BLACK LEGEND – "You See The Trouble With Me"

The jagged/wheezy vocal is probably due to the original white label being based on a 1990 live version of the track, which does sound very very similar to the re-recorded commercial release. When I first heard the Black Legend cover I did wonder what the hell the soundalike was doing (“See! Trou-ble with me!!” etc) until hearing the white label made it all make sense.

So the long fade starts here. I had genuinely never heard of this before – neither artist, nor track, nor idea. I think that’s the first time that’s happened to me in all my years on Popular :o(

What a strange record. I like the pop-as-weightlifting analogy, though I’ve been to the weightlifting and there was a lot more euphoria the way I remember it. The periodic piano house break is indeed welcome – but it leaves me with the vibe more of a man heaving some luggage up to his top-floor apartment, passing neighbours’ parties on every landing, and never getting invited in.

Anyway, what was the concept? What on earth did the public think it was buying into? I’m bewildered. Having said that, I kind of like it. (5)

I’m a sucker for crowd noise on a studio record or even better party background noise like The Tremoloes’ Here Comes My Baby. Rainy Day Women is still rub, obviously.

Hated this. #4 what WAS the concept? I have no memory of this being used on an advert or a TV show etc, where did the groundswell for this pathetic novelty mess come from?
Was this bought out of any affection for Barry White? His last studio album ‘Staying Power’, released in 1999 reached a heady number 60 in our album charts. Maybe a greatest hits had come out around this time?
One of the most forgettable number 1’s of 2000. And there’s a vast amount of competition.

This barely touched my world at the time and I probably only heard it 3 or 4 times in total. I was at a point in my life where the radio was tuned to XFM and I was busy re-exploring the nooks and crannies of the London gig circuit after spending years away from the capital. Big club tunes often ended up passing me by, whereas before they’d have been inescapable.

I do quite like this now, though. It’s a very peculiar mishmash of styles and ideas which shouldn’t work, but somehow do gel. Nothing worth getting wildly excited about, but at the right time and in the right place I can now imagine getting on the dancefloor to this one. The brutal, bleeping and warping little instrumental flourishes after the pseudo-White’s vocal add an extra kick and some contrast to what could have been a slightly uninteresting track otherwise.

I had the same problem with this track that I had with Madison Avenue a few weeks before, namely that as a very introverted nineteen year old listening to the top 40 religiously every week I wasn’t hearing these songs in their natural environment; the club. Therefore I was baffled and indeed slightly irritated by tracks like this bouncing into the top spot and quickly getting barged out of the way. With hindsight if I had been able to associate this with several good nights on the town I’d probably have felt differently.

Entering at three the same week (Sonique dropped to two and S Club 7 to four) was Darude’s Sandstorm which ultimately outsold Black Legend and proved more enduring.

Another 2000 Tenerife disco staple, but one which totally baffled me at the time: I couldn’t pick up on any sort of hook apart from the BOOP-BOOP, BOOP-BOOP and had no idea what it was called or that it had got to #1 (prob bcs was literally in Tenerife when this charted). The title/artist is still unfamiliar enough that I had to google it just now to check it was the same song I was thinking of (the last Popular entry where I can’t hum the tune or picture the artist is ….Jim Diamond??).

I remember the Barry-a-like being so low in the mix compared to the crowd noise bits that I wasn’t even sure if it was meant to be him, and I didn’t want to ask because that would be legitimising all this non-indie music which I was definitely only dancing to under drunken duress. TBH I was more worried about the lads in the apartment above ours squirting sun cream on to our balcony.

I hated this first time around and then second time became hypnotised by the whole car -crash experience. I can’t say I like it but it stands as one of the more bizarre, avant-garde things to hit number 1.

Yup, Sandstorm would’ve been an unquestionable (10).

In fact it’s kind of astonishing it didn’t enter at the top instead. A more immediate track you will never hear.

An odd problem I have with pure instrumental tracks like “Sandstorm” is that without a lyric to hook my mind on, it often takes more effort on my part to commit the track to memory. I had heard OF “Sandstorm” but couldn’t recall it until listening just now and immediately getting oh THAT track recognition. I used to have the same problem with Robert Miles’ “Children” for the longest time.

That being said, it’s relatively rare for a hit instrumental not to be really good once I can remember it. Something about the lack of lyrics to fall back on makes for a higher bar to clear to become a major hit.

I remember this getting lots of airplay post-Miami Winter Music Conference, only it wasn’t this, but the original bootleg that sampled Barry White. This version is as close as we’re going to get to that. Best not to dwell on the couldhavebeens. Black Legend does what is necessary, with the live audience samples and the heavyweight baritone stand-in, to give a flavour of what The Walrus Of Lurrve might have sounded like. I see this track as a Stars In Their Eyes banger. In a world where disco knock-offs with superstar DJ remixes can drop at any club anywhere, it seems Black Legend was the compromise, that fed the public’s demand for YSTTWM. The track was first heard by me when it was played by Pete Tong on Radio 1. It’s a perfect storm, where there’s a positive reception from the clubheads and a demand from the public at large, coalesce to drive it to #1. I’m guessing the public didn’t care that there was a soundalike. And neither did I. Tonight Matthew, I’m awarding a 7.

A similarly great title – Linda Flavell’s And The Trouble With Me Is You.

The DHS rip is really obtrusive once you hear it.

The official version is a surprisingly faithful re-creation of the white label, which itself is very little more than a mashup of two tracks: what makes it work is the selection of those two tracks. Re-created from scratch*, it’s like Pierre Menard in reverse – what’s radical and witty the first time it was done is cheesy and pointless the second time around (and let’s not even mention the video). 8 or even 9 for the original but 5 for this.

*The Barry White track, at least; I suspect DHS may still be in there.

#27 A lot of my use for millennial trance (and the EDM wave of ten years later!) is as music to block out background noise and/or to bounce to. The keyboard builds, or to be more exact the drops, weaken the value for me.

(As does the tempo being really, really ill-suited to running to – to the point that my first reaction to bunny #1,237 was that it was good to hear a song that both sounded custom-built to run to and actually had the right tempo for it, and it was a shame that it wasn’t actually any good. Come to think of it, #1,236 – by a performer well-known for being a keen runner – fits the bill too, at least musically.)

This seems like a rather poorly researched review, comments like “In case we didn’t get the point, a cheering crowd hollers its approval of both of these – slightly louder on the instrumental break, if anything – which ought to be as annoying as a laugh track but actually helps give “Trouble” a rather sympathetic gloss” suggest the blogger isn’t aware that the crowd noise is due to the original sample on the white label (and indeed, the initial Italian promotional copies on Time Records http://www.discogs.com/Black-Legend-Well-Be-In-Trouble/release/155699) being from a live version. The sampled crowd noise may in fact have been left intact on the re-recorded version or it may have been replayed, I’m not sure.

One of the more disturbing of number ones to have originated as a bootleg, and perhaps only accidentally so; Black Legend were from Italy and the track first did the rounds of the club as a straight mash-up of a live Barry White performance (“1975 – we brought you an album with a song”) and a self-generated hardcore House undertow. The original “You See The Trouble With Me” was White’s second biggest British hit, peaking at #2 in April 1976 behind, unforgivably, “Save Your Kisses For Me.” However, the producers couldn’t get clearance from White’s people to use the original for commercial release so had to re-record the vocal with one Elroy “Spoonface” Powell (who was British).

The result is something of a Frankenstein’s monster of a record; “Spoonface” does his gruff best to reproduce White’s growls and entreaties but sounds distressed, can’t quite reach the extremes, and set against the fairly uncompromising rhythm pattern seems to take sweet soul down the darkest and least welcoming of alleyways; it does take the form of a waking nightmare with showbiz applause and orchestral flourishes ricocheting against the bullet-welcoming beats and not really that far away from how Shut Up And Dance might have tackled the song; even if it lacks the latter’s tricky depth, the altered-by-necessity end product far exceeds the original mix in terms of sheer strangeness.

All new to me, so I listened to the actual number one first; a bit one-note, and I lost interest before its 3:15 was up. A 4, I think, or maybe 5. Then listened to the white label, and it suddenly makes more sense; there’s more development, and just more Barry-ness; no disrespect to Elroy ‘Spoonface’ Powell, who does a perfectly decent job on the remake, but White is a hard act to follow. I’d go to 6 for that one.

#30: “The blogger”? He’s right here, you know… in any case, it seems clear enough to me from the review that Tom knows the basic background to the track. But it’s reasonable to critique the crowd noises as a deliberate choice, not just as an accidental artifact of the source recording. For one thing, why was the white label sampled from a live version and not a studio version? For its particular effect, presumably. And why add crowd noises to the chart version, when you’re remaking everything in it anyway? Again, for the effect.

Some of this song’s success must be down to the Fun Lovin’ Criminals, who had made Barry White sort of kitschily cool with their song Love Unlimited a year or two earlier. Or at least put him back in people’s minds.

I recognised the BOOP-BOOP sound from Mad’house’s dancey Madonna covers from a couple of years later. I wondered whether they were the same people, but apparently (says Wikipedia) it’s because they got the idea from a Black Legend/Madonna mashup, so it’s a homage not a recycling.

Mad’house were a lot better than this, since the songs were Madonna songs after all. Funny that there haven’t been more covers of Madonna.

For the record I never liked Mad’House’s ‘Like A Prayer’ – it genuinely sounds like a mess and just makes you want to hear the (ten out of ten) original. Now 52 used a remix that was much much better, as it did its own thing rather than clumsily plonk the now twelve-year-old House of God beat over the Madonna soundalike.

Original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4vSbVWm6F8

Almighty/Now 52 mix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8ty6CAIFFQ

One of my all-time favorite bands, The Meat Purveyors has a great bluegrass/alt-country Madonna-medley called ‘The Madonna Trilogy’. It’s not on youtube but it is on spotify. Highly recommended.

Scooter were briefly my *life* as a teenager, supporting a bunnied act (though for the wrong song) at my first ever live music gig in March 2008. They ripped a lot off from other acts but they have some astonishing tracks – Hyper Hyper is mid-90s happy hardcore heaven, and The Logical Song is a huge noughties classic.

#42 omg Billy was that the Clubland Live tour? We went and it was AMAZING. Especially the surprise appearance of Samantha Mumba.

The lack of bunnied Scooter (so far!) is a shame – I’d suggest that you could mentally append “Scooter would have done this better” to most of the 6-and-lower entries and you’d match Tom’s views more often than not.

#45 – The-Dream was addicted to “male crowd yelling YEAH” to an extent that actually creeped me out – though that was arguably used as an effect rather than any suggestion people were miked up for any given record.

Ooh yeah – I haven’t heard much of her, but the first time I did she blew me away. Such a strutting sound.

I did once mention her to someone else who said she’s great in every way … except that she can’t sing. I can kind of see what he meant now, but that’s still a fine record.

44: It was! As an extremely overexciteable teenager it was quite the experience, the highlight was definitely hearing Kelly Llorenna perform ‘Set You Free’ live at the start.

Ministry of Sound immediately then held their own copycat version called Dance Nation Live, with a 2008 bunny headliner I’ll probably be the only one giving any sort of praise whatsoever to when Popular reaches there, and, brilliantly, Sash! as sub-headliner who’d just got back in the charts with an Encore Une Fois remix. ‘Ecuador’ being performed live was all kinds of wow.