70s KnockOut Cup Match 3 *Darkness_Fish advances*

[never/ever]

A

The New Birth - Until It's Time for You to Go





B

Donna Summer - Our Love

[The Modernist]

It feels as if people are slightly avoiding this tie..I can see why actually!

I think I've heard some other New Birth stuff that I've preferred to this. There were things I liked about it ( percussion, backing vocals) but it was too overcooked in the vocal and mined too many 70s soul cliches ( the talky bits, the sickly sax) ultimately. It feels as if there were better selections by the same act.
It's good to see a Donna Summer pick that isn't those songs. It's a decent production, but the song is very forgettable. It does sound like something to pad out the album.

Er...I'll come back to the vote, they might sound better on a re-listen.

[Osgood]

A sounded like a (very long) intro to a good song, but the song failed to appear in the end.

B is good enough to get my vote here, in fact I quite liked it in spite of the dodgy synth bridge.

B

[Loki]

I really like

[Jumper K]

Lord Knows why you'd pick that Donna track over something like Loves Unkind. Still, its miles better than that other pile of trash.
B.

[C]

Neither of the tracks are my sort of thing and it is difficult for me to be positive about either.

No abstentions

-+B+-





.

[fange]

Yeah, not the strongest of ties - idiosyncratic choices, where both seem to have stayed away from the artists' bigger/stronger hits.


I'll go with the NB.


A

[Purgatory Brite]

B but one of her raunchier numbers would have been a better choice.

Didn't care much for A.

[harvey k-tel]

Yeah, I'm not too inspired by A. She's got a great voice, but the song itself is kinda weak.

I'll go with the tune that New Order seem to have based their entire career upon.

B

[Goat Boy]

Whoever picked B gets a pint from me. Pass the poppers please.

b

[The Modernist]

B

[naughty boy]

A is wonderful - right out of nowhere for me, that. Smart!

[sloopjohnc]

B

[Darkness_Fish]

Christ, A starts off bad, it has to be uphill from here, surely? The production sounds a bit off, too, I dunno if it's the youtube upload again, but there's something of an early Joe Meek echoing muddiness about it. I guess it's ok if you like this kind of thing, but it sounds like a filler on a 70s soul mixtape.

B is something I find fascinating. Mr K-Tel picked up on the New Order connection, both Temptation and Blue Monday (probably their greatest songs, without which, it's doubtful if they'd be anything other than a post-Joy Division footnote) borrow heavily from this, a fact they readily admit. I don't know of another case where a band owe such a huge debt to a single B-side by another artist, let alone a band as huge as New Order. I don't think it's as good as either song, btw, but it also seems to signify the point at which the 70s ended, and the 80s were ushered in. Although disco (and Donna) had been around for quite a while, it seems to be breaking away from the soul/funk base of the 70s and becoming a quite dry dance beast. The electronic is more important than the emotion, even in a song called "Our Love". Anyway, Dougie, name your Wetherspoons of choice.

B

[Penk!]

A has a great voice tacked onto what sounds like a demo the producer was mucking around with and forgot to go back to. Strangely skeletal and underdeveloped.
I rather liked B. The New Order bits are very noticeable, but that's not a problem given that they're good and she got there first, and I thought the vocal was nicely underplayed and gave it an affecting air.

[echolalia]

Maybe it's deliberate but there's a lot of Irma Thomas’s Anyone Who Knows What Love Is in A? Anyway, it meanders about for a bit and then it goes away.

I like practically everything Donna Summer does, so
B

[trans-chigley express]

The horrible intro to A didn't bode well and it never improved much from there.

B is a fairly forgettable song but the distinctive Gorgio Moroder production saves it.

B

[Rayge]

a - In 1974 and ’75, I had a job at the Reader's Digest, so had some disposable cash, but very little to spend it on given how UTTERLY SHIT most records were at the time, and I was living in Putney, south London, a long way from a decent record emporium, so I started frequenting a shop called Black Wax (I think), which specialized in imported soul, R&B, doo-wop, funk and various other genres not C's 'thing' both modern and vintage. they sent out a list, I remember, and having heard this track on Charlie Gillette's masterly weekly radio show (I think, we're talking 40+ years ago now and a time when I was permanently stoned), I ordered it. BW's proprietor expressed surprise, saying he didn't think it was 'my thing' (mostly been buying reissues of 50s doo-wop). But, of course, it is mercifully free of funk, has Harvey Fuqua of the Moonglows doing the classy, stripped back production and the spoken intro with one of Honey Cone, a stormingly beautiful soprano soul vocal – featuring the most glass-shattering held high notes since the supremely great Arlene Smith – on a remarkable high-quality song by a Native American singer-songwriter, and an arrangement that would not have been out of place on a mid-60s soft soul classic. What's not to like? - well, plenty, according to the BCB incognoscenti . The track was, in truth, a bit of an aberration from New Birth, a kind of soul-going-on-funk supergroup put together by Fuqua and the others responsible for taking the Motown sound into the 1970s with the Invictus and Hot Wax labels - they had to get a ringer, Susaye Greene, later of the Supremes, for this record as Fuqua thought the usual vocalist, Londee Something couldn't hit the notes.
My only quarrel with this pick is that the 5 and half minute LP version, featuring even more stratospheric warbling, would have annoyed the cloth-eared rock-botherers even more. 8 / 10
b - Ooh, a half-decent div two R&B singer with backing from an Italian. That's the real deal. Ooooof, let's put on our Lurex disco-drawers, the ones with the spangles and get down to the eurobeat, goose-stepping like a simpleton. Emperor's New Clothes, people. It isn't that bad, of course, it's a half-decent 'disco album track' (a phrase that should strikes chill into record-lovers everywhere) but nothing to distinguish it from other mid-tempo chuggers of the period with no swing at all (I have several Donna Summer records, btw, just not this one and no albums). New Order did this sort of thing so much better, as people have noted, because it's basically Dance Music by and for White People. Who can't actually dance, just saw it as a way of, ahem, 'picking up chicks' or a little light exercise after necking some pills and booze. 5 / 10

A

[Diamond Dog]

Phew...

A sounds like it's from a low budget musical... the music played whilst the big set change (sorry, only set change) happens just before the finale.... completely inconsequential and forgotten before it gets remembered.

I don;t likethe Donna Summer track so much either, but it wins this easily. B

[toomanyhatz]

Everything Rayge says is true, I just hate A rather than love it. Perhaps if they'd picked a better/more appropriate/less often covered song, I might feel more generous toward it. I just don't like what it does, though I admire that it doesn't do it halfway.

Anyway, B has feet in both Summer camps - the bold techno one and the more complex, poppy songwriting one. It's one of the better songs I've heard by her.