Stars on 45

Stars on 45 biography

Stars on 45 was a Dutch novelty pop act that was briefly very popular in the United Kingdom, throughout Europe, the United States and Australia in the early 1980s. The group later shortened its name to Stars On in the U.S., while in the U.K. and Ireland it was known as Starsound. The band, which consisted solely of studio session musicians under the direction of Jaap Eggermont, formerly of Golden Earring, popularized the medley, by recreating hit songs as faithfully as possible and stringing them together, with a common tempo and relentless underlying drum track. The point was to provide a danceable disco record which used familiar tunes-a technique that was also used in the Hooked on Classics series of recordings released by RCA Records and K-Tel Records.

History

Jaap Eggermont originally created the "Stars on 45" concept after the managing director of the Dutch publishing company Red Bullet Productions, Willem van Kooten, in the summer of 1980 by sheer coincidence happened to hear a disco medley being played in a record store. The medley coupled original recordings of songs by the Beatles, the Buggles, the Archies and Madness with a number of recent American and British disco hits like Lipps Inc.'s "Funkytown", Heatwave's "Boogie Nights" and The S.O.S. Band's "Take Your Time (Do It Right)", as the rhythms of the various songs tended to complement and "dovetail" into each other. When van Kooten heard that the medley also used a segment of "Venus", a 1970 US #1 hit by Dutch band Shocking Blue - a song for which he himself held the worldwide copyright - and knowing that neither he nor Red Bullet Productions had given the permission for the use of the recording, he realised that the medley in fact was a bootleg release. The record turned out to be a 12-inch single called "Let's Do It in the 80's - Great Hits", credited to a non-existing band called Passion and issued on a non-existing record label called Alto. The medley had its origin in Montreal, Canada, and it was later revealed that it was the work of one Michel Ali together with two professional DJ's; Michel Gendreau and Paul Richer. Gendreau and Richer both specialised in the art of "splicing", stringing together snippets of music from different genres, in varying keys and BPM's and from different sound sources, at this time still predominantly from vinyl records. The first version of the medley was eight minutes long, included parts from some twenty tracks of which only three were by the Beatles; "No Reply", "I'll Be Back", and "Drive My Car". A later extended, 16-minute, 30-track mix of the same medley labeled "Bits and Pieces III" added another five Beatles titles: "Do You Want to Know a Secret", "We Can Work It Out", "I Should Have Known Better", "Nowhere Man" and "You're Going to Lose That Girl". With the bootleg recording obviously already circulating in dance clubs on both sides of the Atlantic, van Kooten decided to "bootleg the bootleg" and create a licensed version of the medley by using soundalike artists to replicate the original hits and therefore contacted his friend and colleague Jaap Eggermont.

Biography from , the free encyclopedia.
It may not have been reviewed by a professional editor, and recent changes may not show up straight away. See the latest version of this article. Used under licence. Subject to disclaimers.