Search And Destroy: British Soul

View from a hill - No conversation. One of THE great lost 80's singles.

Associates - Party fears two

Paul Johnson - Paul Johnson.

Junior - Mama (used to say)

The Real Thing - You to me are everything

Shara Nelson suffered the fate of many a great vocalist (Billy Mackenzie), strong voice, weak songs, diminishing audience.

Anyone remember Lewis Taylor? What a twat.

The continuing absence of Junior Giscombe from this thread is noted. And word out to the rest of the '81 school: Central Line (Walkin' On Sunshine - nowt to do with Katrina thank God), Light of the World (12" of Time is PHENONENAL) and above all Beggar & Co whose Somebody Help Me Out is ENORMOUS and EPOCHAL and sounds like the world crashing down on Tony Hadley's cufflinks.

Look again Marcello.

So, are Heatwave considered a major influence on those great early '80s Brit-soul acts like Linx or Imagination and Junior? Judging from "Too Hot To Handle" (c. 1976-77 apparently, and which I never heard til yesterday on a British K-Tel LP, and which wasn't one of their three hits in the States) they maybe should be -- sounds pretty similar to me. Wiki says they were American servicemen based in Germany who later moved to the UK. (Hot Chocolate are pretty major influence too, I assume, but that's obvious.)

I would say not. There may well be a similarity in the sound of the end product, but British r&b/soul/funk musicians were primarily influenced by American music, not British. The end product rarely sounded particularly American but I doubt very much any one was sitting down and listening to Heatwave and trying to emulate that.

But you're right, there is a strand running through all those things (even Hot Chocolate, despite them really being '70s pop, not soul), which is a certain kind of British black pop sound, but in my opinion it's not what people were aiming for. The aim was always to match the feel and flavour of American music.

Hot Chocolate, despite them really being '70s pop, not soul

Not sure I understand this. They used soul/funk/ disco rhythms, and Errol Brown's vocal style was clearly steeped in r&b. Which makes them at least as "soul" as Linx or Junior (who also incorporated some Caribbean rhythms, though I guess Hot Chocolate maybe worked in more rock and even -- in "So You Win Again" for instance -- a little bit of country.)

Still, Junior's big hero was Stevie Wonder I suppose. What American stuff were Linx and Imagination shooting for, I wonder?

It's just they (Hot Chocolate) were not regarded as 'soul' by the people you are talking about. Yes, there are elements of soul/funk to Hot Chocolate but they had no credibility to speak of on the soul scene, except for perhaps the odd record here and there that I may have forgotten and that was not typical of their output.

What American stuff were Linx and Imagination hooting for?

It's hard to say. I would say they listened to EVERYTHING that was coming out, week by week, month by month, and tried their best to match it, yet what came out sounds really nothing like what they were listening to, except superficially. I mean, 'You're Lying' sounds a little bit like Slave to me and has a bassline that's derived from Narada Michael Walden's 'I Shoulda Loved Ya', but the overall effect is a bit lightweight and skittering.

'Intuition' is different, of course. It's much more their own thing.

Imagination .. I don't know. Their stuff in retrospect sounds quite original to me, and pretty damn good, but again I would guess they were keeping a close eye on American soul as a very general template.

Hmm... the bassline and beat of 'Burning Up' (growling, non-percussive synth sound, plus chunky sub-disco beat - but in 4/4 not 6/8 time) remind me a little bit of 'Searchin' by Change (Italian, not American, of course). The piano on the Imagaination track takes it somewhere completely different, of course (I'd forgotten how good that track is).

Actually that rolling 'Burning Up' bassline also reminds me a bit of Ned Doheny's 'To Prove My Love' (another big 1980 track).