Lovely Italo Disco track with loud beats. The main performer on this record is credited as a toy for geeks from the eighties known as Topo the robot. This vintage piece of so-so hardware lends its limited text-to-speech synthesis skills for a few vocals on the track.

Topo and Roby - Under The Ice (1984)

Cube - Two Heads Are Better Than One

Italy, 1982. In the picture, two sassy signorinas from the Amnesia club of Milan, filled with fashionistas, models, punks and punkettes, rich girls, and boys in Armani, Armani and Armani. The Amnesia was one of the flashiest venues to try out the emerging italo tracks( and not to be confused with the place of the same name in Milan now).

B-52s - Planet Claire

American made new wave-disco fusion from 1979.

——and to continue the “italian babes” serie, that I’m pretty sure many of you will be delighted by, here it comes Gloria (Piedimonte).

She was a one hit wonder starlette that made three singles back in the days. “Ping Pong Space”, the only one which actually had some airplay, was the opening soundtrack of the popular fiction “Il Commissario Verrazzano” (Deadly Chase). This 7″ from 1978 appears to be selling for quite a lot of money on the market, though it is relatively obscure. I guess you still can be lucky enough to land yourself a copy for cheap on ebay. As far as i know it is one of the very few Durium releases which sported a (very nice indeed) gatefold sleeve. On the flipside of the single there is the instrumental version, which is quite a good reason to look for this one.

If anyone wants to deep dig on the subject and get seduced by Gloria’s silver suit and her  table-tennis bat (ping pong, as it’s called in Italy)  go check out You tube, search under  “Il commissario Verrazzano” and enjoy…………

The Simon Orchestra - Don’t Give Up (1979)

Trivia: it features the exact same melodic line (wait for the second half of the sample) as found in one of my all-time disco favourites, French Kiss - Mischief. But there’s no plagiarism involved, just a composer being lazy and recycling it in two different songs.

Alain Band/Hot City Simphony - Hold Up (1977)

The B side of the Alain Band 7” record features a conventional piece of instrumental disco, with drums and horns.

Louis Chedid, the composer, remade Hold Up in 1984, but it’s honestly not as good as the original one. A much better remake was recently done from samples off this 1984 track by the great LoSoul:

Louis Chedid - Hold Up (LoSoul Re-Edit) (2010)

It also appears that a very first version of this tune exists, dating back from 1974: I really don’t know whether it’s the same as the 1977 one.

The Italian theme of an old Japanese anime from the mid 70s called Grendizer (aka UFOロボ·グレンダイザー, Grandizer, Goldrake, and Goldorak.)

Not really groundbreaking in any way - but well produced, the Atlas UFO Robot LP appears to be in high demand though, for some odd reasons.

Actarus - Shooting Star (1978)

Actarus - Vega (1978)

According to Tempera and Albertelli, they were asked in January 1978 by a RAI executive to write the theme songs for a new program for kids: a Japanese cartoon (i.e. Grendizer). They were given no information about the story, but they could see some scenes of the anime in Japanese some days later and understood more or less it was about a “good” robot fighting against some “bad” space invaders. This was enough for Albertelli to write the – somehow surreal - lyrics of “Ufo Robot” and “Shooting Star” (which originally was intended by the authors to be the song for the initial credits, but was refused by RAI executives for the role so becoming the ending theme), while Tempera involved Tavolazzi in the music writing process and thought to musical themes that could be played by an orchestra and sung by everybody so avoiding solo parts (a big novelty in Italian songwriting for theme songs, particularly referring to programs for kids). The whole writing and recording process of both two first theme songs lasted circa one month.

Excerpt courtesy of Goldotriomphe.

For comparison purposes, here’s an alternate disco-ified version of the Grendizer theme, especially made for the French-speaking Canadian market:

Michel Smith - Disco Goldorak (Vocal) (1980)

The sole credits of this second-rate theme are the rarity of the record on the market.

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Danny Darrow - Telephones

USA 1979.  Off a ten minute 12″ with a howling synth, a repeated male vocal and several phone calls.

Rainbow Team - Come To The Rainbow

Chic-esque 1979 track from Italy.

Neil Young - Sample And Hold (1982)