The first track on this album ‘Work That Sucker To Death’ a great dance, funk track with outstanding vocals. Favourite #1.

Notes
Release:  1982
Format:  Vinyl, LP
Genre:  Soul, Funk
Label:  Liberty Records
Catalog#  1A 064-400075

Vinyl:  Goed (VG)
Cover:  (Goed (VG)

Prijs: €10,00

Shaka Zulu is a 1987 album by South African a cappella group Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

Ladysmith Black Mambazo are a light and pleasant choral group, yet demonstrate none of the requisite complexity, interest, edge, intellect, or virtuosity, to earn acclaim as singular or significant musical artists.
Though Paul Simon is a respectable and successful songwriter, he has been known to fall into the trap of ‘easy-listening’.
‘Shaka Zulu’ does absolutely sound like an album by Paul Simon’s backing vocalists. ‘Graceland’ was the man’s strongest work post-Garfunkel, but it was his songwriting that buoyed it.

Following the collaboration on Paul Simon’s 1986 album Graceland which brought the group to international prominence, Shaka Zulu (produced by Simon) marked the band’s first genuine international hit.
Shaka Zulu was a collection of newly recorded versions of older Mambazo hits, such as “Unomathemba”, “Hello My Baby” and “Lomhlaba Kawunoni”.
Shaka Zulu won a Grammy in 1988 for Best Traditional Folk Recording.

The album was also featured in Robert Dimery’s 2006 musical reference book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Schilder verliet BZN in 1984, waarna ze een redelijk succesvolle solocarrière kende, ook al was het succes niet te vergelijken met dat met BZN.

In 1985 liet Annie zich overhalen door Phonogram om onder een aangepaste voornaam, Anny, een solo LP op te nemen.
Op 20 april 1985 verscheen het album “Here I Am”. Het album was geproduceerd door Cor Aaftink en Roy Beltman, die ook verantwoordelijk waren voor de BZN sound.
Nummers op dit album werden o.a. geschreven door Piet Souer, Hans van Hemert en Hans Vermeulen.
De opnamen vonden plaats in de Wisseloord Studio’s in Hilversum. Anny Schilder was met dit album de eerste nederlandse solozangeres die op cd te horen was.
Van het album “Here I Am” is geen TV Special gemaakt, maar wel deed Anny een aantal televisie optredens. Een paar van deze optredens zie je hieronder bij de betreffende singles.

Kottke would re-record this version again in 1999 on One Guitar, No Vocals.
The song “Pamela Brown” was also featured as the sole Leo Kottke track in a promotional-only compilation album from 1976 issued by Capitol records.

Gerald Alston (born November 8, 1951) is an American soul/R&B singer, and the lead singer of the Grammy Award winning group The Manhattans between late 1970 and 1988.

Alston was lead singer on their most successful 1976 Platinum song "Kiss and Say Goodbye", which topped all U.S. pop and R&B charts and was number one in four countries. 

Alston left the group in 1988 to pursue a solo career and recorded five albums and ten singles, including the hit singles "Take Me Where You Want To", "Slow Motion" and "Getting Back into Love", he also recorded a remake of Atlantic Starr's "Send for Me", most of which was for Motown Records.

Open Invitation was Manhattans lead singer Gerald Alston’s Top 14 R&B follow-up to his self-titled solo debut.
The opener, “Slow Motion,” produced by Stan Sheppard and Jimmy Varner of By All Means fame, was a number three R&B hit in the fall of 1990.
The second single, “Getting Back Into Love,” went Top Six R&B. Not surprisingly, with Alston having sung on such classic slow jams as the platinum-selling “Kiss and Say Goodbye” and the gold smash “Shining Star,” the album best succeeds when it’s in ballad mode.
“Don’t You Know” has a nice doo wop-ish sway in its groove. The same could be said of sweet, romantic “Crazy,” which is helmed by Commodores producer James Anthony Carmichael.
“We’re Still in Love” conveys a kind of charming “ol’ skool” romantic vibe in both lyric and feel. Alston does a smooth, snappy remake of the Chuck Jackson hit “Any Day Now,” produced by Levi Seacer Jr.

Peter Tosh’s most “accessible” solo album, Mama Africa would also be his best seller outside Jamaica.
Toning down the rhetoric, Tosh concentrated on the music, self-producing an album that sounds fantastic from start to finish.
Of course, he had help from a boatload of friends, with two separate aggregates of musicians providing backing; Carlton “Santa” Davis and Lebert “Gibby” Morrison fuel one grouping across most of the album, with Sly & Robbie firing the other.
There’s a fabulous horn section, a clutch of superb backing singers (including the Tamlins, who accompany Tosh on three songs), and some superb guitar work from Donald Kinsey.
The album itself revisits the past while also looking to the future.
The updated songs are particularly creative, with the Wailers’ “Stop That Train” totally revitalized through an incredible mix of styles, brilliantly blending R&B, nods to Motown, a faux slide guitar, and a steady reggae beat. Even more astonishing is Tosh’s stunning take on “Johnny B. Goode,” a U.K. Top 50 hit that boasts an intricate rhythm, brass accents, sumptuous keyboards, and Kinsey’s soaring guitar on a song that builds and builds into an absolute crescendo of sound. There’s also a fine revisit of “Maga Dog,” one of Tosh’s nastier songs. But that has little on “Peace Treaty,” whose laid-back beat and chirpy melody can’t hide Tosh’s gloating.
Yes, listeners remember his admonition that peace will only be found in the grave, and the cease-fire declared by the gangs would never last.
But as gunfire echoes across the track, should the treaty’s collapse really be the cause for celebration? To judge by Tosh’s triumphant I told you so, apparently it is.
On a more positive note is the urban meets Kingston sound of “Not Gonna Give It Up,” boasting the Tamlins at their best, and more great guitar licks.
The title track is even more infectious, a rocker with a Caribbean flair and a light Afro-beat, as Tosh muses eloquently about his beloved continent.
Every track on the album is just as memorable in its own way, as the artist combines styles, genres, moods, and atmospheres across songs old and new.
Not Tosh at his most revolutionary, but an album filled with music that remains unforgettable.

Personnel

• Peter Tosh – lead and backing vocals, clavinet
• Leebert “Gibby” Morrison, Robbie Shakespeare – bass guitar
• Carlton “Santa” Davis, Sly Dunbar – drums
• Geoffrey Chung, Lancelot “Maxie” McKenzie – engineer
• Darryl Thompson, Donald Kinsey, Ed Edizalde – lead guitar
• Mikey Chung, Steve Golding – rhythm guitar
• Byron Allred, Peter Couch – keyboards
• Robert Lyn – organ (tracks: A1 to A4, B3 to B5)
• Skully, Uziah Thompson – percussion
• Keith Sterling – piano”
• Dean Fraser – saxophone
• Ronald “Nambo” Robinson – trombone
• Arnold Brackenridge, David Madden, Junior “Chico” Chin – trumpet
• Jon Paris – harmonica
• Audrey Hall, Betty Wright, Donald Kinsey, Dorett Myers, Pam Hall, Raymond Hall, The Tamlins – backing vocals

Technical

• Chris Kimsey, Peter Tosh – mixing
• John “Jellybean” Benitez – mixing on “Johnny B. Goode”

Sneaker is the debut album by the band Sneaker. It was released in 1981 on Handshake Records.

“No More Lonely Days:” Luscious keyboards and slow bass groove that are extremely resemblant of the title track to Steely Dan’s Aja masterpiece as much as Ambrosia’s darker early tunes, it is quite obvious that most of their musical influences lie there and in Michael McDonald era Doobie Brothers.

Personnel

• Michael Cottage – bass, background vocals
• Mitch Crane – guitars, lead and background vocals
• Mike Hughes – drums, background vocals
• Jim King – keyboards, synthesizers, vibes
• Michael Carey Schneider – lead and background vocals, keyboards
• Tim Torrance – guitars

 Production

• Producer: Jeff Baxter
• Engineer: Larold Rebhun
• Management & direction: Shelly Weiss
• Additional engineering: Al Schmitt, Wayne Neuendorf, Jeff Baxter
• Assistant engineers: Clif Jones, Sheridan Eldridge, John Hanlon, Krohn McHenry, Karen Siegel
• Recorded at Village Recorder & Cherokee Studios
• Mastered at Bernie Grundman Mastering, Hollywood
• Mastering: Bernie Grundman
• Production coordinator: Marylata Kastner
• Photography: Sam Emerson
• Illustrations: Susan McDonnell
• Design: Tommy Steele/Art Hotel

 Guest artists

• “Don’t Let Me In”: Jeff Baxter – guitar solos on fade
• “Jaymes”: Ed Greene – drums, John Raymond – bass, David Foster – clavinet, Lon Price – saxophone solo, Bobby LaKind – percussion (courtesy Warner Bros. Records)
• “One By One”: David Woodford – saxophone solo
• “No More Lonely Days”: Jeff Baxter – guitar solos on fade, Sherlie Mathews, Paulette Brown, Cleopatra Kennedy – background vocals, Jimmie Haskell – string and French horn arrangements

Notes
Release: 1981
Format: LP, Vinyl
Genre: Soft Rock
Label: Handshake Records
Catalog# 204361

Vinyl: Goed (VG+)
Cover: Goed (VG+)

Prijs: €10,00

The Two of Us is the debut album by the R&B duo Yarbrough & Peoples, released in 1980 on Mercury Records. It was produced by LA based producer Lonnie Simmons, who would go on to form Total Experience Records the following year, and veteran songwriter Jonah Ellis.

Any Nitty Gritty Dirt Band fan who thought the smooth soft rock of 1978’s The Dirt Band was a fluke was proven wrong by the following year’s American Dream, which took the template of its predecessor and improved it with a streamlined production and some very strong material.
Chief among these, of course, was the title song, a winningly polished take on Rodney Crowell’s clever “American Dream” that became a hit, climbing all the way to 13 on the pop charts and thereby establishing the band in the public’s eyes as the soft rock act they’d become.
It’s a brilliant single, one of the best Californian soft rock songs of its era, and American Dream the album delivers at least on the level of sound — sonically, it’s a sleek and appealing collection of mid-tempo pop songs, ballads, and lazy jams.
It’s the latter that hurt the momentum of the album; although the instrumental “Jas’moon” works better than “White Russian” on The Dirt Band, there are some really silly good-time numbers — “New Orleans,” “Happy Feet” — that deflate the mellow vibe of the record (as does the reggae-fied cover of “Wolverton Mountain” that closes the LP on a sour note). Though these are stumbles, they don’t hurt the record, since the rest of American Dream glides by on its smooth surfaces — all electric pianos, slick guitars, saxophones, and glistening polish — and songs as light but appealing as “In Her Eyes,” “Take Me Back,” “Dance the Night Away,” “Do You Feel the Way That I Do,” and “What’s on Your Mind.”
This won’t win over the fans lost on The Dirt Band — it would be some time before they returned to the progressive country that made their reputation — but this is another small late-’70s soft rock gem.

Light Up the Night was the final Brothers Johnson album to be produced by Quincy Jones. When Jones left A&M Records, he was contractually barred from having contact with the brothers.

This album includes the song “This Had to Be”, co-written and co-produced by Michael Jackson.

Light Up the Night marked the end of an era for the Brothers Johnson — it was the last of four albums that Quincy Jones produced for the Los Angeles siblings, and it was the last time a Brothers Johnson album was truly excellent instead of merely decent.
When Jones was producing the Brothers Johnson’s albums from 1976-1980, he gave them something their subsequent albums lacked — consistency.
Even though George and Lewis Johnson recorded some decent material after Light Up the Night, none of their post-Jones albums had the type of consistency that Jones gives this 1980 release. The album gets off to an impressive start with the major hit “Stomp!” (a definitive example of the smooth, sleek brand of funk that was termed sophisticated funk in the late ’70s and early ’80s), and the tracks that follow are equally memorable.
From the sleek sophisti-funk of “You Make Me Wanna Wiggle,” “This Had to Be” (which was co-written by Michael Jackson and employs him as a background vocalist), and the title song to the tender R&B/pop ballads “Treasure” and “All About the Heaven,” Light Up the Night is without a dull moment.

The second album from elusive Canadian disco legend Gino Soccio that despite the bland artwork features some stunningly produced discoid gems like the boogie roller I Wanna Take You There and the sleazy spatial robo-disco jam Rhythm Of The World..

Chalk this one up to a very, very midsguided attempt at rock music. This album was released at the end of 1980.
Disco had officially “died”. The music industry was without direction and was deperately trying to find the newest fad it could jump onto. Many record labels tried to have their disco artists cross over into rock, often with disastrous results.

The album was recorded at Davlen Sound Studios and Hollywood Sound Studios in Los Angeles. Among the accompanying musicians, David Paich, Jeff Porcaro, and David Hungate became members of Toto, while Fred Tackett became a member of Little Feat. The album marked Scaggs’s commercial zenith, a mix of pop rock (“Jump Street” and “Lido Shuffle“), soul (“What Can I Say” and “Lowdown“), and ballads (“Harbor Lights” and “We’re All Alone“, which became a hit for Rita Coolidge).

The front cover photograph was by Moshe Brakha of Scaggs at Casino Point, Avalon, California.

Side A
A1.  What Can I Say  (2:59)
A2.  Georgia  (3:54)
A3.  Jump Street  (5:10)
A4.  What Do You Want The Girl To Do  (3:49)
A5.  Harbor Lights  (5:55)

Side B
B1.  Lowdown  (5:15)
B2.  It’s Over  (2:48)
B3.  Love Me Tomorrow  (3:14)
B4.  Lido Shuffle  (3:40)
B5.  We’re All Alone  (4:10)

Production personnel

• Joe Wissert – production
• Tom Perry – engineering
• Doug Sax – mastering at The Mastering Lab (Los Angeles, CA).
• Ron Caro – design
• Nancy Donald – design
• Moshe Brakha – photography

Notes
Release:   1976
Format:  LP, Vinyl
Genre:  Blue-Eyed Soul, Soft Rock
Label:  CBS Records
Catalog#  81193

Vinyl:  (VG)
Cover:  Goed (VG)

Prijs: €10,00