Front-loaded with 2 alpha divas as lead singers, this is the Tameka show despite Livin' Joy's first signiture song Dreamer owing everything to the sultry roar of Janice Robinson's inmitable vocals as well as her writing credit - sadly Ms Robinson's original version, which became a global number 1 smash, only appears as a hidden track. Tameka's gutsy go-for-broke style immediately responds with the act's second mega hit Don't Stop Moving, another full-pelt anthem - her lightening bolt vocals are not for the faint hearted but like her predecessor she fleshes out the song in a way that defines it beyond mere lyric and melody. Both singers trigger a unique rocket fuel with miraculous neo-camp sassiness (Pick Up The Phone is high class trash as far as I am concerned - you'll want to hear it again).
The air wooshes through your patience on the albums final modest hit single Deep In You (sadly there were no decent remixes). Tameka is more than the apprentice diva, but her lack of composure almost strips the rampant italo-house predator Where Can I Find Love of it's superb blizzard of desperation (although I do think 'am I looking for love on all the wrong websites' would have been the better lyric - missed a trick, girl).
She's pleasingly virtually anonymous on the soothing dancefloor throb Whenever You're Loney. Always insisting on getting her props, her much raggedier, much quirkier and much more wayward diagnosis' can be seen as symptoms of a somewhat awful nervous disorder if one is to be kind.
The fully engaged Follow The Rules establishes such versatile slogans as 'don't stop climbing till you reach the top'. Even self-made sex bombs have feelings: bedroom feelings of course; and Let Me Love You breaks it down if there were any doubt. Once again her careful message is loud and clear on Be Original and Don't Cha Wanna, both solid handbag swingers.
Before Dreamer the guys produced two Janice Robinson solo singles: the Dannii Minogue Gone-ish-but-good Children (seek it out and its anthemic pianotastic Explorer remix), and the Kelly Llorenna classic Sweetest Day of May (also a thrilling remix package).
I wrote this post below in disbelief thinking a song had been credited to one singer and had vocals belonging to another. It turns out there are simply different versions for each vocalist available - a nice little touch actually given the history of the act they are paying tribute to. Except these remixers are extracting the actual vocalists and at least giving them some credit. How was I supposed to know?
Read below with a pinch of salt, then:
Above: Janice Robinson originally released Dreamer 3 times until it became a hit, and has since released it a further 2 times just so we get the point.
Something fishy is going down within the Australian dance community right now and I am not referring to the stench of Dannii's native chart positions. Livin' legend and ex-Livin' Joy vocalist Janice Robinson's good name is being destroyed by over-anxious evil gays falsely re-releasing her signiture hit Dreamer using vocals from that of her Livin' Joy replacement Tameka Starr.
Now, I have mixed feelings about the abs-ulous Tameka, whose real name is the faaabulous Doris Diggs, as a singer who sounds as if singing someone to death with her ear-drilling vocals. Her sparse catalogue of sporadic recordings is not much to look at, and yet in 1993 she fearlessly gurned her guts out on the Capella-tastic and rampantly spectacular Feel The Rhythm:
Movin' back to Janice, she herself has already re-released Dreamer back in 2005/6 with some pretty epic remixes so solid that there wasn't enough fibre in the world to slide them out the American Bilboard dance charts for a whole week before they vanished without a trace. There are two superior edits to choose from, either the funky-house elasticity of the Joe Bermudez Club Edit or the racous Nic Mercy's Epic Anthem which makes all other dance tracks extinct throught its 9:28 minutes of titanic destruction. The relentless open-fire purring persuasion of 'here we lie all alone, am I dreaming' once again erupts her unforgettable rapture - Tameka's exhaustedly shrill take on this track does not get anywhere near her rival's full-throttle roar.
Below: an all-too brief wig-free solo-sprint from Robinson with the gutsy singer-songwriter single Nothing I Would Change sadly never got off the ground despite touring with idol Tina Turner and singing her song on an unforgettable episode of US sci-fi drama Charmed, as seen here posing with cast-members (L-R) Alyssa Milano and Holly Marie Combs.
Because Starr superseded Robinson before an album was written or recorded, it was decided to re-record Dreamer for inclusion of the album and the original was tagged on the end as a hidden track - basically Tameka recorded it to seal over any confusion anyone might have had with 2 vocalists on the 1 album. Remixes such as Wayne G's tranceplant-treatment prove Starr's efforts were not completely useless, but there is one definative singer who wrote this track, and when she sounds like a higher-sexed Tina Turner as well, it's not as if there would be any doubt which is which. However, everyone knows the definative remixes of Dreamer are the piano-stampeding Loveland's Viva Tenerife Mix, the stop-start carnival carnage of the Junior Vasquez Soundfactory Mix and the head-spinning trance of the Big Rollo's Mix.
Above: the acid-house imagery proudly fronted by Livin' Joy's second vocalist Tameka Star who declares war on fat people with no motivation throughout the album's 11 tracks.
Throbbing 90s house music did not pound harder than the triple-penetrating beats of Livin' Joy, with their razor sharp, chic and sleek singles that littered the European charts between 1995 and 1997. The legendary act was also catapulted across the Atlantic with moderate, lengthy chart damaging singles Dreamer (UK #1 and 7 weeks in the top 40) and Don't Stop Moving (UK #5 and 12 weeks in the top 40), but scavenged a further 3 UK top 20 hits, as it was in Europe where they left their most impressive skidmarks. As a 4-hit-wonder dance act, they join the Real McCoy, Corona and La Bouche, as towering leaders in their game of 'vagina and a disco beat' shananigins, in the elite few who went as far as releasing a whole album to remember them by. Above: Robinson's ultra-fierce performance in the Dreamer video could make even Grace Jones wet herself - here, the American singer gets some beauty sleep before an early dentist appointment in the morning.
The wanton whiplash Hi-NRG of Dreamer features the collosal vocals of Janice Robinson, an earthy singer whose smouldering sexuality was the type of uber-fierce femininity drag queens dream of. Her rapturous, lover-dissing lyrics hissed famously a change in fortune, the tireless rapid fire of 'here we lie all alone am I dreaming / your heart's smooth my soul is unbelieving', using her vocals as a formidable weapon, which has never been matched and at once created a unique proposition of which would become Livin' Joy's trademark style and pace. Italian producers, and brothers, Venturi and VianiVisnadi oversaw acts including Alex Party (Don't Give Me Your life), Simply Red and 2 Unlimited remixes, and even another bald black dance diva Alison Limerick (the ambientPut Your Faith In Me and accompanying remixes).
Above: Tameka's ferocious anti-impotence campaign was so scary that her no-nonsense 'keep it up' refrain from Don't Stop Movin' has resulted in the world's population growth epidemic.
When Robinson abruptly balted after the mammoth success of Dreamer, Tamek Star was her divisive replacement. Whilst Star's delightfully out of control slit-throat vocals were unable to topple her predecessors, her qualifications as a writer were very much evident on Don't Stop Moving, a gasping '110%' workout mission that almost equals Dreamer for sheer adrenaline and militancy. She starts to drain on the rest of the album where her 'get off your ass and achieve bitches' shtick is a bit like being face fucked by a life coach shoutting as she comes across like the Hitler of dance.
Above: Despite overcompensating with aerobic cliches, TamekaStar was simply outshone by, and could not compete with, Janice Roninson's natural instinct for transsexual prostitute glamour, broken down into wigs, pvc, feathers and ripped torsos belonging to rent boys unseen in this video breakdown of Dreamer.
However, Star does deserve credit for her ridiculous abs and contrived 'mmm hmm, girlfriend' neck-snapping - she practically gives herself a high five on the slightly dark Be Original album cut, whilst those beats keep slicing away ferociously. Highlights include the dead-eyed single Where Can I Find Love (UK #12), which would be funny had she sung 'am i looking for love in all the wrong websites?' instead of 'places', but the straights do love their dogging. Fans left drooling for Robinson can take consilation from two of her early solo singles, both produced by the Visnadi bros, the Morroder-esque Children and a certain Sweetest Day of May.
Above: Robinson's first solo video presents her heavenly voice with a budget that probably stretched only far enough for a razor to shave her head in order to maximise record sales with a bald black female dance singer - the track itself triggers an agony only dance can remedy.
Going steady, Follow The Rules really does feel like a self-help lecture, spearing its way to number 9 in the UK, but gnaws away at my ears (the fact that Star is credited with producing her own vocals is rather telling, her style is often far too histrionic, as if she thinks she is better than a mere makeshift dance singer). Rumours fly around forums like spare cocks in a gangbang, that Star and her producers fell out. After the album campaign was laid to rest, a sophomore effort was indeed recorded and an Australian-only single Just For The Sex of It was a very 1998/9 Euro-pop affair that would certainly have been a minor UK hit had it been released, and not being miles off from another hit single at the time called Sex On The Beach or even the Tamperer featuring Maya. Their familiar rampant Italo-disco sound was more reinforced rather than reinvented elsewhere: the galloping Love Yourself is another soap-box anthem but has an impressive momentum that just builds and builds as piano keys are splattered like flies on a registration plate.
Below: Comeback single Just For The Sex of It was a bit of a limp black dick, it slapped you around a bit but never brought a 'joyful' tear to your eye, with no full facial in sight. Australian gays soaked up its trashy brilliance and made it a top 100 smash. Ready For The love is formulaic and desperately revives the pulse of Dreamer, which feels like an old lover pounding away at you just for the sake of it, I mean just for the sex of it (yawn). The funky, heavy bass of I Only Wanna Dance almost wants to be Basement Jaxx but sounds work in progress and out of date even for 1999. Lookin' Fine is another run-of-the-mill Z-snapper, this time yanking inspiration from Don't Stop Moving. Tameka finally does her trembling voice justice on U R My Livin' Joy, which is like a lost Dina Carrol disco flirtation - stripped of their asphixiating beats, cooing vocals fawn over a sleeping muscled black basketball player, not even giving a moments thought to steal from his wallet (true love, y'all). Overall these unreleased songs invariably sound in hurried competition, only Love Yourself proves worthwhile in these high stakes, but develping their sound might have been worth finding more time for as proven by U R's contentful seduction.
Front-loaded with 2 alpha divas as lead singers, this is the Tameka show despite Livin' Joy's first signiture song Dreamer owing everything to the sultry roar of Janice Robinson's inmitable vocals as well as her writing credit - sadly Ms Robinson's original version, which became a global number 1 smash, only appears as a hidden track. Tameka's gutsy go-for-broke style immediately responds with the act's second mega hit Don't Stop Moving, another full-pelt anthem - her lightening bolt vocals are not for the faint hearted but like her predecessor she fleshes out the song in a way that defines it beyond mere lyric and melody. Both singers trigger a unique rocket fuel with miraculous neo-camp sassiness (Pick Up The Phone is high class trash as far as I am concerned - you'll want to hear it again).
The air wooshes through your patience on the albums final modest hit single Deep In You (sadly there were no decent remixes). Tameka is more than the apprentice diva, but her lack of composure almost strips the rampant italo-house predator Where Can I Find Love of it's superb blizzard of desperation (although I do think 'am I looking for love on all the wrong websites' would have been the better lyric - missed a trick, girl).
She's pleasingly virtually anonymous on the soothing dancefloor throb Whenever You're Loney. Always insisting on getting her props, her much raggedier, much quirkier and much more wayward diagnosis' can be seen as symptoms of a somewhat awful nervous disorder if one is to be kind.
The fully engaged Follow The Rules establishes such versatile slogans as 'don't stop climbing till you reach the top'. Even self-made sex bombs have feelings: bedroom feelings of course; and Let Me Love You breaks it down if there were any doubt. Once again her careful message is loud and clear on Be Original and Don't Cha Wanna, both solid handbag swingers.
