Category: 1975-1979

“Gotta Go Home” (1979) – Boney M. * Written by Frank Farian, Fred Jay, Heinz Huth, and Jurgen Huth * Produced by Frank Farian * UK 45: “Gotta Go Home” / “El Lute” * LP: Oceans of Fantasy * Label: Atlantic * Charts: UK #12

Boney M. were a Eurodisco phenomenon (with only five minor hits in the US) created by German pop wiz Frank Farian, the same man who’d later create Milli Vanilli to so much eventual sturm und drang. What’s funny is that although a modicum of sleuthing would have revealed in the disco seventies that front man Bobby Farrell lip synced Farian’s vocals, it’s safe to assume no one would have felt outrage in the midst of an era so comfortable with pop artifice. And what infectious pop artifice it was—”Gotta Get Away” revamped an already catchy German single (“Hallo Bimmelbahn”) by the group Nighttrain, giving it new English words and magic steel pan drum hooks. Two Canadian DJs called Duck Sauce would revamp the tune even more in 2010, turning it into the bonkers dance hit “Barbra Streisand.” (Giving the general sentiment of “Gotta Go Home” more meaning was the B-side, a tribute to the erudite Spanish prisoner Eleuterio Sánchez, who had become a cause célèbre. Two years after, he’d be pardoned and released. How’s that for pop artifice?)

“Tankeros Love” (1975) – Kivikasvot * Written by Ismo Sajakorpi * FIN 45: “Tankeros Love” / “Hoi Laari Lii” * Label: Rondo

Seventies Finland went crazy for garbled English, and a catalyst for this was Foreign Minister Ahti Karjalainen. A career politician, he held the post three separate times in the sixties and seventies, with his final stint happening between 1972 and 1975. He was famous for botching his English utterances. At a visit to a Kenyan zoo, where a sign said “all animals are dangerous,” he reported to his colleagues that all of the animals were of the “dangerou” family, pronounced with his strong Finnish accent as “tankero.” A torrent of Finnish jokes about the mysterious “tankero” animal burst forth and the term still survives in the Finnish lexicon in reference to mishandled English. A 1975 single by the group Kivikasvot (stone faces), who were a TV comedy/vocal troupe comprised of men with otherwise separate careers (including the hit maker known as Fredi), capitalized on the tankero craze and some of its accompanying jokes (“If you love me too, then I love you three, four, five”). Equally funny are the record’s self-deprecating tourist plugs (“sauna in Finland!”). Its Russian inflections likely nod to Karjalainen’s political preoccupation with Finland’s eastern neighbor.

“I Don’t Really Want to Get Involved” (1978) – The Cortinas * Written by the Cortinas * LP: True Romances * Produced by Martin Birch * Label: CBS

The Cortinas’ only album had a few things going against it: a shadowed cover image, a pre-release band breakup, and a promotional approach summed up by one of their song titles, “I Don’t Really Want to Get Involved.” What the album did have going for it was a chiseled guitar pop sound with durable hooks and cheeky teen angst lyrics. All five Cortinas, who hailed from Bristol, England, would likely express surprise at secret followings their album attracted via cutout bins in American suburbs. None of True Romances‘ stateside buyers, it’s safe to say, had an inkling of the harder-edged punk credibility the band had established for itself as 16 year olds in 1977 with the singles “Fascist Dictator” and “Defiant Pose.” No, American fans of this album would like it for what it was.

“Parisienne Walkways” (1978) – Gary Moore * Written by Phil Lynott and Gary Moore (Kenny Dorham uncredited) * 45: “Parisienne Walkways” / “Fanatical Fascists” * LP: Back on the Streets * Produced by Chris Tsangarides and Gary Moore * Label: MCA * Charts: UK singles (#8)

The most famous song by late Irish guitar hero Gary Moore had a central melodic hook that had been written by jazz trumpeter Kenny Dorham as “Blue Bossa” and first released only twelve years previous. Somehow it’s managed to avoid any publicly known legal hubbub. If there were a case, Moore’s legal team likely would have defended it according to the Rod Stewart Principle (see “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy” and “Wrong Side of the River”), wherein musical arrangements receive no protection under copyright law while lyrical content and vocalized melodies do. “Parisienne Walkays” also contains passages sung with original words by Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott, which also likely helped Moore tapdance past an argument. Still, would it have hurt so terribly much to have given credit where it was due? Aside from that, we can remember “Parisienne Walkways” as a recording by an Irishman about France using a melody written by an African American to evoke Brazil.

“Welcome to Our World (Of Merry Music)” (1976) – Mass Production * Written by Tyrone Williams * 45: “Welcome to Our World (Of Merry Music)” / “Just a Song” * LP: Welcome to Our World * Produced by Ed A. Ellerbe * Label: Cotillion * Billboard: #68 (Hot 100); #32 (Soul)

This high-grade disco track presents even more semiotic genre-consciousness than anything by Chic, whose first album it barely predates. The group’s dance floor world functions as a utopia where everybody “lends a helping hand” and “lives in harmony,” but their choices of “merry” for the song title’s adjective and “Mass Production” for their own name acknowledge blissed-out excess. The single edit is an explosive four minutes showcasing Kevin “D’No” Douglass’s fluid bass and songwriter Tyrone Williams’s clavinet.

“Banana Splits (The Tra La La Song)” (1978) – The Dickies * Written by Mark Barkan and Richie Adams * 45: “Banana Splits” / “Hideous” / “Got It at the Store” * Produced by John Hewlett * Label: A&M * Charts: UK singles (#7)

The Dickies, from San Fernando Valley, presented themselves as punk parodists, but when you listen to any one of their zippy tracks all the way through, they inevitably treat you to a moment of sublime realization that they’re celebrating their subjects—not mocking them. On this rip-through of the late sixties kiddie show theme (which had reached #69 in Billboard in ’69), for example, two guitars harmonize over the song’s moody VII^b chord, propelling the whole thing upward as an offering of thanks to the trash culture gods. Their hooky approach and stage presence had more in common with UK bands like the Damned and the Rezillos than with anything else going on in LA; not surprisingly, they’d hit the British Top Ten (#7) with “Banana Splits” while never charting in the US. (The Banana Splits show indeed ran on British tellies for summer programming during the early seventies.) In 2010, the record turned up in the Kick-Ass movie soundtrack.

“They Long to Be Close to You” (1979) – Jimmy “Bo” Horne * Written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David * 45: “You  Get Me Hot” / “They Long to Be Close to You” * LP: Goin’ Home for Love * Produced by Harry Wayne Casey and Richard Finch * Label: Sunshine Sound Disco

Produced by the Sunshine Band’s KC and Richard Finch, this disco-era version of the Burt Bacharach-Hal David standard will carry you off on a love cloud if you keep listening until the glockenspiel motif comes in at 2:50. Although Horne—who first made his mark with the 1975 bubblegum soul hit “Gimme Some”—appears cagey on the album cover, he sings his heart out, then drifts into spoken Isaac Hayes territory for the outro.

“Kesse Ye Lolo De Ye” (1979) – Stevie Wonder * Written and produced by Stevie Wonder * LP: Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants * Label: Tamla

Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants sprung forth as soundtrack music for a documentary film based on a new-agey 1973 book by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. It focused on plants as sentient beings, a premise that gives Wonder’s album whimsical appeal while attracting some serious stink-eye from hard science. “Kesse Ye Lolo De Ye,” from side two of the double LP, showcases Senegalese kora player Lamine Konte, and the title is a phoneticization of the words “a seed is a star” in Konte’s native Bambara language.

“Ajetaan Tandemilla” (1976) – Freeman * Written by Leo Friman (aka Freeman) * 45: “Ajetaan Tandemilla” / “Mystilliset Kyyneleet” * LP: Freeman * Produced by Hector * Label: Love

Deceptively complex Finnish hit single. The synthesizers and falsetto vocal hooks suggest spaceships on the go, but the title translates to “We Ride a Tandem Bicycle.” Accordions join in at the end of each chorus to reinforce this odd future vs. tradition juxtaposition, of old world culture slowly warming up to new world sounds. So colorful are the lyrics—about a traveling man who’s back home and ready to marry his lady—that they’re almost untranslatable, but they do offer up rewards like this: “In the summertime goddamns ring through the trees.”