www.musicweek.com PRODUCTREISSUES BANANARAMA • VANGUARD RECORDS • GEORGE McCARE • KC AND THE SUNSHINE BAND •MAXI PRIEST
BANANARAMA: 30 YearsOf (Rhino 2564657996)
Still one of Britain’smost successful girl groups, Bananarama’s
career spanning new compilation cherry-picks 22 of their best tracks, most of which were substantial hits. Their harmonies endearingly ragged, Bananarama were lucky or clever enough to hook up with a succession of songwriters and producers whose expertise helped themto be chart regulars formore than a decade. After a couple of top five hits with Fun Boy Three got themestablished, the classic Bananarama trio of Sara Dallin, Siobhan Fahey and Keren Woodward put together a string of excellent hits with Tony Swain and Steve Jolley, including Shy Boy, Cruel Summer and Robert De Niro’s Waiting, then found a new lease of life under Stock, Aitken & Waterman, who propelled themto
further successes like Venus, Love In The First Degree and IWant You Back. Bananarama compilations aren’t in short supply but where this one scores is by the inclusion of a DVD featuring no fewer than 35 of Bananarama’s promotional videos, many commercially available for the first time. The DVD includes rarer clips like Last Thing OnMyMind and the extended (sevenminutes) promo for the Venus 12-inch.
VARIOUS:Make It Your Sound, Make It Your Scene:Vanguard Records&The 1960sMusical Revolution(Vanguard VANBOX 14)
Initially a classical label, and later to cash in on the disco boomwith The Players
Association, Vanguard Records is, however,mostly known for its folk, roots, country, jazz and blues acts, which helped tomake it amajor player in said fields between the late 1950s and early 1970s. In
keeping with that,Make It Your Sound,Make It Your Scene illustrates with examples from each genre, how the label evolved during the 1960s. It does so in style too, with 83 tracks spread across four CDs, while a 60-page booklet includes extensive annotations, essays and illustrations. Initiallymore focused on jazz and blues, with artists like Skip James, Otis Rush, JuniorWells and DocWatson on its roster, Vanguard bolstered its folk roster and becamemore politically conscious, with John Fahey’sMarch ForMartin Luther King, Tom Paxton’s Death Of Stephen Biko and Buffy
St.Marie’s Soldier Blue all championingminority causes.
St.Marie’s song was also amajor hit, as the label continued a purple patch which also saw chart success for the likes of Joan Baez (The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down), Ian & Sylvia (Four Strong Winds) and The Rooftop Singers (Walk Right In). All are here, in a box set of rare quality.
GEORGEMcCRAE:Rock Your Baby / KC ANDTHE SUNSHINE BAND: KC AndThe Sunshine Band(Big Break CDBBR 0167 / CDBBR 0168)
Two important early albums in the genesis of disco, George McCrae’s debut
albumRock Your Baby (1974) and KC and The Sunshine Band’s eponymous second album(1975) are now released in expanded, remastered editions on Big Break. McCrae’s groundbreaking title track fromRock Your Baby was originally intended to be a duet with his wife Gwen – but she was late for the session, and the rest is history. After the song’s success Casey and Finch quickly assembled an album of similarly-styledmaterial including further hits in I Can’t Leave You Alone and You Can Have It All. Much-sampled by the hip-hop community, both albums remain likeable and vital examples of 1970s disco.
MAXI PRIEST:Maximum Collection(Music ClubDeluxeMCDLX 157)
One of British reggae’smost successful recording artists – he had 20 UK Top
75 entries, and scored six Hot 100 hits in America –Maxi Priest has a supremely soulful voice, which made himparticularly adept at lover’s rock, although he was equally at home with uptempo jams. Both styles are included on this 36-song double disc distillation of his career, which also includes some new recordings. Priest’s first two Top 20 hits (Some Guys Have All The Luck andWildWorld) were well-judged covers but he really came into his own with a song he co-wrote – Close To You, a sweetly- chiming but bass-propelled ballad which not onlymade No.7 here but also topped the US chart. The last Priest compilation, on Virgin in 2004, is long out of print, so this is a welcome release.
13.07.12MusicWeek 49
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