Professor Eddy

C-Heads Magazine Enjoy this new part of the success series Smooth Sailing ! 😊 On Bandcamp a listener wrote about the album Merger by Canadian duo Rapallo: "This album is something very special that I believe people will be discovering and falling in love with for decades to come. It’s nothing like anything I’ve heard before - eccentric but accessible, exciting, tasteful, beautiful and fun. Favorite track: Nothing You Can Do." Tracklist: Ned Doheny – Think Like A Lover (1979) Steve Winwood ‎– Second Hand Woman (1980) Rapallo – Nothing You Can Do (2024) Alessi Brothers – Put Away Your Love (1982) Men At Work ‎– Who Can It Be Now? (1981) Dent May – Sea Salt & Caramel (2020) Pointer Sisters – What A Surprise (1981) Tim Green – Got More Love (1981) Chris Christian – Day Like Today (1981) Walkers – Rumour At The Honky Tonk (1979) Cotton Lloyd & Christian – Crying In The Rain (1976) McGuinn, Clark & Hillman – Little Mama (1979) Seals & Crofts – When I Me...

Pexels I like that upbeat, electronic eighties pop sound a lot and that’s what I wanted to catch in this new part of my imaginary station Sunshine Radio . I used some authentic jingles and air checks to recreate the feeling of the decade. The Calypso Drip FM intro is from an album about a fantasy station with the same name by retro wave artist Gryff. Enjoy! "I knew I wanted a project that reminded me of radio stations of decades past... especially the type you would have on GTA: Vice City. The accessibility and discovery of lost music to the new generation deeply resonates with me." (Gryff) Paris Is One Day Away by British band The Mood stalled at number 42 on the UK singles chart in 1982. Two places higher might have got them a slot on Top Of The Pops and might have catapulted these three good looking guys to world fame, but they did not have the same luck as Wham! Their Young Guns (Go For It) sold badly upon its initial release in November 1982, reaching just number 42 as...

Unsplash It’s time to put eighties subgenre sophisti-pop in the limelight again, just like Taylor Swift did when she mentioned The Blue Nile in her song Guilty As Sin recently. Enjoy! “Some of the sound’s hallmarks are jazzy chord changes, air-tight drums, splashy synth melodies, high-sheen production, and a decidedly non-rockist embrace of everything from slow-jam R&B to Brazilian music and ‘50s film scores.” (Jim Allen/Discogs) One of the tracks is from The Dream Academy. The self-titled debut album from the art-school trio led by lead singer/guitarist Nick Laird-Clowes was produced by him and David Gilmour (Pink Floyd). The band used lush string arrangements and multi-layered vocals to create a unique, sixties style sound. It worked to best effect on their hit Life In A Northern Town with its nostalgic lyrics and references to Frank Sinatra, The Beatles and The Walker Brothers ( Make It Easy On Yourself ). The song was written as an elegy to British folk singer Nick Drake, wh...

Unsplash My latest cloudcast is inspired by the music in the John Hughes movies of the 1980s: a mixture of pop, indie and new wave. He made the perfect soundtracks to stories about big and small troubles in the lives of teenagers. Well-known films from this director were The Breakfast Club , Weird Science , Pretty In Pink and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off . One of the tracks I selected, If You Leave by OMD, sounded during the famous prom scene in Pretty In Pink . Steve Harley, who passed away earlier this year, had quite a few hits in the 1970s, but when the decade came to a close his sales dropped dramatically. In 1982, when he tried to pick up his career, he teamed up with Midge Ure, the front man of Ultravox who were very popular at the time. He produced Steve Harley’s single I Can’t Even Touch You and played an amazing guitar part on it (a bit similar to the one on Dancing With Tears In My Eyes , a later hit single by Ultravox). Unfortunately I Can’t Even Touch You was not successf...

Unsplash Enjoy music mostly from and otherwise inspired by the 1980s! The majority of the tracks can be categorized as “sophisti-pop”. Many popular artists of the genre incorporated sweet pop-soul into their sound, which made it fit smooth jazz radio formats. The synthesized sound of sophisti-pop made it a typical product of the 1980s and by the beginning of the next decade, it had largely faded out, leaving us with quite a few really enjoyable songs. Electro pop band The Human League were very successful during the first part of the 1980s, but they seemed to have taken a dead end street in the mid-eighties. To get a fresh sound the record company hired R&B producers Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis who had just finished Janet Jackson’s album Control . The collaboration did not go well, because Jam & Lewis mainly used their own musicians and replaced vocalists Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley in favour of their studio singer Lisa Keith. The album Crash was based on two ideas t...

Pexels Sophisti-pop, soul pop, yacht rock and an occasional Japanese city pop song are the ingredients of a new series: Sophistication Of The Eighties , named after the Steve Harley song. Enjoy! When Andrew Gold was in England to record with his band Wax, he met British singer Steve Harley in the kitchen of RAK studios and Gold offered Harley to play piano on his song Sophistication . The track was meant to be put on Harley’s album El Gran Senor , but his record company RAK went bankrupt and the album never came out. Years later Harley managed to get Sophistication back and released it on an independent label. Denim rockers Status Quo started as a psychedelic rock band in the 1960s, but felt uncomfortable with their image and therefore changed their music style drastically in the 1970s. They played straight forward rock from then on and eventually became successful with it. For more than 20 years they were regular visitors of the charts. Although there were some serious struggles with...

Craig Adderly Music that makes you feel good on a Friday Night, not necessarily on the dance floor, but more particular in your own bath tub 😊Enjoy! Last week I played two tracks from the 4th instalment of Too Slow To Disco , by far the best compilation of 2022. This week I selected another one, Tell Me The Reasons Why by Max Leake. On the album there is also a track by Severin Browne, Stay . In the liner notes it is said that he was "the first ever white artist to be signed to Motown Records." This is not true, of course. There were quite a few white artists employed by Motown before him, like Meatloaf, Tommy Good, Frankie Valli, R. Dean Taylor, the band Rare Earth and female artists like Chris Clark, Kiki Dee and Debbie Dean. Say Lou Lou are beautiful twin sisters Miranda and Elektra Kilbey. They are the daughters of singer Steve Kilbey. front man of Australian band The Church, known for their eighties hit Under The Milky Way . Say Lou Lou’s new single, Waiting For A...

Pexels All aboard, we are on our way to eighties land! One of the artists on board, or should I say one of the passengers on the night train, is Steve Strange, singer and co-founder of electro band Visage. He was one of the key figures of the New Romantics/Blitz movement in the early eighties, together with Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Culture Club and Ultravox. They were young musicians who not only wanted to make good music, but who wanted to look good as well. They brought some light in those dark days of economic crises and right-wing governments. Strange died of a heart attack in Egypt on the 12th of February 2015, after years of struggling with his health and a heroin addiction. “Flaunt the Imperfection is the one album where China Crisis got the balance right.” (Allmusic) Tracklist: Jeannine Otis & Heikki Sarmanto – Magic Song (1980) China Crisis – King In A Catholic Style (Wake Up) (1985) Pressyes – Merissa (2022) Butter Bath – Kurrajong Hotel (2022) ABC – Ocean Blue (...

Tolga Aslantürk Driving away from home Thirty miles or more And we'll go moving away from home Without a care in the world (Driving Away From Home / It's Immaterial) Steely Dan’s core members Donald Fagen and Walter Becker played on Rosie Vela's 1986 first and only album Zazu. It was produced by Gary Katz who had previously worked with Steely Dan. Though the album was critically acclaimed and had some success in Europe, it stayed under the radar in the United States. Following Zazu , Vela did not release any further material, but has since become a backing vocalist for other musicians, including Electric Light Orchestra on their 2001 album Zoom . Bryan Ferry's song about gossiping, Kiss And Tell, peaked at number 41 on the UK Singles Chart and at number 31 on the US Billboard 100 in early 1988. It was one of the tracks to the soundtrack of the movie Bright Lights, Big City , which featured Michael J. Fox ( Back To The Future ) as the main character. In the song...

Sophisti-pop, blue-eyed-soul, new wave and some Japanese funk are the ingredients for the best years of our lives: the 1980s 😊 Enjoy this new sofa session ! What was called easy listening in the early days, became sophisti-pop later on. In the 1980s the big orchestras of the previous decade were replaced by small synths and the cheesy musical structures disappeared in favour of more complex ones. Sophisti-pop could be described as stylish, predominantly electronic, sometimes jazzy or funky and always very cleverly put together. I suppose Bryan Ferry was the king and Sade the queen of the genre.  On May the 25th, at the 50th anniversary of Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry will publish his book Lyrics . It contains the lyrics of his 17 albums, from the first Roxy Music album in 1972 to 2014’s Avonmore . The book includes an introduction by the author, and an essay by James Truman. The track by Mizuki Koyama is from the compilation Tokyo Glow by DJ Notoya. He explains the quality of the song...

Flickr I think the 1980s were one of the best eras in pop music with those big budgets and highly creative musicians. That’s why I like more recent music that was inspired by the decade as well, like the brand new songs from Parekh & Singh and Miles. Let me know what you think! 😊   “I wanted to make a record that would fit in between the Eagles and Michael McDonald. Those 70s and 80s records that had all the top LA guys are the favourites in my vinyl collection so I knew if I wanted to listen to it, others would too.” Adam (Miles) Tracklist: Stella Starlight Trio – Don’t You Want Me (2009) Baiana – Saudade Samba (2022) Viktor Lazlo ‎– Sweet, Soft N' Lazy (1986) Everything But The Girl – I Don’t Want To Talk About It (1988) Rosie Vela – Magic Smile (1986) It’s Immaterial – Driving Away From Home (1986) Peter Blegvad – Karen (1983) Jens Lekman – What’s That Perfume You Wear (2017) Miles – Riding The Wave (2022) Black – The Big One (1988) China Crisis – Black Man Ray...

Music that sounds best on warm days is without any doubt sophisti-pop, a genre that popped up during the mid-1980s in the UK. It had a light tone and contained elements of jazz, soul and pop. During those days artists often made extensive use of electronic keyboards, synthesizers and polished arrangements. Major influences were Roxy Music’s album Avalon and Bryan Ferry's mid-1980s solo albums. According to AllMusic, key players in the genre were Simply Red, Sade, The Style Council, Basia, Swing Out Sister, Prefab Sprout and the early work of Everything But The Girl. And when we talk about summer, you can't ignore Donna Summer :-) I chose to play a track from her 1983 album She Works Hard Ford The Money . Enjoy!  Next up is a new episode of Mellow Mellow FM . Tracklist: Lou Hayter – Cold Feet (2021) Janis Siegel – Lovin’ Eyes (1982) Sade – Your Love Is King (1983) Jay Gruska – Cancun (1984) Oscar And The Wolf – Oliver (2021) The Style Council – You're The Best Thing (...

  Unsplash We’re going back to the future, enjoy this exclusive time machine trip! 😊 I really like Save Your Tears , the new single from The Weeknd. The video is exploding on YouTube, because of its controversial content. Did he have plastic sugery or is his blown up face fake? After being recovered from Hodgkin's disease, singer Martin Fry reformed his band ABC as a duo in the second half of the 1980s. They were back on track in the summer of 1987,  when they released When Smokey Sings . The song was a major success on the charts, reaching number 5 in the U.S. and number 11 in the U.K and the Netherlands. Their tribute to Motown legend Smokey Robinson would become their biggest hit ever. Tracklist: First Light – Time Machine (1983) Rah Band – Clouds Across The Moon (1985) The Weeknd – Save Your Tears (2020) Timecop1983 Feat. Josh Dally – One Night (2021) Client Liason – Electric Eyes (2016) Allie X – That’s So Us (2017) The Human League – Don’t You Want Me [Lady Gaga M...

Unsplash As I wrote earlier, sophisticated pop is a smooth, jazzy style of mainstream pop/rock that first appeared around the mid-eighties, although bands like Steely Dan did something similar earlier on. Artists, like Sade and The Style Council, merged jazz-soul characteristics with their music and made it extremely popular. It turns out to sound best on lazy days when the weather is extremely hot :-) The track by Janis Siegel is from the new Too Slow To Disco compilation: “There are one or two slightly over-schmaltzy moments but generally speaking these are late-night smoochers n' swayers of the highest order... soft focus, white wine and roses optional.” (Juno) Enjoy this exclusive mix that I made for my loyal Boogie Bunker Radio listeners and Mixcloud subscribers ! Tracklist: Jessie Ware – Remember Where You Are (2020) Sinj Clarke – Unas Horas (2020) Everything But The Girl ‎– Each & Every One (1984) Folamour Feat. Liv East – I Miss Having Someone To Ta...

Unsplash To celebrate my 600th cloudcast on Mixcloud and the beginning of summer, I made this sunny sophisti-pop mix. Enjoy! Many popular sophisti-pop artists incorporated sweet pop-soul into their songs, which made them perfect material to play on pop as well on smooth jazz radio stations. Especially the typical eighties synthesizer sound made sophisti-pop a product of its time and by the beginning of the next decade, it had largely faded away, leaving us with quite a few really enjoyable tracks. Well-known names in this sub-genre are (apart from the ones that I selected) Black, Simply Red, Sade, The Style Council, Swing Out Sister, Prefab Sprout, and Everything but the Girl. Tracklist: Bodyline – Tender (2020) Scritti Politti Feat. Miles Davis – Oh Patti (Don't Feel Sorry For Loverboy) (1988) DeBarge ‎– I Like It (1982) Jerry Corbetta – Caribbean Lady (1978) Nohelani Cypriano – Island Boy (1979) Matt Bianco ‎– More Than I Can Bear (1984) Priscilla – Juste Un ...

Jessie Ware Sophisti-pop is a sub-genre of pop that especially flourished in the UK between the mid-1980s and early 1990s, incorporating elements of rock, jazz, new wave, and blue-eyed soul. The genre made extensive use of electronic keyboards, synthesizers, and polished arrangements, particularly horn sections. The Human League moved from electro pop to sophisti-pop in 1986, when they released 'Crash'. ‘Human’ was written and produced by Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis (Janet Jackson, S.OS. Band). It reached the number one position on the Billboard Hot 100 in the late summer of 1986. The Human League influenced all kinds of electro based artists (especially their album 'Dare'), like Lady Gaga and David Bowie. The latter once referred to them as "the future of pop music". Since 1987 the group has essentially been a trio of singer Phil Oakey and long-serving female vocalists Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley (both of whom joined the band in 1980), with va...