THAT’S RIGHT! A Short Muse On The Blankness of Silver Convention
While ‘I Feel Love’ may have felt like a brave new world, the key Patient Zero of Eurodisco arrived in 1975 when Munich-based act Silver Convention (initially Silver Bird Convention) released ‘Save Me’. For all its nods to a Motown-esque pound, that was where any comparison ended. The bassline was the star now, as was a string section. This was due to necessity, if anything, according to Silver Convention’s producer Michael Kunze whose interest in replicating the lusher disco sounds that at that point involved hauling in whole orchestras into session, there was actually a lack of decent brass players in Munich, however the Munich Philharmonic had no end of string players keen on earning an extra wedge from sessions. The strings here on Save Me were instructive, dismissive, stabby and directional rather than the luxuriant glide elements offered by the swoon of American disco.
Silver Convention took the anonymous element a bit too literally when even their record company couldn’t identify the players in a band photo, and so after utilising a succession of female vocalists, once they started charting with Save Me, Fly Robin Fly and of course the genius Get Up and Boogie, the public image of the act was made up of jobbing German singers Penny McLean, Ramona Wulf and Linda G. Thompson whose ensuing careers were best described as ‘moderate’.
I think we would all benefit from this clip of Silver Convention performing Get Up and Boogie to the most unenthusiastic audience ever…
They even entered the Eurovision Song Contest as Germany’s entry in 1977 with a song called Telegram coming eighth. It was not the blank surface emptiness of something like Fly Robin Fly or the frankly imperial Get Up And Boogie, but rather a Seaside Special open-top-bus-esque breezer.
Incidentally Penny also released Lady Bump in 1975, which sold over THREE MILLION copies worldwide, and became the toast of discos everywhere which is a bit mad really. Yet also correct. Here she is serving veneral disease realness in an itchy looking top.
Interestingly enough, and I’m aware that I’m probably boring on a bit about Eurodisco now, the drummer behind Silver Convention’s hit was Englishman Keith Forsey, who’d started out as a percussionist for krautrockers Amon Duul II before becoming Giorgio Moroder’s drummer as well as helming hits by Boney M, Munich Machine, Sparks, Dee D Jackson, Patrick Juvet and many, many more. As the seventies melted into the eighties, he turned to production, producing Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell album, earning an Academy Award for co-writing ‘Flashdance (What A Feeling)’ and credits on the soundtrack albums for Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop, The NeverEnding Story and The Breakfast Club. Indeed, it was he who wrote Simple Minds’ international breakthrough single ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’. So, he did alright.
