B-side making it to the top of the Italo-Disco genre

compilation

Listen to a merg of both versions

Material / Mr. Flagio

In 1982 NYC based band Material recorded the song “Memories” with then just starting singer Witney Houston. It is her first recording. A story on it’s own. However, the B-side of that single “Take A Chance” is what this story is about.

Material was the band of bassplayer Bill Laswell, keyboardplayer Michael Beinhorn and drummer Fred Maher. Bill is an American superproducer, a bassist and he owns a recordlabel. He made so many important productions particularly in the eighties, it is too much too mention. His Wikipedia page is endless and in a parallel world he would have been a superstar.

Within a year from the original version Italian based duo Mr Flagio recorded their version (1983).
Flavio Vidulich and Giorgio Bacco created an anthem from a hip track from the other side of the world basically. How they decided to record this song is not really clear. The duo only made one other production, a year later. There is no solomaterial or other co-operations known from each one of them. Apparently one of them was a radio-dj, I cannot find any more information.

A conversation on chatsite gearslutz.com in 2013 between Material’s Michael Beinhorn and an admirer at a digital ‘Q&A’ session reveals that up to that point mr Beinhorn never heard the Mr Flagio version… After the admirer send the Youtube link Micheal Beinhorn states: ‘I think it kind of smoked the Material version’. To me unknnown of that is positive.

Ever since popular music is developed it is clear that at the start of new genres bands made versions -or take samples- from earlier songs. The new scene always needs recognizable songs. This is one of the examples, altough the original never been a hit.

Whitney Houston

On the A side of this single is the song “Memories”. Sung by that time starting, unknown singer Whitney Houston. This was her first release, it is a cover version of a 1965 song by the band ‘The Wild Flowers’.