#wish & fonda rae

[randomvarious]

Today’s compilation:

The Best of Personal Records 1989 Disco / Post-Disco / Eurodisco / Electro / Boogie

Despite only existing between around '83 to '86, the New York-based dance label Personal Records possessed an uncanny ability in churning out floor-burning bangers. In just less than four years, and without the assistance of any major label, they managed to chart twenty-eight of their own releases. That's a lot, folks!

Personal was co-founded by famed disco producer Jurgen Korduletsch and record biz executive Don Oriolo. And here's a fun bit of trivia about Oriolo: he also ran the Felix the Cat brand. It was actually his dad who created Felix—as well as Casper the Friendly Ghost—and when he died, Don took over operations for Felix. So, if you've ever wondered why Felix appeared to have this sudden resurgence in the 80s and 90s, it's because the co-owner of this excellent 80s dance label was the one who was pulling the strings! Neat, huh?

Anyway, there's few things in this world that I love more than 80s club music. Just a total hodgepodge of stuff like disco, post-disco, boogie, funk, R&B, soul, hi-NRG, electro, hip hop, dance-rock, freestyle, synthpop, house, dance-pop, and new wave, all flowing carefreely through each other. Never has music really felt more like a melting pot than when it was played on a 1980s dancefloor. Purely unprecedented peak eclecticism that I don't think we're ever going to see again.

And Personal contributed to that spirit of dynamism with their own catalog, which this compilation manages to provide a retrospective of in eleven songs. Personal's stuff lit up New York clubs, but not all of it was made by New Yorkers. In fact, four of the songs on here were actually licensed from Germany, including probably the album's most popular song, George Kranz's "Din Daa Daa," a peculiar, onomatopoeia-heavy, beatboxing precursor that was featured on the soundtrack for none other than Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. And the other three German-made tracks come courtesy of a guy named Fancy, whose "Chinese Eyes" sure as shit hasn't aged well at all lyrically, but sonically, it's something of a new wave-synthpop-Eurodisco masterpiece. Kranz's song hit #1 on Billboard's dance chart, while "Chinese Eyes" peaked at #2.

Also, do you remember that 1991 dance-pop-house piece of cotton candy fluff, "Touch Me (All Night Long)" by Cathy Dennis (I actually posted about it a while back...you think you haven't heard from Dennis since that song came out, but trust me, you have.)? Did you know it's actually a cover of a 9½-minute freestyle-electro-post-disco bop by Wish & Fonda Rae? The original's far less known than Dennis' version, but it still peaked at #5 on the US dance chart and it was also featured in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2. It's co-produced by the great and recently departed Patrick Adams (he made up half of Wish), who shows up in a couple other places on this comp too, including "Let's Change It Up" by Inner Life, a studio group fronted by Jocelyn Brown that he was also a member of.

Oh, and eminent 80s producer-remixer extraordinaire Shep Pettibone is on here as well, providing his signature sound in Clair Hicks & Love Exchange's "Push Push (In the Bush)," which, come to think of it...do you think that provided some inspiration for "What What (In the Butt)"? 😂

And one last thing! She's not on here at all, but Lisa Lisa was actually also signed to Personal Records for some time. They licensed her hit debut single, "I Wonder If I Take You Home," which Korduletsch and Oriolo both had a hand in producing, to CBS Records for a European compilation called Breakdancing, and it led to her getting signed to Columbia. Just another feather for this powerful, yet ultimately fleeting 80s dance label to wear in its cap.

Highlights:

George Kranz - "Din Daa Daa" Wish featuring Fonda Rae - "Touch Me" Fancy - "Chinese Eyes" Fancy - "Come Inside" Clair Hicks & Love Exchange - "Push Push (In the Bush)" Fancy - "Check It Out" Claudja Barry - "Born to Love" Inner Life - "Let's Change It Up"

[trukqsofficial]

Touch Me § Wish & Fonda Rae

[messagestomegan]

Touch Me § Wish & Fonda Rae

[c-40]

A-T-4 033 Wish Featuring Fonda Rae - Touch Me (All Night Long)

I've shared several Fonda Rae recordings. Rae had been the lead singer in Patrick Adams' group Rainbow Brown (It Ain't No Big Thing, Let's Go Another Round), after scoring a massive hit with Over Like A Fat Rat written by Adams friends and collaborators Leroy Burgess, Sonny T. Davenport, and James Calloway she is back featuring on a Patrick Adams/Greg Carmichael one off, a studio group they named Wish. Touch Me (All Night Long) (sometimes Tuch Me) might possibly be bigger than Over Like A Fat Rat, both have been heavily sampled but Touch Me has been covered more times. The best known cover I know is Cathy Dennis's pop version of 1990. Of course the positions of the two songs are different Over Like A Fat Rat is about reservations and dreams for some reason in my head I link it to the Burgess/Carmichael et al Bearly Breaking Even like there's an internal conflict happening, I think it's the 'getting over' bit I dunno, Touch Me (All Night Long) speaks for itself

The 1984 mixes were made by Bruce Forest

The original on Spotify and Bandcamp

In the UK Wish was dropped and Touch Me came out under Fonda Rae's name. Streetwave put out out a special version for breakdance which was a little more freestyle, in other territories it was just the dub mix (I think)

and here's footage of Fonda Rae performing Touch Me on US TV

[thebonesofhoudini]

Wish feat. Fonda Rae - Touch Me (All Night Long) (1984)

[retropopcult]

"Touch Me (All Night Long)" was a 1991 hit song for British singer Cathy Dennis, released as a single from her debut studio album, Move to This (1990).  It was a #1 hit on the US Billboard Dance Club Songs chart.

The song was written in 1984 by American singer Fonda Rae and released with her band, Wish. It was only a minor hit for them but was featured in the 1985 horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge.

[wrongarmofthelaw]

The Mun’s Music

YOU CAN TELL A LOT ABOUT SOMEONE BY THE TYPE OF MUSIC THEY LISTEN TO. HIT SHUFFLE ON YOUR IPOD, PHONE, ITUNES, MEDIA PLAYER ETC AND WRITE DOWN THE FIRST 20 SONGS. THEN PASS THIS ONTO PEOPLE.

ONE RULE: NO SKIPPING.

1. Love My Way - The Psychedelic Furs

2. And When I Die - The Heavy

3. Dragula - Rob Zombie

4. Forever May Not Be Long Enough - Live

5. The Rockafeller Skank - Fatboy Slim

6. King Of Pain - The Police

7. Savin Me - Nickleback

8. My Girlfriend Is A Witch - The October Country

9. Someday - Nickleback

10. Loverboy - Billy Ocean

11. It’s Terror Time Again - Skycycle

12. If I Ever Lose My Faith In You - Sting

13. Son of Man -Phil Collins

14. Touch Me (All Night Long) -Wish ft. Fonda Rae

15. High On Emotion - Chris De Burgh

16. Bump In The Night - Steel Breeze

17. I’d Rather Be Burned As A Witch - Eartha Kitt

18. Radioactive - The Firm

19. Break My Fall Radio Edit -Tiësto ft. BT

20. S.O.S. - Rihanna

Tagged by: @darkvitas

Tagging: @where-the-hell-were-you, @the-galaxy-savers, @mxgicshxrds, @exorcised-coffee, @dcspairwings, @hehhimawkward, @fromgallowsandgraves  (and whoever else wants to!)

[grimelords]

I just realised I wrote up my June playlist and forgot to post it at all, which benefits no one. July coming soon, but for now please enjoy three hours of two month old thoughts on the new Kanye, the Red Dead Redemption soundtrack and two songs about drinking beer.

Ghost Town - Kanye West: Now that the dust has settled around Kanye's month of chaos I can safely say Ye is great and Ghost Town is the best song on it, though it's not a coincidence that the best song is the one where Kanye says the least.

DLZ - TV On The Radio: I've been obsessed with this song for a long time. The combination of the absolutely hypnotising drums and very good cryptic lyrics about impending doom is exactly my shit. Also the whistling right at the very end is a perfect moment.

Hyph Mngo - Joy Orbison: Someone had a thing on twitter the other day that was like 'quote tweet this with a phrase you remember that if you told a younger person they wouldn't understand' and someone said Hyph Mngo and I felt age 100. This song really was such a game changer and that whole wave of stuff like this, Koreless and Jame Blake's EP's around then was such an incredible time to be alive. I am aging decades by the second and will not be around much longer.

The Shootist - Bill Elm & Woody Jackson: I've been thinking about game soundtracks a lot the past month or so for some reason and Red Dead really is an all timer. They did such a great job capturing the whole feeling without it just being a straight Morricone rip-off (though obviously it is mostly a Morricone ripoff).

Touch Me - Wish & Fonda Rae: This song is so fucking good to begin with but then it gets really really good in the middle part and where they just start going hogwild with the sampler on her vocals, and then again at the end when it starts sounding like a Battles song.

In The Vespers - Colin Stetson & Sarah Neufeld: Ever since I finished MGSV again I've been thinking about open-world stealth as a genre and how I'd do it, and this song is really the perfect kind of soundtrack to the game I'm thinking of. It's already got four alert levels built in, all the way from Tense to FUCk and back down to Calming Down But Still Scared.

Human After All - Daft Punk: Human After All is still a beguiling album in sound and vision after all this time. The amount of noise emananating from every single element in this song, and songs like Technologic is just so strange compared to everything they'd done before and since, but I think that's what I like about it. It sounds like it was made in 1979 when electronics were a novelty and everyone accepted that they'd be noisy as hell. Also I had an emotional moment this month while I was driving and listening to this song and reflecting on how we are all, human.. after all.. so who knows what's up with me.

Disparate Youth - Santigold: The production on this song is insane. The drums, the guitar, the bouncing piano, it just has so much momentum the whole way through and holy shit I just realised that the video I was talking about last month that referenced The Holy Mountain that I couldn't remember is L.E.S. Artistes by Santigold what an incredible two for one.

Violence - Parquet Courts: This song has the potential to be embarrassing but it's saved from itself by the specificity of the lyrics and the backing vocals that sound like a smiling swing band saying 'violence is daily life!'.

Jane Says - Jane's Addiction: The steel drum as the central melody line in this is such a strange and beautiful choice and also this song has two chords and no chorus. There are truly one million ways to make a good song.

Heatstroke - Calvin Harris feat. Young Thug, Pharrell Williams, Ariana Grande: I really can't believe I missed this song that came out like a year ago, so thank god my girlfriend told me about it. It's incredible. Everyone is operating at full capacity in this song and the structure is so good, the Pharrell/Thug pre-chorus could be a chorus on its own but then Ariana and Pharrell trade lines foe the actual chorus, amazing. Also when Thugger says 'she got every read bottom like a baboon’ the way the backup says '..baboon' slightly apprehensively cracks me up.

Maximum Black - Bohren & Der Club Of Gore: More Bohren, carrying over from last month. This is one of my favourites of theirs, mostly just for the choir sound and the all-time great sax intro at about 4:30. When you start at absolute zero, dialling it up to a 1 sounds like bomb going off.

Dust Bunnies - Kurt Vile: This is like most Kurt Vile songs in that it's sort of just about hanging out and feeling kind of funny, which is a mindset I really relate to.

Here For The Beer - The Sloppy Boys: A bunch of guys from The Birthday Boys have a band now and it's really great. Comedy music is hard but this album is the best kind where it's just dumb ass rock and roll story songs and odes to partying. The way he says 'autographed baseball' makes me laugh every time.

Beer Pressure - Municipal Waste: Anyway that song reminded me of this song, which is almost the exact same song with a slightly different mindset.

Credulous! Credulous! - BATS: There's really something to listening to a song for ten years and then having it suddenly dawn on you one day that it's about an epilleptic 16 year old in the distant past getting treppaned by a mystic and a team of scientists in the present figuring out what happened.

Please Take Your Hand Away - Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross: Everyone's (me) always talking about how good The Social Network soundtrack is but nobody's ever talking about how they did a sequel that's just as good and goes for longer than the actual film when they released the nearly 3 hour Girl With The Dragon Tattoo soundtrack a year later. What an achievement!

What Does Your Soul Look Like Part 2 - DJ Shadow: This song is really on a whole nother level. It is really a kind of magic that you can get a 15 minute song out of a two note bassline and a drum loop, but when they're this good it looks easy. The drums especially are just absolutely hypnotising.

One Of One - Kamasi Washington: Kamasi somehow outdid himself on this one my god. The groove in this is just amazing, and the way it twists and turns into something darker and darker before the sun shines through and the hook comes back is incredible. The way the theme comes back all twisted up with strings near the end. Great stuff.

My Exit, Unfair - mewithoutYou: I honestly very nearly got converted in high school just because I was listening to so much mewithoutYou, and it still informs a lot of my religious thoughts. A running theme through a lot of their songs is wrestling with and trying to accept the idea that God has a plan for you that you definitely don't understand and getting extremely upset about it and that's about where I'm at.

Stand - R.E.M.: Apparently this was the theme to a show called Get A Life and it's funny because it really does sound perfect for a 90s tv theme. It sounds like it's two and a half minutes too long. Release the 30 second TV theme version REM.

BFG Division - Mick Gordon: I was watching a guy speedrun Doom on GDQ and the music for that game is so amazing, but it sounds really funy when the whole sppedrun is just clipping through a wall and rocket jumping halfway across the level to trigger the checkpoint. Mick Gordon really nailed this soundtrack, it's a massive part of the atmosphere of the game and it's really the logical expansion of the MIDI themes of the original, it sounds like the original in HD, this is what you thought you were hearing.

Angel's Rest - Marisa Anderson: Marisa Anderson's songs are so loosely structured they often seem dreamed up on the spot, but the sounds and moods seem so carefully considered that the notes themselves aren't so important.

Looks Like I Picked The Wrong Week To Quit Oxygen - Michael Giacchino: If Michael Giacchino doesn't get an Oscar for The Incredibles II soundtrack I'm going to riot. The climax of this is so big I had to stop myself from applauding in the theatre, it's irrepressible.

AM // Radio - Earl Sweatshirt & Wiki: I was having a week where I was really feeling like the phrase "I don't like shit, I don't go outside" and so I suddenly remembered this album. This beat is so, so good. It sounds like nothing else, and it only adds to the alien flavour by giving the second half of the track to an instrumental.

World In Harmony - Adebisi Shank: Adebisi Shank are really the perfect band. They love to have fun and have a big time and they started out with a perfect first album and only got bigger and better by the time they got to the third and broke up. This song is so powerful, and my billionaire dream is to finance a new F-Zero game and get Adebisi Shank back together to do the soundtrack.

Make Luv feat. Oliver Cheatham - Room 5: I'm slowly putting together a playlist of songs that sound like Music Sounds Better With You by Stardust in order to invoke some kind of euphoric 'best night ever' and ascend to heaven but this song is the only other one I have so far.

A Love Supreme Part II: Resolution - John Coltrane Quartet: I don't feel qualified to say anything about A Love Supreme, so I don't think I'm going to. I literally don't know where to start with this. It's damn good music.

"You Got A Killer Scene There, Man..." - Queens Of The Stone Age: This song is a real vibe. This should be a whole genre but I've never really found anything else like it. It's like if The Doors were good I suppose. It's shocking that this song only goes for 5 minutes because it really feels like it could go for 20 and you wouldn't mind. I remember a few years ago I opened this in Audition and slowed it down to 75% and I really recommend it, it makes the whole thing feel as sludgy as I think it's supposed to be and makes all the breaks that much more impactful.

Never Let Me Go - Sarah Blasko: A friend sent me this and said it sounds like a Bond theme and he's absolutely right, especially towards the end where it all starts stacking up. Maybe it would need a bit more brass to be a proper Bond theme but still, I love it.

Protection - Emma Ruth Rundle: I love Emma Ruth Rundle so much and I'm so excited that she's got a new album coming out. The absolute textural thickness she can conjure up in a song like this blows me away. I don't know what it is about her voice but it sounds like the 90s somehow. Does that make sense? This feels like 90s music, like the grunge female songwriter thing went a slightly different way and I love it.​

listen here

[duranduratulsa]

Up next on my Spooktober Filmfest...A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985) on glorious vintage Media Home Entertainment VHS 📼! #movie #movies #horror #anightmareonelmstreet #anightmareonelmstreet2 #anightmareonelmstreet2freddysrevenge #wescraven #RIPWesCraven #freddy #freddykrueger #robertenglund #markpatton #kimmyers #RobertRusler #sydneywalsh #CluGulager #ripclugulager #HopeLange #Christieclark #joannwillette #MarshallBell #robertshaye #kerryremsen #jacksholder #vintage #vhs #mediahomeentertainment #80s #spooktober #halloween #october

[randomvarious]

Cathy Dennis - “Touch Me (All Night Long)” Dance Mix USA by Markus Klinke, Rawle James, Rob Rettberg Song released in 1990. Mix released in 1994. Dance-Pop / House

Found a really good article in The Guardian from 2008 that tracks the career of Cathy Dennis, a brief, early 90s UK pop-house princess who was shaped in a similar mold to Kylie Minogue, and then went behind the curtain to become one of the most successful and prolific pop songwriters of all time:

It is a measure of how disposable pop music is and how fickle listeners are that Cathy Dennis is, for many, only half remembered. We might struggle to think of one of her songs, only vaguely recall what she looks like. Yet, she was a star: she had 10 consecutive UK top 40 hit singles in the 1990s and was even more adored in the US and Japan.

For anyone still trying to remember, the lyrics "hold me baby / drive me crazy / touch me / all night long" should ring some bells.

Today she is one of the most important women in the pop industry, as one of its most prolific songwriters. She went into the history books when the song she wrote for Katy Perry, I Kissed A Girl, recently became the 1,000th number one record in the Billboard US charts. Last Sunday the single reached number one in the UK charts and has become one of the songs of the summer. Quite simply, without such talented writers as Dennis the whole mad pop machine would fall apart.

The number of pop songs that Dennis has had a hand in is staggering. To name but a few: Toxic by Britney Spears, Never Had a Dream Come True by S Club 7, Anything is Possible by Will Young, About You Now by the Sugababes, Sweet Dreams My LA Ex by Rachel Stevens, and on and on.

But there is one song she co-wrote, with former Mud guitarist Rob Davis, that will be the subject of pop culture essays for years to come. Not only did Can't Get You Out of My Head rescue Kylie Minogue's then floundering career in 2001, it is, for many, one of the greatest pop songs ever.

You get all that? This pop singer that most people thought had just faded into obscurity (including you, admit it!) is behind "Can't Get You Out of My Head," "Toxic," and "I Kissed a Girl." And so much more, actually. Those grafs don't mention it, but Dennis has worked very closely with Simon Fuller throughout her entire career. If you don't know who Simon Fuller is, I wrote very cynically of him in a long post about S Club 7 during quarantine. When Fuller discovered Dennis when she was just 17, he was the manager for Paul Hardcastle, who at the time had recently triumphed with the 1985 anti-Vietnam War UK megahit, "19." But throughout the 90s, Fuller managed to manufacture and amass himself a British pop music empire, and Cathy Dennis was alongside him in some capacity just about every step of the way.

The Spice Girls? That was Fuller's invention. And guess who wrote the B-Side for Wannabe? Cathy Dennis. S Club 7? Another Fuller project. Guess who wrote a bunch of their songs? Cathy Dennis. Pop Idol and American Idol? Guess who wrote their theme songs? Cathy Dennis. Winners of those contests, like Kelly Clarkson and Clay Aiken; guess who wrote some of their songs, too? Cathy Dennis.

You've heard so much more Cathy Dennis in your life than you probably thought you actually ever had. And that's not an exhaustive list either. She's also written songs for Celine Dion, P!nk, Ariana Grande, Christina Aguilera, Little Mix, Carrie Underwood, and David Guetta. And she's worked with Mark Ronson and has written with Primal Scream, too(?!).

So, here's the song that really set things off for Dennis: "Touch Me (All Night Long)," a marimba-laced sonic piece of cotton candy (it's light, fluffy, and sugary!) that was able to keep her on the dancefloor while also occupying the top 40 airwaves, and charted high across multiple continents. Co-produced by the one and only Shep Pettibone, this new and improved cover of a mid-80s electro-freestyle-post-disco tune by Wish and Fonda Rae has found ways to remain on gobs of early 90s playlists and mixes throughout the years. It's not an earth-shattering song in and of itself, but there is something to be said about its overall ubiquitousness. "Touch Me (All Night Long)" had very broad appeal. It fit on a wide range of radio formats, all the way from adult contemporary to contemporary dance. And there's really not that many songs out there that have had that level of versatility, much less in 1991. That's ultimately why this thing smashed; it's an inextricable piece of the early 90s, both as just straight-ahead radio pop and also for the clubs; a song that youthful dance hedonists and their fuddy-duddy parents could both find ways to enjoy. Kind of remarkable, no?

Warm, bouncy bass stabs, sets of dreamy strings that float and soar, perpetually ticking hats, a dash of wah-organ stabs, that aforementioned marimba, and a catchy, singalong pre-chorus and chorus. If I was writing for some music publication about this song when it came out and "Can't Get You Out of My Head" somehow predated it, and if I was also a really corny fuck, I might say something like, "this is a song that we just can't get out of our heads, either!" But none of those conditions I just made up are real, so I won't do that to you 😁.

[lindsaywesker]

Good morning! I hope you slept well and feel rested? Currently sitting at my desk, in my study, attired only in my blue towelling robe, enjoying my first cuppa of the day.

Term is over, marking is done, my weekly routine is broken. I’ve totally lost track of time. Is it Wednesday? Is it Friday? Working from home can sometimes seem like one long week (or one long weekend?) When I was working five days a week in an office, I yearned for more free time and flexibility. Now I have it … I love it!

There was great sadness surrounding the death of Paul ‘Trouble’ Anderson but, if he were alive today, he’d be distraught about the death of writer, producer and musician Patrick Adams. Boogie connoisseurs will talk about the influence of Leroy Burgess on the scene, but the more serious boogie connoisseurs will know the vital role that Patrick Adams played. Chronologically, boogie fits in that gap between disco and house. ‘Disco’ had become a cheesy word. People stopped using the word ‘disco’ but, obviously, clubs still needed club music. Patrick had given us two disco classics by Musique: ‘In The Bush’ and ‘Keep On Jumpin’’, but the sound needed to change slightly, if everyone was going to keep their credibility, so the boogie crew (Leroy Burgess, Patrick Adams, Greg Carmichael, and the singers Jocelyn Brown, Donna McGhee, Christine Wiltshire, Venus Dodson etc.) gave us more soulful uptempo music laced with jazz, gospel and social comment. Most people will know Patrick for things like ‘Barely Breaking Even’ by The Universal Robot Band, ‘Moment Of My Life’ by Inner Life and ‘Touch Me’ by Wish featuring Fonda Rae, but then you have this magical one-off by Cloud One called ‘Atmosphere Strut’, a totally unique track fusing Latin, disco, soul and jazz. You can’t listen to these tracks without thinking of Paul.

Yesterday, my beautiful friend Donna Maria Kassim wrote the following words on my status, “74 years ago today, the Empire Windrush arrived to our shores; the generation who transformed our nation but those that know their history know that we’ve been here for centuries before.” Indeed, true historians will know that the first black people arrived in Britain as soldiers in the Roman armies in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. They rebuilt and were stationed along Hadrian's Wall. They were under the rule of Septimus Severus, a black Roman emperor based in York. My maths ain’t great but that’s a few years before the Windrush arrived!

Hope everybody has a great time at Glastonbury! Open-air festivals are not my thing! The Ibiza Soul Week is my kind of festival; I was never too far from my next drink, never too far from my next meal, and never too far from a clean, working toilet! For some people, festivals like Glastonbury are memorable, once in a lifetime experiences. The Trouble and I like clean sheets, air-con, cable TV and a mini-fridge! Our idea of ‘roughing it’ is the bar running out of vodka! Call me a snob – “Lindsay, you’re a snob!” – but my leisure time is precious, and I need those home comforts. The line-up at Glastonbury is dynamite but – again – JOMO (The Joy Of Missing Out!)

Did a speed awareness course yesterday. I did 23 mph in a 20 mph zone! The teacher said to me, “What have you taken away from today!” I said to her, “I hate cars and I hate driving! I’m going to take public transport! Or I’ll let my wife drive!”

Have a throbbing and thrusting Thursday (with hopefully a few thrills through your thoroughfare?) I love you all.

[trukqsofficial]

Touch Me | Wish & Fonda Rae

[messagestomegan]

Touch Me § Wish & Fonda Rae