Rocks In The Attic #134: The Kiki Dee Band - ‘I’ve Got The Music In Me’ (1974)

I’m a big fan of Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, Dee’s duet with Elton John, but other than hearing that song thousands of time throughout my life, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything else by her. I picked this up from my Dad’s record collection - I can’t imagine my Dad listening to this, so it might actually have belonged to my Mum. Either that, or it was a gift from a well-meaning friend.

The link with Elton John seems a match made in heaven, as this album, which came a full two years before that duet, is very much from the same stable of good-time, honky-tonk, mid-‘70s music that Elton was known for at the time. The album is on Elton’s Rocket Records, so maybe that explains the similarity in sound.

Her choice of material might not be the most ground-breaking, but Dee has a cracking voice. On the slower songs like Someone To Me and Water, where she has some space and isn’t merely singing to keep up with the band, she sounds scarily like a close relative of Karen Carpenter.

Hit: I’ve Got The Music In Me

Hidden Gem: Water

Rocks In The Attic #17: Donna Summer - ‘Walk Away: The Best of 1977-1980’ (1980)

Donna Summer passed away the other day, largely unnoticed compared to some recent deaths in the music industry. It annoys me that somebody like Donna Summer is brushed over, while coke-head Whitney Houston is plastered all over the media when she dies .Well, I guess the media likes a tragedy, and Houston is definitely one of those.

I love I Feel Love. It would probably be one of my favourite songs to hear in a nightclub, and it wasn’t too often that I’d hear it either. It sounds futuristic - miles ahead of anything else that was coming out around that same time, and beat-mixed into something similar sounding from the late 1990s sounds awesome.

Hot Stuff I can take or leave - it’s a great song, but now seen as something of a novelty after appearing in the Job Centre scene in The Full Monty. As usual, there’s a cruel irony that the song is undoubtedly more famous because of its inclusion in that film, but also cursed forever as that song from that scene.

I’ve heard a lot of press coverage around her supposedly anti-gay comments made in the 1980s which distanced her from her gay fanbase. Elton John, King Of The Gays, was one of the first celebrities to come out and publicly mourn for her, and as there seems to be no hard proof of her alleged comments, I’m prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Hit: I Feel Love

Hidden Gem: Bad Girls

Rocks In The Attic #3: Elton John - 'Madman Across The Water' (1971)

Elton John can really bore me at the best of times. I don’t mind his early stuff - although it doesn’t thrill me either. I bought this album, his fourth studio offering, purely for Tiny Dancer. It’s a fantastic song, and although I hear it all the time now, I’m sure I’d never heard it before I saw Cameron Crowe’s great 2000 film Almost Famous.

I love the cover of the vinyl - it’s a gatefold sleeve, and when you open it up there’s a little booklet glued inside with the lyrics and recording information detailed in it - a nice little package.

I’ve listened to the full album a few times, and there’s nothing else on there that interests me. It all just sounds like everything else he’s done: lots of piano, with not a lot of melody.

I still love Tiny Dancer though. And I’ll always sing along and substitute the words of the title with ‘Tony Danza’. He he.

Hit: Tiny Dancer

Hidden Gem: n/a