25 YEARS OF RECORD COLLECTING: MUSICAL MEMORIES 1982 - 2007

 

9. Clubhouse

 

Yet another hit making act from Italy’s ‘Media Records’ studio complex put together and masterminded by label boss/’Cappella’ producer Gianfranco Bortolotti. This ‘Italiohouse’ dance group actually started life in the disco era and similar to Dutch DJ Jaan Egermount’s (sp?) project ‘Starsound’ (aka Stars on 45), they hit the charts with a number of reworked medleys of popular hits, such as ‘Billy Jean’ and Steely Dan’s ‘Do It Again’. This approach continued throughout the 1980s right up to a medley featuring the classic More Kante song ‘Ye Ke Ye ke’. By now, Media’s rivals GGM (‘Groove Groove Melody’) had hit not only the dance charts but the pop charts with ‘Piano/Italiohouse’ classics such as Mixmaster’s ‘Grand Piano’, Wood Allen’s ‘Airport 89’ and of course those massive ‘Black Box’ tunes too. However in the new decade, ‘Media Records’ would eclipse all the achievements of ‘GGM’ and become the premier pop dance label in Italy, if not in Europe.

 

One of the great dance tunes of this early 90s house music period was ‘Deep In My heart’, a song which had a soulful house groove not too dissimilar to Double Dee and Danny’s classic ‘Found Love’. I doubt many people will remember this classic favourite of mine, however I guess that anyone with an interest in mid 90s ‘boybands’ will no doubt know of their next chart entry, ‘Light My Fire’, as it is now famous for being the record a newly put together ‘Boyzone’ had to dance to on Gay Burn’s ‘Late Late Show’ in Ireland.

 

Bubbling around the bottom of the Top 75 for what seemed like (in those days) ages, ‘Light My Fire’ was one of those brilliant club tunes that was in danger of not joining the equally commercial ‘Cappella’, ‘Haddaway’ and ‘Snap!’ in the higher reaches of the pop charts. Thankfully one remix later and Clubhouse (now including feature vocalist Carl) sprinted into the top ten ‘Light My Fire’ and soon followed that hit up with another great dance track ‘Living In The Sunshine’. Unfortunately for Clubhouse and Cappella, Media Records pushed so hard their ‘Commercial Pop dance sound’ that the charts became monopolised with this type of Eurodisco and became so ubiquitous that by the late 1990s interest waned in the UK and their dance scene was killed of. Whilst pop fans had moved onto Britpop like ‘Blur’ and ‘Pulp’, clubbers turned their attention to harder sounds of garage and trance, whilst ‘Media Records UK’, in an attempt to distance themselves from commercial pop acts like Stu Allen’s ‘Clock’ rebranded itself as ‘Nukleuz Records’ instead.

 

 

25 YEARS OF RECORD COLLECTING: MUSICAL MEMORIES 1982 - 2007

 

Clubhouse Light My fire is an awesome tune. There were two versions kicking about in 1994 if I remember right, the original version which only got to no.45 or something but spent a lifetime inside the top 200, and then there was a remix which made the top ten. It was also the the tune that Boyzone were dancing to in their infamous very first TV appearance in Ireland!

It came from the post-rave dance scene unfortunately by which point I was well off dance music. The Boyzone clip is ace though.

Yes, a great ‘before they were famous’ moment, which always makes me smile.