HAPPY 40TH BIRTHDAY LET THE MUSIC PLAY BY SHANNON

First up: WHAT A FUCKING RECORD.

Secondly: Let The Music Play is as important and influential as I Feel Love. Seriously. Let me explain…

Originally starting life as an instrumental called Fire and Ice invented by producers Mark Liggett and Chris Barbosa who were trying to replicate the sound of Arthur Baker and John Robie toe-taps, they thought Fire and Ice was so amazing that they wanted a vocal version too. After some mutual friends suggested her, Jazz songstress Brenda Greene auditioned and had a — largely improvised — sing over it, before penning the actual lyrics with songwriter Ann Godwin. However Godwin was signed to Jobete Music at the time and contractually this sort of caper was not on, so she donated her credit to co-writer Ed Chisholm instead. Meanwhile Brenda thought wisely that Brenda wasn’t a very futuristic name, so instead selected her middle name — Shannon — for showbiz matters going forward.

Fire and Ice sounded exactly like it ‘s name — the optimum doof of the enterprise was down to the gating of a Roland TR-808 and synced to a TB-303 bassline and then reverbed and gated again to (make it sound like it was an asteroid battle, if we’re being descriptive). In a few years that sort of set-up would become the bedrock of acid house, but more immediately had invented what was called The Shannon Sound due to the fact that nothing else sounded like it. Originally released on Emergency Records — who were an American label that had hired Liggett and Barbosa, but was primarily operating as a US outlet licensing Italo disco hits from the likes of Capricorn, Kano, La Bionda, Electra etc, as well as homegrown club smashes such as the dimensionful Chemise’s She Can’t Love You. It shot straight to the top of the Billboard dance chart and even made Number 8 in main Billboard chart.

Shall we let Shannon pipe up with some background? Okay: “No one had any idea that Let the Music Play was going to be as big as it was. It was climbing the charts with a bullet. It became Number 8 in the US, and then started to peak in other countries. By 1984, it became part of the world Top 10 chart. It had so many different types of elements that the world fell in love with it, especially the Latino market. They were calling it the ‘Shannon Sound’ at the time, which became the Miami Sound, which became the South Florida Sound and, eventually, after you had so many artists coming out, they changed it to ‘freestyle.’ We had Lisa Lisa, Stevie B., Coro… There were so many people coming out with the sound and they were taking little elements from Let the Music Play: the wit, the character of the song, with all the different rhythms.”

Let The Music Play can be seen as either a tumultuous yet ultimately joyful evening down the disco, of you could expand further and believe it to be a semi-revenge tale. Although the revenge is perhaps more a bit karmic than anything untoward. Due to the kind-voiced Shannon, there is an element of crying on the dancefloor about it — Shannon was having a nice evening throwing shapes with her paramour but then he slips of and gets into a groove with a RIVAL and Shannon’s all a bit ‘Charming!’ and ‘Harrumph!’ about being deserted especially as she perhaps had her eye on him for some erection section smoochers at the end of the night. OR, she could be broader here and talking about how she and her man got together and were having a nice relationship but he left her and so Shannon has no excuse but to seek counsel in ‘Love’ who seems to be a sort-of helpful passenger offering guidance. It’s saying ‘look, carry on Shans. He’ll get bored and will come back, yeah? I wouldn’t get too het about it babes.’ Possibly.

Oh. OH! And the actual voice of ‘Love’, as Shannon parples ‘Love said…’ and then it goes into the chorus, is that of a MAN called Jimi Tunnell. HE is the one singing the chorus while Shannon goes full lungsmith with her ad-libs and that. Fancy. That. I always thought it was her voice but had been slightly mucked about with. The trick was repeated on the — I’M SAYING EQUALLY AS PHENOMENAL — follow-up Give Me Tonight.

So anyway, Let The Music Play became Shannon’s first of four club chart Number 1s in the US, and netted her a Grammy nomination to boot. In the UK it was picked up by Club Records, an imprint of Phonogram, and entered the Top 100 at Number 55 in November 1983 for three weeks and returned to the chart at the beginning of 1984 to crawl up to a peak position of 14 as February became March. It was a HUGE hit in the gay clubs too, because the basic thrust of ‘I’m having a nice dance with some fancypiece and Phfft he’s buggered off because all men are bastards, but — Lo! He has returned! Yaroo!’ kinda relates heavily to the complexities of the homosexual disco environment.

The video to Let The Music Play was made by Nigel Dick, who started life as a press officer at Stiff working on Madness and Ian Dury and appeared on Top of the Pops with Jona Lewie performing Stop The Cavalry, then hopped off to, and must have been fairly ‘in house’ at Phonogram, as his first bunch of promos were Tears For Fears’ Mothers Talk, Shout, Everybody Wants To Rule The World, Head Over Heels and I Believe as well as ending 1984 ‘lensing’ Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas. Other key videos — of the 500+ he’s made — include Oasis’ Wonderwall, Jesus & Mary Chain’s Sidewalking, Gnus & Roses’ Sweet Child O’Mine, Cher’s Believe and …Baby One More Time by Britney Spears. As well as numerous adverts, Dick also worked on the S Club film Seeing Double which I’ve thus managed so far to avoid ever witnessing.

But! Enough about him. This is Shannon and Let The Music Play’s time. Basically after a couple more albums, Shannon kind of evaporated into sessioning and film music as well as graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and worked on tracks by Todd Terry, Sash! and Les Rythmes Digitales. She’s not been particularly chomping at the bit recording-wise — two albums since 1986 — but is now on the Grammy board and enjoys a package tour afterlife on cruise ships and the like.

Due to the precarious nature of early eighties dance labels, while there’s been reswizzles and interpolations, her original Emergency/ Mercury albums have not been remastered or expanded which is just violence. And there’s one rerecorded greatest hits package on spotify which has one of the worst sleeves on Earth.

However! Let The Music Play still sounds quite futuristic at any event or discotheque — it’s position in my Top Ten Favourite Records of All Time sees it very much a given in my DJ sets, and has pulled me out of any ‘YOU’RE LOSING THE CROWD, IAN!’ pickles I may have had due to being dancefloor catnip.

Sharp. Angular. Future. Whoosh. Zap. Fire. Ice. It took the electro template and opened up and invented a whole new world. There still is no other record quite like it.

WHAT A FUCKING RECORD.