Review
Dance To The Music was compiled in association with CNR, Dureco, Indisc and Phonogram. A Dutch release on the Arcade label which included one extended version – the sparking Media Mix of Total Contrast’s Hit And Run – while the remaining 15 tracks were primarily single edits. A number of the tracks also appeared on the label’s Sound Of Hot Music Volume 2 which I’ll review at a later date.
There are three heavy-hitters here: the Pet Shop Boys’ West End Girls (sounds like the 4:07 Nouvelle version which was subsequently edited to 3:21 for the German market), Sophia George’s infectious Girlie Girlie and Billy Ocean’s When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going. Aside from those the album features a number of unfamiliar tracks that either didn’t chart in the UK or else languished in the lower reaches of the top 75 – hands up Phyllis Nelson and Mai Tai. The former’s I Like You is very much different to Move Closer.
The soulful vibe continues with the smooth Baby Talk from Alisha blending into Dotty Green’s upfront I Caught You Out. This is followed by Regina’s plaintive Baby Love. Remind you of Madonna? Well she was initially offered the song but declined so Regina took it to Billboard’s top 10.
Other highlights include a trio of Italo classics – Ken Laszlo’s unforgettable Tonight, Moses’ hypnotic We Just and Den Harrow’s searing Future Brain. You also get Afrika Bambaataa’s cousin MC Shy D reducing hip hop history to three minutes with the superfunky Rapp Will Never Die. Speaking of history – the mid-1980s war themes continue with Danielle Deneuve’s sliceness of weirdness that is The Rising Sun (featuring the voices of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and David Lloyd).
Favourite tracks
Moses – We Just
Den Harrow – Future Brain
Lest we forget
MC Shy D – Rapp Will Never Die
A Pop Fan's Dream 
One of just many, many of these compilations from Europe that I’ve come across – probably would have bought one or two, but sometimes the obscure outweighed the familiar, so I didn’t. I do note almost a straight sequence of two tracks which titles confused me even at the time – ‘Baby Talk’ and ‘Baby Love’, to have them almost as neighbours on the same CD would have really stuffed me! (A little like DJ-ing in a darkened room and you put the ‘instrumental’ B-side on in error – times I’ve done that!)
Tell me about it. DJing at a 80s night recently; full dancefloor. I cue up the 7″ of Buffalo Stance only to discover it’s the b-side and the dancers get going….