( * as part of Miami Sound Machine )
Chart entered : 11 August 1984
Chart peak : 6 ( 3 in 2005 when mashed up with Mylo's Drop The Pressure )
Number of hits : 32 ( including 2 credited to Miami Sound Machine alone )
When this first made the charts there was little to suggest it was launching a long career. Miami Sound Machine looked set to join A Taste of Honey, Frantique, Lipps Inc and Indeep on the long list of disco one hit wonders.
There was of course rather more to them than first appeared. Gloria Garcia was born in Cuba in 1957. Her father was a bodyguard to President Batista and so the family had to flee the Cuban Revolution and settle to Miami. Her father joined the US Army and saw service in Vietnam. She was working as a translator at Miami Airport in 1977 when she and her cousin Merci approached to join a group called Miami Latin Boys for a Cuban wedding. They went down so well they were invited to join and the band became Miami Sound Machine. She became romantically involved with band leader Emilio Estefan and married him in 1978.
The band released their first album "Live Again / Renacer" later that year. It tried to cover all bases with a mix of songs in English and Spanish. What I've heard from it isn't very impressive, either Latin-tinged bland disco songs or soupy Captain and Tennille balladry. Similarly I've only heard three tracks from their second LP "Miami Sound Machine" in 1978 which tell the same story although the horn arrangements on "A Different Kind of Love" make it a bit more interesting. With 1979's "Imported " you get the same sense of great musicianship wasted on vacuous songs.
None of these first three albums broke them out of Florida but at the end of 1979 they signed with a bigger label, Disco CBS International. Their first album on the new label "MSM" wasn't much more nteresting from what I've heard except there was more of an Abba influence on the ballads such as the single "Regresa A Mi"
Their next album "Otra Vez " was entirely in Spanish as they concentrated on the Latin American market. I've no idea what they're singing about but it all sounds very MOR, somewhere between The Dooleys and Abba at their blandest.
Before the next album "Rio" in 1982 there were personnel changes in the band, the most important of which from Gloria's point of view was the departure of Merci, leaving her the sole lead vocalist in the band. The album - Spanish language apart from the poppy OK" - offers more of the same except you're only hearing one voice.
"Dr Beat" was one of two English songs on their 1983 album "A Toda Maquina" on which the band started incorporating synthesisers and electronic beats into their sound. The following year Disco CBS and Epic agreed to release an English language album "Eyes of Innocence" which collected together the English language songs from their last three albums with some new material. "Dr Beat" first became popular in Holland then spread across the rest of Europe,
"Dr Beat" is quite a leap from their previous material, subjugating the usual salsa rhythms to an early hip hop beat and their conservative songwriting style to a robotic repetitive hook, hammered mercilessly throughout the song. It's an undeniably effective dance pop single though to me it's only interesting for the harmonica break towards the end , the only suggestion that they were more than another faceless studio collective striking pop gold with a one off single. It was a hit again in 2005 when mashed up with Mylo's "Drop The Pressure" to create "Dr Pressure".
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