Sunday, June 28, 2009

Racey - Some Girls

Cripes! This must have been the cheapest video in history to produce - it looks like they spent more on the balloons than the video itself. Racey were a British group formed at the tail-end of the 70s whose songs were written and produced by the songwriting team of Chinn/Chapman (well-known for other glam rock and pop hits of the era by Sweet, Mud, Suzi Quatro etc.). Apparently, this song was originally written for Blondie. Racey only had a handful of hits, of which this was the biggest, before disappearing. However, another of their album tracks was a huge hit for another artist after a lyric re-write...

Bonus Clips: 'Kitty' was a track on Racey's 1979 'Smash & Grab' album.

Toni Basil's version was retitled from a female perspective (allegedly about her crush on Micky Dolenz from The Monkees on the set of the movie 'Head' - one of my faves) and added the ubiquitous cheerleader chant and thus 'Mickey' was born.

...and I may as well include this, Toni's first single 'Breakaway' (not the same song as that covered by Tracey Ullman - this one was written by Ed Cobb who also wrote 'Tainted Love') released in 1966 and had an experimental video directed by Bruce Conner, with Toni credited under her birth name of Antonia Christina Basilotta (Warning: NSFW due to some nudity. The music video starts at 3:48).

1 comment:

  1. Wow! I never knew Toni Basil's Mickey used to be a Kitty!?

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