
Catalog#: ENIGMA 8
Format: Vinyl, 12″, 45 RPM
Country: US
Released: 1983
Genre: Electronic
Style: Synth-pop
Credits: Artwork By [Illustration] – Douglas Bevins
Other [Art Direction] – Henry Marquez
Producer – Jon St. James
Vocals – Stacey Swain
Written-By – John Van Tongeren , Jon St. James
SIDE A
A Big Electronic Beat (Extended) 4:20
SIDE B
B1 Big Electronic Beat (Sans Instruments) 1:03
B2 Big Electronic Beat (Sans Vocal) 3:41
Back Cover
CLEANING AND GRADING INFO
US 12″ Single Housed In A Full Color Picture Sleeve.
Vinyl Grade: Near Mint.
Vinyl cleaned using a VPI HW 16.5 Record Cleaning Machine and Gruv Glide.
TECHNICAL INFORMATION
Media Used:
Vinyl 12″ Single
From My Personal Collection.
Artwork Scanned from Original 12″ Single @ 600 dpi
With Brother MFC-6490CW Professional Series Scanner
Edited and Restored Using Adobe Photoshop CS4
HARDWARE USED
Turntable: Pro-Ject Debut III
Cartridge: Ortofon Super 10
Bellari VP130 Tube Phono Preamp
Soundcard: ESI Juli@
SOFTWARE USED
Audition 3.0:
Recording (32bit/96kHz float using ASIO drivers)
*Manual removal of remaining clicks
*Editing and splitting of tracks
*DC bias correction
CLICKS REMOVED USING CLICKREPAIR
DeClick Level: 10 DeCrackle: Off
Converted Wav to very high quality Mp3/320 kbps using dBpoweramp 13.1.
PW: burningtheground
Tags: Jon St. James, SSQ, Stacey Q
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