Boney M. – Kalimba De Luna 1984
Side A
- Kalimba De Luna CLUB MIX
Side B
- Kalimba De Luna
Today Stef pulls a random one off the shelf and I get Boney M. I have no idea who these four people are or what they do. Judging from the cover I initially thought that maybe it could be boogie or something, I don’t know where they are from but yeah I think this is gonna be like when Clair Huxtable got excited when the Theo’s Brazilian teacher, the Dragonlady, came over and they talked about music or something. I don’t know man, it’s a vague memory. Anyways yeah the back of the record has names that could be latin so that’s what I’m going with. I don’t know anything about Carrere records so I’m just swinging in the dark right now.
Oh wait we have scratching! AND RAPPING! Yeah I was totally off on this. This is very 1984 type shit, rapping about rollerskates and sunshine, lots of synth, drum machines, and guitars in the beat. The way this dude says “PRETTY LADIES” made me think it was Melle Mel for a second. The rapping doesn’t last long before this guy sings about the land of the sunshine. The ladies do some background singing but yeah this is the terrible part, this part is super chorus heavy. I could take this when it was some basic ass rap but now it’s on some lets all clap together and sing about about the land of the sunshine. Basically a unity theme. Oh god there is a flute, that’s the second most annoying instrument, the harp is still number 1. This sounds like it could have been used for the ending of Coming to America when everyone in Zamunda was happy that Prince Akeem finally found his queen. It’s pretty happy and I have no idea what Kalimba means but they keep singing about it.
Since this is the club mix now we’re getting into the extended version of the beat. When the bass kicks in and gets kind of funky that’s the part that I could see myself being into when I was 5 years old and thought the Beverly Hills Cop theme was the greatest music ever made (disclaimer:I still kind of do).
The B side is what I assume the original album version to be since the rapping got cut and the song only clocks in at 6 minutes and 40 seconds as opposed to just over 9 minutes of the A side. It’s also probably missing the extended beat. I’m not that deep into it but yeah not much of a change on this side so for our purposes I’m going to stop listening to the B side and just go back to the A.
I don’t really know how to classify this shit, it’s like 80’s pop world music I guess vaguely dancehally I think. keytar stabs, drum machines, accents, ugh that flute though. I just googled this thing to past in the youtube and realized it’s a cover of Tony Esposito’s song for the german market? After seeing something about germany I check wikipedia and found this:
Boney M. is a vocal group created by German record producer Frank Farian. Originally based in West Germany, the four original members of the group’s official line-up were Jamaican-born singers Liz Mitchell and Marcia Barrett, Maizie Williams from Montserrat and Bobby Farrell from Aruba. The group was formed in 1975 and achieved popularity during the disco era of the late 1970s. Since the 1980s, various line-ups of the band have performed with different personnel.
That explains a lot actually. Basically some german guy got a bunch of Jamaican disco lovers to cover an Italian song and it’s pretty much a straight jack with some rapping add for the clubs. But yeah 80’s world music is not my thing, I do not have any desire to listen to this music ever again in my life.
Stef says: I pulled this out of the disco area. I love Boney M and many of their singles are classics but is not one of them, this is very 1984 (she laughed when she handed it to me). I love the flute too. It could totally be played in a movie for an 80’s club scene.
Stef pulled a not very disco record out of her disco section. This is the first record I reviewed that had some rap in it.