Out to Lunch

I like italoto

This is part 2. Going through my cassettes I found an old favourite of mine that I forgot about. Shame on me. Andreas Dorau is a really great… guy. Swell, I bought this album on cassette a couple of years after its release (1994) on a flea market. It said Neu! So I thought it was an album by the Krautrock band Neu! - the cover should have warned me that it couldn’t have been an album by Neu!, then again they print it so small to fit on a cassette cover – but I was mistaken. Instead it was a nice pop album by Andreas Dorau and this song really got stuck in my head for weeks back then. Now, it bugging me again :-)

Andreas Dorau – Und das Telefon sagt Du 1994

Jeder kennt doch diesen Ton
Die Post schickt ihn durch's Telefon
Dieses Zeichen nennt man frei
Und so fühl ich mich dabei
Warum in die Ferne schweifen
Ich muß nur zum Hörer greifen
Ich heb ab und frage wer ist dieser nette junge Herr?

Refrain:
Und das Telefon sagt Du
Und ich hör ihm weiter zu
Und es sagt nur immer Du , Du

Ich denk nicht immer nur an mich
Sondern gerne auch an Dich
Ich nehm den Hörer und frag schlau
Wer gefällt heut jeder Frau?

Dieseswunderschöne Uuuh
Was für mich klingt wie nur Du
Ich heb ab und bin ganz still
Weil ich's nochmal hören will

I found me a decent version of Pas De Deux’s Rendez-Vous in a big band version just as on the Eurovision song contest and what better moment to share this than right now. Oh yeah, Sébastien Tellier didn’t make a lasting impression apparently. He sort of finished 19th which is still one of the best result for France over the last years so it wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

Pas De Deux – Rendez-Vous (big band version) 1983

I'm thinking about making an new page for this article and to collect all Italo disco and add the links in that new page.

1978-1981

In late 1978, Black Devil, at the time a very obscure act from France, releases the Disco Club LP, which is now considered one of the greatest electronic pleasures of the late 70's. Beautiful harmonies working solely with a synthesizer in real-time recording sessions make this album still in demand today! (see the post about the more recent re-release on labels like WARP where some people even thought that it was an Aphex Twin/Luke Vibert collaboration instead of an old disco classic).
Disco Fizz by Azoto (working without the Lucrethia syntax) appeared in 1980, alongside Tantra's The Hills Of Katmandu release. Both artists being Italian and leaning further away from the traditional disco beat and more towards a faster drumbeat using a drum machine, would later be known as two more pioneers of what would become Italo Disco. At the same time, on the newly formed Discomagic Records label, Sylvi Foster created Love Dawn and If You Are Master while Delanua makes a masterpiece called Flood - these songs being considered to this day the first true Italo Disco songs.
Kano begins his long career with songs such as I'm Ready and Holly Dolly. In 1980, La Bionda would solidify their position as a major influence of Italo Disco music with their big hit entitled, I Wanna Be Your Lover.

1982

The Italo Disco scene was well under way by the time 1982 rolled in. Discomagic Records and Il Discotto Productions had both surfaced at this point and had started spawning off many sub-labels, each with their own distinguishable sounds.
On Il Discotto, Jo Jo created the masterpiece track entitled Mind Games, which fused R&B, electro, and disco all into one song, and Gary Low released his first single You Are A Danger which took a synthesizer and piano and welded them together into one song.
On the other end of the spectrum, Discomagic was beginning a long catalogue of records. The first big ones seemed to be How Many Fill by Delanua, The Garden and Robot Is Systematic by 'Lectric Workers, and the club smash, Hookey by Sylvi Foster.
ll Discotto Productions has a huge hit with Tequila by Bo Boss.
I Need Love by Capricorn is released and considered a major accomplishment in electro dance. Plastic Doll by Dharma and on Zanza Records, Klein & M.B.O.’s release Dirty Talk become cult classics way ahead of their time!
Pink Project debuts with Disco Project a cover version of Pink Floyd's Another Brick In The Wall. Dirty Talk and Disco project become two of the biggest chart hits in Europe in all of 1982.
Also released in '82 on Zanza Records was Droid by Mito, a song and artist that has developed quite a following since then. Koto, who would go on to become one of the most famous Italo artists ever, debuts with Chinese Revenge, a very spacey disco song. Bob Salton's Starknight becomes a high energy Italo Disco hit. Coda by Amin Peck starts a long list of hits for this man. The Twins debut with Face To Face - Heart To Heart and would be back in 1983 with two more big singles.
The big accomplishment in blending electro with Italo Disco in 1982 would have to be Bad Passion by Steel Mind. Using male, female, and robot vocals all in one song, we hear what is more like a prelude to all future dance music. We won't stress it any further, but this is to be considered one of the fundamental songs of Italo Disco!
Marzio Dance debuts with some promising hits such as The Adventure and the early 1983 follow up release entitled, Rap-O-Hush. One of the most respectable songs of 1982 is Life With You by Expansives, a project by Franco Rago and Giorgio Farina who also produced The Man From Colours by Wanexa, all releases by the aforementioned 'Lectric Workers, and also Batida by Cariocas, which hit the market in the end of 1982.

1983

1983 is without a doubt the best year for Italo Disco music from a true Italo lover's point of view!