Tag: UK

August 10, 2023

Sinitta – So Macho! (UK 12″)

Burning The Ground Exclusive 1985

BTG BARBIE Rewind: Bubblegum Pop Inspired by BARBIE!

“So Macho” is a song by American-British singer Sinitta. The song was released in 1985 as her self-titled début album’s second single.

Sinitta was both Simon Cowell’s and Fanfare Records’ first signing. Cowell had contacted record producer and songwriter George Hargreaves, who in turn provided the song “So Macho”. Armed with a highly infectious pop record, Sinitta looked poised for success; however, Iain Burton changed his mind and called Cowell to advise he was pulling the plug on Fanfare Records. Convinced “So Macho” was destined to be a hit, Cowell persuaded Burton to give him £5,000 to release the record.

The single was first released in late July 1985 and, like Sinitta’s début single “Cruising”, it quickly gained popularity in the gay clubs and on the Hi-NRG dance scene. Although the single failed to chart, it continued to sell throughout the summer, including 15,000 copies on import. The song’s popularity led Cowell to make the decision to delete the single at the end of October 1985 to let demand build up again. As Christmas approached, the song found renewed popularity in straight clubs and discos. The single was re-released as a double A-side with “Cruising” on 17 February 1986.

The record’s sleeve was changed from an image of Sinitta to a cartoon macho man, in an effort to make clear to radio programers that it was a pop record, and not R&B or soul. The re-release was not an immediate success as it remained in the lower reaches of the charts. It was not until four months later that the single started gaining airplay and entered the top 40, upon which it quickly rose to number two in the UK Singles Chart.

The song’s belated video was recorded for £500 in a London flat belonging to one of Cowell’s friends, in the hope of gaining TV exposure. Sinitta supplied her own wardrobe, and there was no budget for hair or makeup.

It was certified gold by the BPI, and has sold 585,000 copies. Iain Burton’s initial £5,000 investment became a profit of £1,000,000 and paved the way for Fanfare’s future.

SIDE A:
So Macho! (Extended Dance Mix) 6:36

SIDE AA:
Cruising (Remix) 7:31
Engineer –Richard Bull
Remix – Tony Atkins

VINYL GRADE:
Vinyl: Near Mint
Sleeve: Near Mint

RELEASE INFORMATION:
Label: Fanfare Records – 12 FAN 7
Format: Vinyl, 12″, 45 RPM, Single, Stereo, White Logo
Country: UK
Released: 1985
Genre: Electronic
Style: Hi NRG, Synth-pop

CREDITS:

Hair [Sinitta’s Hair By] – Madeline (10)
Photography By – Leo Lyons (2)
Producer – G. Hargreaves and Mick Parker*
Sleeve [Design] – Snap (11)
Written-By – J.G. Hargreaves

NOTES:
Engineered at Village Recorders, London

Buy the 12″ at DISCOGS

VINYL TRANSFER & AUDIO RESTORATION:
-DjPaulT
burningtheground.net

THE GEAR:
Turntable: Technics SL-1200MK7
Cartridge/Stylus: Ortofon 2M Black PnP MkII
Turntable Isolation Platform: ISO-Tone™ Turntable Isolation Platform
Platter: Pro Spin Acrylic Mat
Stabilizer: Pro-Ject Record Puck
Phono Pre-amp: Pro-Jec Tube Box DS2
Tubes: Genalex Gold Lion 12AX7 ECC83/B759 Gold Pins Vacuum Tube – Matched Pair
DAC: Alpha Design Labs GT40a USB DAC
Record Cleaning: VPI HW 16.5 Record Cleaning Machine
Artwork Scans: Epson Workforce WF-7610 Professional Printer/Scanner

SOFTWARE:
Recording/Editing: Adobe Audition 3.0 (Recording)
Down Sampling/Dither: iZotope RX Advanced 2
Artwork Editor: Adobe Photoshop CS5
Click Removal: Manual
FLAC/MP3 Conversion: dBpoweramp
M3U Playlist: Playlist Creator

RESTORATION NOTES:
All vinyl rips are recorded @ 32bit/float
FLAC (Level Eight)
Artwork scanned at 600dpi

**24bit FLAC Only Available For Seven Days!

Password: burningtheground

You can help show your support for this blog by making a donation using PayPal. Thank you for your help.

July 12, 2023

Starship – We Built This City (UK 12″)

Burning The Ground Exclusive 1985

“We Built This City” is a 1985 song by American rock band Starship, the debut single from the album Knee Deep in the Hoopla. It was written by English musicians Martin Page and Bernie Taupin, who were both living in Los Angeles at the time and was originally intended as a lament against the closure of many of that city’s live music clubs.

The song peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Outside the United States, “We Built This City” topped the charts in Australia and Canada, peaked inside the top 10 of the charts in Germany, the Republic of Ireland, Sweden, and Switzerland, the top 20 on the charts in Belgium, New Zealand and the United Kingdom and the top 30 of the charts in Austria and the Netherlands.

The song has gained significant scorn, both for the inscrutability of its lyrics (notably the line “Marconi plays the mamba”), and for the contrast between the song’s anti-corporate message and its polished, “corporate rock” sound. It topped a 2011 Rolling Stone poll of worst songs of the 1980s by a wide margin, and the magazine’s Blender and GQ both called it the worst song of all time.

Billboard said that this “unusual rock ‘n’ roll anthem is as wise as it is rebellious.” Cash Box called it “an ear-catching tune” and described it as “dance rock with sharp hooks.”

“We Built This City” received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group in 1986.

The song was engineered by producer Bill Bottrell, written by Bernie Taupin, Martin Page, Dennis Lambert, and Peter Wolf, and arranged by Bottrell and Jasun Martz. The song was based on a demo by Page and Taupin with a darker feel and based on how clubs were dying in Los Angeles, leaving live performers without work. Wolf reworked the song’s arrangement with a more upbeat tone.

The song features Mickey Thomas and Grace Slick sharing lead vocals. MTV executive and former DJ Les Garland provided the DJ voiceover during the song’s bridge. Additionally, some radio stations, with the help of jingle company JAM Creative Productions, inserted their own opening lines to promote their stations.

SIDE A:
We Built This City (Special Club Mix) 7:00
Remix – Victor Flores
Written-By – Bernie Taupin, Dennis Lambert, Martin Page, Peter Wolf (3)

SIDE B:
We Built This City 4:51
Remix – Bill Bottrell

Private Room (Instrumental) 4:55
Written-By – Craig Chaquico, Mickey Thomas

VINYL GRADE:
Vinyl: Near Mint
Sleeve: Near Mint

U.S. CHART HISTORY:

Year	Single	Chart	Position
1985	We Built This City	U.S. Billboard Hot 100	#1
1985	We Built This City	U.S. Billboard Adult Contemporary	#37

RELEASE INFORMATION:
Label: RCA – FT 49930
Format: Vinyl, 12″, 45 RPM, Single
Country: UK
Released: 1985
Genre: Electronic, Rock
Style: Pop Rock, Synth-pop

CREDITS:

Executive-Producer – Dennis Lambert
Producer – Jeremy Smith (2), Peter Wolf (3)

NOTES:
From the New Starship Album
Manufactured in England.

Buy the 12″ at DISCOGS

VINYL TRANSFER & AUDIO RESTORATION:
-DjPaulT
burningtheground.net

RESTORATION NOTES:
All vinyl rips are recorded @ 32bit/float
FLAC (Level Eight)
Artwork scanned at 600dpi

**24bit FLAC Only Available For Seven Days!

Password: burningtheground

You can help show your support for this blog by making a donation using PayPal. Thank you for your help.

June 27, 2023

Paul Lekakis – Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back To My Room) (Champion Remix) (UK 12″)

Burning The Ground Exclusive 1987

NEW 2023 Transfer
NEW Meticulous Audio Restoration

Originally posted July 13, 2015

A pretty face won’t get you everywhere… but it got you pretty damn far in the ’80s.

And it certainly helped gay musician Paul Lekakis, who went from upstate New York waiter, to model and professional party boy in Milan, to international pop star in 1987 with a little bop called “Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back to My Room.)”

The song will certainly resonate with those who survived its ’80s dance-floor domination… and anyone who’s attended a Pride party in the past five years.

Lekakis, who is HIV-positive, appeared on the cover of Poz magazine. In the article, he recalls major record labels wanting to market him as a teen idol in the 1980s, which did not interest the already out young singer.

“Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back to My Room)” is the debut single by American singer and model Paul Lekakis.

Originally released in 1987 on ZYX Records, then picked up by Polydor Records for a wider release, the song peaked at #43 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the U.S. and at #60 on the UK Singles Chart in England. It fared better in other parts of the world, where the song spent five weeks at #1 on the ARIA Charts in Australia, from April 13 through May 11 of 1987. It also topped music charts in Japan and South Africa and peaked at #2 in Canada. The song is noteworthy because it is a well-known 1980s dance club track that nonetheless failed to appear on the U.S. Hot Dance Club Play chart upon its initial release. Subsequent remixes have appeared on that chart, however, as well as some of Lekakis’ other dance recordings. The song was popular in the LGBT community and helped to establish his career, both as a singer and as an actor.

Several remixes were commissioned for the track including the rare UK-only Champion Remix by mixmaster Phil Harding of PWL released on Champion Records a London-based major long-running soul, dance, and house music label.

SIDE A:
Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back To My Room) (A Phil Harding Remix) 6:40

SIDE B:
Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back To My Room) (A Phil Harding Dub Remix) 5:44

VINYL GRADE:
Vinyl: Near Mint
Sleeve: Near Mint

U.S. CHART HISTORY:

Year	Single	Chart	Position
1987	Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back To My Room)	U.S. Billboard Hot 100	#43

RELEASE INFORMATION:
Label: Champion – CHAMPX 12-43
Format: Vinyl, 12″, 45 RPM
Country: UK
Released: 1987
Genre: Electronic
Style: Hi-NRG

CREDITS:

Producer – M. Chieregato*, R. Turatti*
Remix – Mixmaster Phil Harding*
Written-By – M. Chieregato*, R. Ballerini*, R. Turatti*, S. Montini*, T. Hooker*

NOTES:
Tracks are listed incorrectly on the back cover.

VINYL TRANSFER & AUDIO RESTORATION:
-DjPaulT
burningtheground.net

RESTORATION NOTES:
All vinyl rips are recorded @ 32bit/float
FLAC (Level Eight)
Artwork scanned at 600dpi

**24bit FLAC Only Available For Seven Days!

Password: burningtheground

You can help show your support for this blog by making a donation using PayPal. Thank you for your help.

June 23, 2023

Frankie Goes To Hollywood – In The Pleasuredome (UK Cassette)

Burning The Ground Exclusive 1985

Pride month would not be complete without including Frankie Goes To Hollywood known for their leather-clad homoerotic videos and suggestive lyrics. Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ambitious work sought to challenge the status quo of pop, and politics. they were true trailblazers.

“Welcome to the Pleasuredome” is the title track to the 1984 debut album by British band Frankie Goes to Hollywood. The lyrics of the song were inspired by the poem Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

In March 1985, the album track was abridged and remixed for release as the group’s fourth UK single.

While criticized at the time of release and afterward for being a song that glorifies debauchery, the lyrics (and video), just as Coleridge’s poem, were about the dangers of mindless indulgence. This song, along with “Relax”, made Frankie Goes to Hollywood even more controversial than they already were.

Billboard compared it to “Relax,” saying that “Welcome to the Pleasuredome” had “less hook, less controversy, more drama.”

Despite the group’s record label (ZTT) pre-emptively promoting the single as “their fourth number one”, an achievement that would have set a new UK record for consecutive number one singles by a debuting artist, “Welcome to the Pleasuredome” peaked at number two on the UK Singles Chart, being kept off the top spot by the Phil Collins/Philip Bailey duet “Easy Lover”. The single spent a total of eleven weeks on the UK chart.

It was the first release by the group not to reach number one and, despite representing a creditable success in its own right, it symbolically confirmed the end of the chart invincibility that the group had enjoyed during 1984. Frankie Goes to Hollywood would not release another record for seventeen months, and they would fail to emulate their past chart success upon their return.

The spoken-word introductions to both 12-inch mixes are adapted from Walter Kaufmann’s 1967 translation of Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy. The recitation on the first 12-inch (“Real Altered”) is by Gary Taylor, whilst that on the second 12-inch (“Fruitness”) and the cassette is by actor Geoffrey Palmer. It is unknown whether Palmer’s conclusion “Welcome To The Pleasuredome” was a genuine mistake or a deliberately scripted one.

All releases featured an edited version of “Get It On”, originally recorded for a BBC Radio 1 session in 1983 (a full-length version was included on the cassette release), plus a faded or full-length version of “Happy Hi!”, a non-album track.

The video, by Bernard Rose, features the group stealing a car, going to a carnival, and encountering all manner of deceptively “pleasurable” activities. The audio soundtrack of the video was included as part of the cassette single.

ABOUT THE TRANSFER

On the cassette “Welcome To The Pleasure Dome (The Soundtrack From Bernard Rose’s Video)”, and “Get It On” are sequenced into one track to preserve the integrity of the original cassette release I chose not to split the tracks. DOLBY NR was used for this transfer.

All In The Body
Happy Hi! 1:22
Welcome To The Pleasure Dome (The Soundtrack From Bernard Rose’s Video)/Get It On 9:48

All In The Mind
Welcome To The Pleasure Dome (How To Remake The World) 9:32
Happy Hi 1:12

CASSETTE GRADE:
Cassette: Near Mint
Sleeve: Near Mint

U.S. CHART HISTORY:

Year	Single	Chart	Position
1985	Welcome To The Pleasuredome	U.S. Billboard Hot 100	#48
1985	Welcome To The Pleasuredome	U.S. Billboard Dance Club Songs	#31

RELEASE INFORMATION:
Label: ZTT – CTIS 107
Series: Action Series – 7, Incidental Series – 95
Format: Cassette, Single
Country: UK
Released: Mar 18, 1985
Genre: Electronic, Rock, Pop
Style: Synth-pop

CREDITS:

Compiled By – Sunday Morning Broken Spirits*
Composed By – Nash* (tracks: A1, A2, A4, A5, B1, B2, B4, B5), Johnson* (tracks: A1, A2, A4, A5, B1, B2, B4, B5), Bolan* (tracks: A3, B3), O’Toole* (tracks: A1, A2, A4, A5, B1, B2, B4, B5), Gill* (tracks: A1, A2, A4, A5, B1, B2, B4, B5)
Design [Cassette Packaged By] – XLZTT
Performer – Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Photography By – Anton Corbijn
Producer – Dale Griffin (tracks: A3, B3), T. C. Horn* (tracks: A1, A2, A4, A5, B1, B2, B4, B5)
Producer [Assisted By] – S. J. Lipson* (tracks: A1, A2, A4, A5, B1, B2, B4, B5)
Voice Actor [Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche Played By…] – Geoffrey Palmer

NOTES:
Plays the same tracks on both sides. Issued as a grey cassette with white text on black paper labels. On some copies, it is apparent that there is red/pink print directly on the cassette under the paper labels.

Frankie Goes To Hollywood in the Pleasure Dome, a two-part cassette celebration of their fourth number one. There is, unquestionably, a stringent honesty in all this – but can it be carried too far? Ask your friends.

This singlette is number ninety-five in the imperfect Incidental Series. It is also part of number seven in Zang Tuum Tum’s professional Action Series. Fans of Frankie Goes To Hollywood must also know it is all part of Number One in Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s 1985 Escape Act… ‘from the wasteland to the artificial paradise.’

Friedrich Nietzsche appears as “Friedich Wilhelm Nietzsche” on release

Dolby System

Buy the Cassette at DISCOGS

CASSETTE TRANSFER & AUDIO RESTORATION:
-DjPaulT
burningtheground.net

THE GEAR:
Cassette Deck: Nakamichi BX-300 Discrete 3-Head Cassette Deck
DAC/Phono Pre-amp Line In Alpha Design Labs GT40a USB DAC
Artwork Scans: Epson Workforce WF-7610 Professional Printer/Scanner

SOFTWARE USED:
Recording/Editing: Adobe Audition 3.0 (Recording)
Down Sampling/Dither: iZotope RX Advanced 2
Artwork Editor: Adobe Photoshop CS5
Click Removal: Manual
FLAC/MP3 Conversion: dBpoweramp
M3U Playlist: Playlist Creator

RESTORATION NOTES:
Cassette transfer was recorded @ 32bit/float
FLAC (Level Eight)
Artwork scanned at

**24bit FLAC Only Available For Seven Days!

Password: burningtheground

You can help show your support for this blog by making a donation using PayPal. Thank you for your help.