Chart entered : 11 February 1984
Chart peak : 15
Number of hits : 10
Hello Matt Bianco ? ..... You're a bunch of wankers !!
Thus said caller Simon on Saturday Superstore and it's hard to argue with him. Matt Bianco were representatives of a London-led attempt to prevent a resurgence of rock as the New Pop threw up such unappetising fare as Jones and Kershaw. Championed by the likes of DJ Gary Crowley and Jim Reid at Record Mirror , the answer was to return to the early sixties and support anyone whose main influences were jazz. They were bolstered by the decision of a major rock star in Paul Weller ( later to be joined by Sting ) to turn his back on rock music. There was a political side to this as well. While rock had produced its fair share of anti-establishment radicals, it was now perceived by the Islington left as innately conservative and ideologically suspect . We'll meet some other beneficiaries of this shortly but Matt Bianco were first out of the traps.
Matt Bianco were formed from the ashes of an earlier attempt to shift the cultural goal posts. By the summer of 1981 music journalists were anxious to move on from the New Romantic movement and latched on to salsa as the Next Big Thing. Accordingly they threw their weight behind Blue Rondo a la Turk , a Latin jazz collective helmed by punk failure Chris Sullivan . Virgin were hoodwinked by the hype and gave them a deal. In their line up were guitarist Mark Reilly and bassist Kit Poncioni .
In one of the most celebrated cases of chart gazumping, while Blue Rondo were in the studio , a couple of opportunistic plastic punks operating in the group Modern Romance appropriated the salsa style and scored two big hits before Blue Rondo's debut single got out of the traps. "Me And Mr Sanchez" peaked at a less than impressive number 40 in November 1981 and those journos who hadn't bought into them were quick to highlight their failure. Personally I think it would have struggled without Modern Romance's intervention. The band kick up an impressive storm of carnival jazz but the bass is very pedestrian and upfront they're woefully weak even with Christos Tolera doing a joint lead vocal with Sullivan. The follow up "Klacto Vee Sedstein" compounded their problems with a solo vocal from Sullivan whose thin nasal tones are hopelessly inadequate but as he was writing most of the songs he could hardly be sacked. Add to that a title that deterred people from asking for it over the counter and an intro that consisted of adenoidal sniffing and it did well to get as high as number 50.
After that they were finished , their reputation as a failed hype preceding them. Their debut album "Chewing The Fat" , featuring new keyboards player Danny White reached the dizzy heights of number 80 in the autumn of 1982 and subsequent singles failed to chart. Along with Poncioni, Mark and Danny decided to quit the group in 1983 and form their own outfit. To help out on vocals they recruited Polish exile Basia Trzetrzelewska a well known singer on the Polish rock scene such as it was.
At first they called themselves Bronze but soon changed their name to Matt Bianco after an imaginary spy character. They got a deal with WEA towards the end of the year.
"Get Out Of Your Lazy Bed" was their debut single. Although Poncioni is pictured on the back of the sleeve he'd left the group by then and only plays on the B-side. It's a long time since I last heard this and what strikes me first is how electronic it actually is with only the drums and sax sounding like they're not being played on a synthesiser. I've already declared my lack of love for jazz so this was never going to float my boat but I can see why it was successful. The song is slight and Mark's vocals are pretty ordinary ( though much better than Sullivan's in his old band ) but it moves along at a fair lick and Basia's multi-tracked scatted contributions are the icing on the cake, surely the reason it was a Top 20 hit.
No comments:
Post a Comment