Funky16Corners

Touch – Love Hangover (Breaking Down)

By Larry, July 3, 2011 2:59 pm

Touch

~~Listen/Download – Touch – Love Hangover (Breaking Down)~~

Greetings all.

I hope all is groovy in whatever burgh you call home.

The first tune I’ll bring you this week is something very interesting that I happened upon during a recent, unscheduled dig.

A friend had dropped me a line that a local record store had gotten in an interesting collection, but regularly scheduled family stuff precluded a trip over there, so I figured I’d try to get over later in the week.

Then, the following day I had to do some Dad stuff, which just happened to end in the late morning, so I bundled up Thing 2 (the little guy) and took a drive North so that I might paw through the records in the hour before lunch.

Good thing too, because while the collection might not have been spectacular (the really heavy stuff was out of my price range or areas of interest) but I did score a grip of excellent jazz funk for about half the going rate, and a couple of cool looking things that were not familiar, but interesting (and cheap) enough that I figured I’d grab them.

The tune I bring you today was on one of them.

I’d never heard of the group Touch (no relation to ‘The Touch’), but since it was a mid-70s LP on Brunswick that I’d never heard of it definitely piqued my interest.

What really grabbed me though was the presence of a tune on the album entitled ‘Love Hangover (Breaking Down)’. I couldn’t remember who had written the Diana Ross tune, but it had a Jobete publishing credit so I figured it had to be related.

And (you probably figured this out already) it was.

The tune in question was in fact (as described in the title) the breakdown from Diana Ross’s ‘Love Hangover’, i.e. a reworking of the fast instrumental part at the end of her record.

Now, I love the Diana Ross record, but I have to admit that if the song were truncated to remove the first half, I wouldn’t miss it all that much.

That is exactly what Touch did, and their version (which you will hear as soon as you pull down the ones and zeros) is quite good, a little funkier and with a slightly rougher edge than the original.

While I haven’t been able to find out much about the band, the record was produced by disco movers and shakers Tony Valor and Tom Moulton, the first a prolific producer and the second one of the original remix masters.

A little research reveals that Valor had a habit of recycling material, with some of the backing tracks on this album also appearing on a ‘Do the Hustle’ LP, and the only other credits I can find for the members of Touch are on other Tony Valor productions. My best guess is that they were likely his main studio band and either got the chance to make their own album, or were just repackaged as a group out of convenience.

Either way, this track is especially cool, and there are a number of cool tracks on the album that would serve as a great example of a sort of higher level of disco, with thoughtful songwriting and quality playing.

I hope you dig the track, and I’ll be back on Wednesday.

Peace

Larry

Also, make sure that you check out the POAC link below (click on the logo). It’s a fantastic organization that provides services to our local autism community, with education and recreational events, and any contribution you could make would be greatly appreciated.