Listen: Zarah / Nina Hagen
Zarah

She never sat in my office at Columbia. Nina Hagen was before my time, but during Howard’s. I don’t recall his memories being flattering. Not unlike her records, she was apparently rather primal.

Her vocal styled in that walking dead voice always took the prize for best dynamic moment on any track, although I’d have to say Mike Thorne was best at dragging that out of her on NUNSEXMONKROCK from ’82, one album and one year prior to ‘Zarah’. In fact, my all time favorite Nina Hagen track from said album, ‘Born In Xixax’, never graced a 7″. Luckily, ‘Zarah’ came in a close second.

Good call on someone’s part paring her with Giorgio Moroder, and, the 80′s version of today’s Mark Ronson fifteen minutes of fame producer, Keith Forsey. The track is superb, soldiering along proudly in the shadow of Sparks ‘Beat The Clock’, another Giorgio Moroder production from three years earlier.

Man, remember when records began to sound really expensive? Looking back, ‘Zarah’ was totally in that fast lane.

Listen: Cigarettes, Women And Wine / Chicory Tip ChicoryWinesomanyrecordssolittletime.mp3

Having scooped a UK release of ‘Son Of Your Father’ off Giorgio Moroder’s own German version, Chicory Tip ended up at #1 as a result. Not so in the US. Giorgio’s reached #48, while Chicory (as their name was shortened to for that one US single) peaked at #91. Despite the UK coup, Moroder wrote it, thereby still earning off every sale without having to schlep about in glam trousers and platforms, as the band did. In fact, Chicory Tip apparently hated their new found teen success, thus live, would deliver heavy blues rock instead. Bad career move.

Back in the studio, the Chicory Tip camp was smart enough to keep a winning formula going for a few more replicas of that lone #1, right down to having the band cover Moroder songs exclusively as A sides. A few charted, but despite heavy airplay from the influential Radio Luxembourg, BBC’s Radio 1 wouldn’t touch ‘Cigarettes, Women And Wine’, supposedly due to the cigarettes mention. Big cheat. They were a perfect mix of Glam and synth rock, and had they continued mixing the two elements, the result may have been much closer to what Manfred Mann’s Earth Band achieved, especially with Giorgio Moroder as producer.

Their sound certainly pointed to a whole musical revolution that wasn’t too many years away.