You’re lucky! I waited them out because they were so atrociously expensive and hoped they would come down in price...they never did and I missed out.
Kylie's original deal with Mushroom/PWL was really bad but when she went #1 in the UK Waterman and Mushroom boss Michael Gudinski formed a new company (PAL) and Kylie formed one called KDB and they negotiated a much better deal. Kylie controlled her artwork in Australia from Hand on my Heart and in the UK from Never Too Late and her videos from Better the Devil You Know.
Waterman and Stock had a sort of abortive comeback with this Eurovision Entry for the UK (2010). It came last LOL.
Stock did a single for a tabloid TV show who wanted to prove you could rig the singles chart. After that the industry basically shut him down.
Here's the actual Josh Eurovision performance that flunked with the voters. (Not that they would even vote for a good UK entry these days)
To be fair, the UK will come last or very low in Eurovision even if they had the greatest song ever written!
They put out a couple of Kylie remixes on white labels as 'Angel' and 'Angel K' to try and fool club DJs. I think they did a pre release white label of Roadblock and made the DJs believe it was an old James Brown record.
Waterman also claimed a lot other records on the UK charts were SAW productions made under pseudonyms.
...That's...........something. When were people " taking away " house music from the radio, BTW? Shaw's videos, from my American.perspective of not having seen even what made it to America at the time very much - Their videos all seemed to follow this formula of " cheep and cheerful " dancers ' In this case the artists themselves - didn't they?
You Can Do Magic by Mojams featuring Debbie Currie (actually sung by Sinitta) Left and to the Back: Second Hand Record Dip Part 65 - Mojams feat. Debbie Currie - You Can Do Magic
. .I meant " SAW's videos ", I believe my phone's spell function got in the way, perhaps you guessed that. The Americans single mix of Rick Ashley's " Together Forever - which gave them a Billboard #1, which " that " Rick record did not give them, IIRC - was great! The charts agreed with me on this one. Did it come out in Albion? You know, when the whole thing of " Rickrolling " started, I recall that it was putting up links to the " Whenever You Need Somebody " video, not the " NGGYI " bid - " WYNS " was not issued as a single in the US at the time, and I never heard it then. I might have bought, possibly secondhand, possibly not, the cassette single of " TF " but was I too punk/indie/garage (US definition of that phrase as it applies to music!!)/college rock to buy a full new full price Rick Astley album? Or too cheap? - Anyway, " It Would Take A Strong Strong Man " was the U.S. third Ashley single -And in fact was a hit!! I presume that, needing I suppose to be released/licenced to MTV/whomever, and I suppose that, since it was"t promoted as a single in Yank-Dom, no need was seen for it to be seen. So it would be unfamiliar to generally nostalgic Americans, and so, was " Rickrolling " changed after it started to gain more American appeal to being about the " NGGYU " video and not the " WYNS " video? Inquiring minds want to know.
I love almost everything they did. What can I say? Their brand of pure pop trash is exactly the kind of thing that appeals to me. I like how so many of their upbeat-sounding songs are actually very sad when you listen to the lyrics. Even their lousy songs (I'd Rather Jack; Just Say No) are charming in a so-bad-they're-good kind of way. Roadblock is about the only one that I really dislike. Their singles box set is one of the coolest things I own. I'm still hoping for a volume 2.
Lol.....I play the 12" single when I want to hear it! So the instrumental mix always gets played loud here too! I do my best to sing along, but I am no Pete Burns!
Brand New Lover is up there as one of the best SAW-produced singles. Like Kylie and Rick Astley and Bananarama, Dead Or Alive couldn't just leave everything to the SAW conveyor belt and brought their own to the studio. In fact, I thought their 1989 album, Nude, did a great job of incorporating the best of SAW into the production - and SAW wasn't even involved in that album.
...I repeat - wasn't " Rickrolling " originally about linking to the " Whenever You Need Somebody " video? Only later becoming about linking to the " Never Gonna Give You Up " video?
...Unfortunately, it's basically unreadable due to the " clever " contrast backing. Is there another story up about it?
Who: Mojams feat. Debbie Currie (actually, Sinitta) What: You Can Do Magic Label: Gotham When: 1997 Where: Music and Video Exchange, Camden High Street Cost: 50p Whilst truth is indeed frequently stranger than fiction in the music industry, sometimes when things seem too absurd to be true, it's because they are. This single is a supremely odd confirmation of that fact, a scam so subtle in its execution that to this day, you can still see references to it on national newspaper websites as being a bona-fide piece of work. Debbie Currie, the daughter of "outspoken" Conservative MP Edwina Currie, was attempting a career as a journalist when the team behind the investigative programme the "Cook Report" approached her with an intriguing offer. The deal was that she would pretend to front a single produced by Mike Stock and Matt Aitken, and they would hire a gang of "hypers" to artificially push its position up the charts. The aim was to ultimately expose the British charts as being open to abuse despite the BPI's continual assurances that hype was now easily spotted, and a thing of the distant past. In reality, Sinitta sang the vocals, and all Currie really appears to have done is displayed her stomach on the sleeve (above) and posed for a few publicity shots. The gossip columns of newspapers also ran a few short pieces about "sexy" Debbie Currie's new pop band which gave the project an air of authenticity, which was eventually blown on prime-time television. I suspect that the "Cook Report" team would have liked to have seen the single chart within the Top 40, but in reality - despite the production team behind it, and despite the publicity - the single stiffed at number 81. The end programme appeared to gamely claim that they'd exposed the fact that chart rigging still existed, but it's hard not to conclude that an average pop single produced by Stock and Aitken would have been expected to chart within the lower reaches of the Top 100 at the very least. Music industry mogul Clive Selwood also dismisses the show's scoop in his biography "All of the Moves But None of the Licks", stating that the single should probably have charted higher on its own merits, and questions should have been asked of the distributors. All it proved, he concluded, is that people can easily be tricked out of money for non-existent services, which is admittedly fraud, but not exactly headline news. Perhaps it's due to the failings of the documentary to make a concrete point that to this day, journalists still cite Debbie Currie's "failed pop career" as evidence of the fact that she's "Edwina Currie's rebellious, wild child daughter". This is an utterly incorrect version of events, and Debbie has gone on record as saying that she would never have seriously considered a career in music, and that her friends assumed that she was having "some sort of breakdown" at the time whilst she kept the pretence up. As for "You Can Do Magic" itself, it's a passable little single, perfectly pleasant in a quickly recorded Saint Etienne B-side kind of way. In a quiet week in January it might actually have performed moderately well in its own right, and it's certainly a strange tune to pick to prove a chart hype point. Perhaps if something noticeably below par had been used, the researchers and producers behind the show might have worried that the authorities would have smelt a rat. Interestingly, there's also an information service advertised on the sleeve, asking us to write to "Mojams, Freepost 1276, PO BOX 4100, London, SE1 0YW". One wonders what anybody who scribbled a note to that address got in return - a signed picture of Roger Cook angrily pointing, perhaps.
Only his debut, Ten Good Reasons was released here and they took off "Especially For You." Not sure exactly why, but his album was released on Atlantic Records here and Kylie was signed to Geffen at the time. Perhaps there were plans for it to be included on a Kylie record but it wasn't on her second US album, Enjoy Yourself (which has different art and track listing from the UK version). "Too Many Broken Hearts" was the first single and "Every Day (I Love You More)" was the second; there was also a promo single of "When You Come Back To Me." None of them were hits. As for SAW in general, I loved a lot of it at the time even though I was more of a new wave/alternative guy. I still really love "This Time I Know It's For Real" by Donna Summer and "Shattered Glass" by Laura Branigan. On the latter, I found an interview on her website once where she said SAW wanted her to just record the chorus one time and repeat it throughout the song, but she insisted on recording the chorus for each instance it appears in the song.
...As the article said, the record was competent/" pop " enough that it might've hit, a little bit anyhow, anyway, as high as the not very high chart position it achieved before the hoax was exposed...
Can't believe I've missed four pages of a S/A/W thread! I was exactly the right age in the mid-'80s for their pop hits to be just about perfect. Pure, joyful, synthetic, contrived, packaged pop! The first of their singles I bought was Hazell Dean's Whatever I Do (Wherever I Go), long before I knew anything about producers or S/A/W, and to this day it's a cracking tune and I'd say one of their best productions - from before they'd locked the one consistent formula down. As others have noted, they really lived up to both the Hit and Factory parts of their moniker. They churned out product like nobody's business, but there were very clear and defined tiers to the acts and the quality of the material. Kylie, Mel & Kim, Bananarama, and Rick Astley were probably the top tier - while other artists got a great song here and there (e.g., Hazell Dean, Sonia, Dead Or Alive), in general those four got the most consistent attention, the best songs, the strongest production, and the greatest overall support. (I'd add the one Donna Summer album here, too - not like they were going to give her anything less than their top quality material.) And I'd agree that Rick Astley probably had the best voice of any of their artists. Then you had the next level of successful artists - none of them had the strongest voices, but that didn't matter if they had the right image and cultural circumstances. Sam Fox, Sinitta, Brother Beyond, Pepsi & Shirlie, etc. I still don't think Jason Donovan can sing a note on pitch (although to be fair, he did still have success post-S/A/W), but he was can't-miss during the whole Neighbours/are-he-and-Kylie-a-thing period. He couldn't fail. Then there were the gimmicks. The we-can-a-hit-out-of-this-crap songs. The Reynolds Girls. Pat and Mick. The Fat Slags. Names and songs no one ever needs to hear again. It's interesting that they had many artists sing the same songs before deciding who should "own" which tracks. For example, Mandy Smith recorded Got To Be Certain (the less said about that, the better). While Kylie had Turn It Into Love and even reached the top with it in Japan, Hazell Dean was the one who got to release it as a single in the UK/Ireland (and I actually really like both versions). Pete Waterman has certainly done everything he can to establish himself as the mastermind Svengali behind the whole enterprise - and I wouldn't underestimate his role in strategically positioning and marketing everything - but I think Stock and Aitken were the geniuses behind the music. Here's where it all began (for me): Hazell Dean's Whatever I Do (Wherever I Go). Great song!
