25 YEARS OF RECORD COLLECTING: MUSICAL MEMORIES 1982 - 2007

 

8. Utah Saints

 

“I still think of you, I still think you”

 

Do you remember this great Leeds duo Tim and Jez, who sampled and blended a collection of 80s pop heroes into some great dance floor classics, but faltered when they went indie-dance and stated using their own vocals? Well they are back, Back, BACK! and can be seen in residence at a number of clubs around the North of England. However cast your mind back to the early 1990s when they were one of the first true ‘Stadium Techno’ bands (this is obviously if you take the opinion that Cauty and Drummond’s self-branding lark of ‘Stadium House’ was a not too serious art-music prank said with too much irony in a way similar to that ‘Klaxons’ Nu-rave genre) and those great singles that stormed into the top ten. The first one was ‘What Can You Do For Me’ which was built around a short refrain from Annie Lennox’s vocal in ‘There must be an Angel’ along with a sample from someone like Aretha Franklin (of this latter vocal part I’m not 100% sure of the sample, I could be thinking of ‘DJH & Stefy’ at this moment when it comes to Aretha and getting it mixed up with ‘Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves’). Nevertheless it was a great record and one which the duo actually managed to better with their second and third chart hits ‘Something Good’ and ‘Believe in Me’.

 

Moving on from Annie Lennox to another of Britain’s ‘national treasures’, Kate Bush, ‘Something Good’ moulded a sample from the chorus of the song ‘Cloudbusting’ that warped syllables and Kate’s unique voice, truncating lines from “…and every time it rains, you’re here in my heart, like the sun coming out, I know that something good is going to happen” and making it into a brilliant dancefloor classic.

 

Another personal favourite of mine was the next single release ‘Believe in Me’, instead of sampling a female voice, this time they went for one of the most distinctive male baritones of the 1980s – Philip Oakey of ‘the Human League’. Unlike Jarvis Cocker and ‘the All Seeing I’ from down the road in Sheffield, Phil did not vocalise his part as a guest person, with the Utah Saints turning instead to that early 1980s classic from the Dare LP called ‘Love Action’ for their vox. Whilst George Michael was happy to sample the clattering electrobeat for his political statement that was ‘shoot the dog’ many years later, the Utah Saints took the middle eight vocal stab of the song and welded it to the woo-hoos of the 1970s disco-funk classic ‘Do You Wanna’ by the Crown Heights Affair and their own techno beat. It shouldn’t have worked but it did most perfectly. The next couple of singles did not follow the same template, the same hit formula and so did not reach the heights in the charts as their previous singles. However I still think that songs such as ‘I still think of you’ and ‘I want you’ are not to be forgotten, as they too have their charms and seeing that the Utah Saints re-appearances are almost ‘Blue Nile’-a-like (reappearing with a second album in 2000 which featured the late great Edwin Starr) I guess that they will be sticking to club residences rather than the charts for the time being.

 

 

25 YEARS OF RECORD COLLECTING: MUSICAL MEMORIES 1982 - 2007

 

i liked utah saints chart hits, thats all i know of their work as i wasnt much into current music at that time, i was retroing!

I was never a big fan of Utah Saints.

I liked them a lot but never really bought their stuff. That said, I do have 'Believe in Me' on 7" at home and I loved, loved, loved 'Something Good' when it was out.

My copy is actually on a CD single and I think it is in a pile with ‘Isotonik’, ‘Electroset’ and ‘Skin Up’s’, “…a juicy red apple is nice, but, not every apple is red”.

I loved the album they put out. Some classic singles but my favourite is I Want You where I think they absolutely nailed that dance metal thing.

My copy is actually on a CD single and I think it is in a pile with ‘Isotonik’, ‘Electroset’ and ‘Skin Up’s’, “…a juicy red apple is nice, but, not every apple is red”.

 

I have all three of those at home!

 

On CD as well or are they on vinyl?

I have Electroset on CD and the other two are on 7" vinyl - no remixes for me on them :(