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Contrary to popular opinion, disco didn’t die when all of those yahoos in Comiskey Park (I think?) blew up their Donna Summer records. Through 1980, there was a sea of hit records obviously influenced by the maligned genre-The S.O.S. Band’s “Take Your Time (Do It Right)” and Lipps, Inc.’s “Funkytown” were huge on the pop charts, and Diana Ross’s Chic-produced diana was her first official platinum seller. Then there was Queen’s blatantly Chic-influenced “Another One Bites The Dust,” which was suggested for single release by one Michael Jackson, whose disco-adjacent Off The Wall album was 1980’s #3 seller.
You get my point.
There may have been a scarlet “D” attached to dance-friendly musicians in the U.S., but folks overseas were not aware of any such stigma. Two of the music world’s most influential dance acts of 1980 emerged from Italy; Change and Kano.
Kano was comprised of three producer/musicians: Luciano Ninzatti, Stefano Pulga and Matteo Bonsanto. Signed to Emergency Records, they immediately made an impact with “I’m Ready.” If you’re a fan of Giorgio Moroder’s electronic experiments, it’s pretty obvious to hear what Kano was listening to when they composed this song.
Thirty-five years later, “I’m Ready” still sounds futuristic. Some enterprising young lad or lass who’s infinitely better at putting videos together than I am should sync this to a portion of The Empire Strikes Back and put it on YouTube. They’ll risk being sued by Lucas En…uh, Disney, but it’d be hella fun to watch.
Kano wasn’t particularly big on these shores, although “I’m Ready” was a huge dance hit (#2) and scored moderately on the Black chart, peaking at #21. The song received a second life in 1994, as the musical bed for Tag Team’s massive smash “Whoomp! There It Is.” One of the biggest hit singles of the rock era, it no doubt earned the Italians of Kano a shit ton of lira…or Euros…or whatever currency was available in Europe back in the Nineties.
…also, I love the Emergency Records logo.
5 comments
Gonzo says:
Jan 9, 2015
True story: once Big Money was at my apartment and I dropped the needle on Kano’s New York Cake LP.
BM: What is this?
Z: Kano.
BM: Sounds like a lot of cocaine went into that record.
MJ says:
Jan 9, 2015
I remember this conversation!
Terje says:
Jan 9, 2015
I was hooked on Italo Disco for a few years in the 1980s. I’ve never heard Kano before, but yeah, this sounds like very early Italo Disco with its arp’ing bass, staccato synth hits, slightly out-of-tune vocals, vocoder and whooshy analogue sounds. I always assumed that Hi-NRG preceded Italo Disco by a few years, but it seems like they evolved almost side by side in the late 1970s.
Hm, if you take the first bar of the “Another One Bites the Dust” bass line and merge it with the second bar of the dominant “I’m Ready” bass line, it’s an exact duplicate of “Good Times.”
MJ says:
Jan 9, 2015
I just hummed it to myself…holy shit!!
John says:
Feb 1, 2015
Never heard this track before, even with the whole Tag Team sampling. This sounds very New York to me.