Ah yes, the secret promise of black lace. The illicit temptation. The forbidden erotic thrills. The... Conga.
Agadoo I really want to listen to a bunch of bands called Black Lace?
Haven't I got anything better to do with my life?
Haven't you?
BLACK LACE #1
We start today in Australia with an Aboriginal band formed in 1972 by Mac Silva... but still going strong well into the 80s.
BLACK LACE #2
Bettye Sweet, aka Black Lace, sang backing vocals on Gary Wright's big US hit Dreamweaver in 1975. A couple of years later, she teamed up with White Satin (Julie Lucero) for an album of funky disco tunes, most notably...
BLACK LACE #3
Steve Scholey, Alan Barton, Colin Gibb and Terry Dobson. They sound like the kids who used to muck around in Maths lessons, don't they? In 1979 they won A Song For Europe and went on to represent the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest. They came seventh (which these days would be a win!), and that really ought to have been the end of it. Except... it wasn't.
Because in 1981, Colin and Alan held a coup and chucked the other two guys out, reinventing Black Lace as "the ultimate party band". That's when the horror really began, especially if you went anywhere near a school disco from 1983 onwards. Superman. Do Tha Conga. The Hokey Cokey. Aga-bloody-doo. In 2003, Q Magazine voted it The Worst Song of All Time. There's more to the story. Much more. Members came and went. There were scandals, fall outs, bankruptcy, benefit fraud and worse (you can probably guess)... honestly, it made depressing reading. If you're desperate to know more, there was a documentary released late last year which the Grauniad reviewer described as "melancholy".
Anyway. Here it is. If you need extra incentive to watch the video, I'm told that one of the dancing fruit people is actually future TV star / Cruise singer Jane MacDonald. Push pineapple. Shake the tree...
BLACKLACE #4
Wash your ears out with a New York heavy rock act from the mid 80s.
BLACK LACE #5
Sometimes you look at a band photo and there's one member who seems to have wandered in from a completely different group.
Here's some more hard rocking types (plus Peter Andre) from Greece in the year they called 1990.
BLACK LACE CLUB #6
Which Black Lace makes you feel sexier?
And which ones put you off sex forever?
