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Sign upNotes on music, craft, and the era
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June 1979, New York: #1 Billboard for 6 weeks, 5M copies. Bernard Edwards plays an E-D fingerstyle riff on a Music Man StingRay through an Ampeg SVT. Sugarhill Gang copied it on “Rapper's Delight” - the first hip-hop hit. Queen paraphrased it on “Another One Bites the Dust”. 1,900+ samples by 2024.
January 1979, New York: the fifth Parallel Lines track. Harry and Stein wrote it in 1975 as “a Bee Gees parody”; producer Mike Chapman pushed for a serious cut. #1 UK and Billboard, 4M copies. Drummer Clem Burke refused the disco beat for three weeks before giving in.
March 1977, Düsseldorf: Kraftwerk's sixth album on their own Kling Klang label. Modest #67 UK on release. Five years later the title track becomes the spine of Afrika Bambaataa's “Planet Rock” (1982) - the first hip-hop hit. House, techno, IDM and trip-hop all grow out of that chain.
December 1982, Hamamatsu: Roland ships the TB-303 as “an automatic bass guitarist”. A flop - 10,000 units in 18 months, discontinued in 1984, leftovers dumped at $50-100. In 1987 Chicago's Phuture, working without the manual, cranked the resonance and stumbled on the “acid” sound. Today - $3,500-5,500.
January 1980, San Rafael: 25-year-old Roger Linn ships the first drum machine with digital samples of real drums. $4,995, Intel 8048, 12 voices, 8-bit. Prince owned ten and cut Purple Rain on them. In four years - 525 units sold and the sound of an era; Linn went bankrupt in 1986 and Linn moved to Akai to design the MPC60.
Musicland Studios ran from 1969 to 1992 in the basement of Munich's Arabella hotel - no windows, no daylight. Moroder cut Donna Summer, Queen, the Stones and Led Zeppelin here. And in 1977 he invented Moog↔MC-8 CV/Gate sync here - the MIDI prototype, ten years early.
April 1983, Rome: Discomagic Records issues the single by Milan's Fabio Roscilli as Ryan Paris. Producer Pierluigi Giombini reuses his “I Like Chopin” template: piano intro, Jupiter-8 bass, LinnDrum, 118 BPM. Summer at UK #5, #1 Germany, 2.6M copies.
June 1985, Milan: EMI Italiana drops Baltimora's debut. Front of the band - 28-year-old Irish dancer Jimmy McShane. By 1986 - #1 Italy, UK #3, US #13, 3.2M copies. But McShane wasn't singing: every lead vocal was tracked by producer Maurizio Bassi himself. The public didn't know until 1993.
February 1984, Milan: 25-year-old Raf writes “Self Control” with Bigazzi. In six weeks - #1 Italy, Switzerland, Austria, France. In April Laura Branigan buys the English rights for $45,000 and her cover hits Billboard #4. William Friedkin shoots the video; MTV pulls it for being “too sexy”. Both versions top-5 at once.
Late 1979, Sydney: Kim Ryrie and Peter Vogel ship the first commercial digital sampler at $30,000 a unit. A light pen instead of a mouse, 8-bit sampling. Over six years the Fairlight rewrote 80s production - Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, Trevor Horn's ORCH5 stab.
November 1982: the Doroschuk brothers from Montreal write a synth-pop protest after pogo dancers were thrown out of Quebec's Club 281. Korg Mono/Poly, Pro-One, Juno-60, TR-808. Tim Pope's Wiltshire video in medieval stylisation with 200 extras in 14th-century costume. #3 Billboard, #1 South Africa, 2M copies.
February 1985: after Bryan Ferry, Billy Idol and Corey Hart all said no, Simple Minds reluctantly recorded The Breakfast Club theme. They added their own “la-la-la” intro and rewrote the arrangement. Result - #1 Billboard, 4M copies, 1.3B streams.
October 1983: Melbourne's Real Life with producer Steve Heathcote drops the first global Australian synth-pop hit. Jupiter-8 unison in the chorus on the BRASS 3 preset (the same Duran Duran used on “Rio”), DX7. #1 Australia and the Netherlands, US #29 in 1984; the 1989 reissue put it back in charts.
September 1985: Dieter Bohlen runs his own template a third time - minor verse, major chorus Am-F-C-G at 118-122 BPM. 5 days at Rüssl Studio, 18,000 Deutschmarks budget. #1 Germany plus four more; the USSR took 10M+ cassettes.
July 1983: Pascal Languirand from Montreal, formerly Klaus Schulze's technician, releases a solo synth-pop single on Prophet-5 and Jupiter-8. #1 Canada for 11 weeks, UK #2 after Polydor's 1985 reissue. Italian DJs played it as one of their own - it slotted perfectly into Italo-disco. 3M copies, 110M streams.
October 1978: failed chansonnier Patrick Hernandez cuts a disco single in one night on an ARP Odyssey. #1 in five European countries, 25M copies by 1980 - the 8th best-selling 70s single. A 21-year-old Madonna danced on his tour.
April 1986: Gabriel knocks Genesis - his own old band - off Billboard #1. Aardman Animations' stop-motion video - 7,450 frames, 16 weeks of filming, 80 hours of Gabriel under glass. Nine 1987 MTV Video Awards (still unbeaten). Kurzweil 250 with shakuhachi, Fairlight CMI, Rick Astley on backing vocals. 5M copies.
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