Watch a recent Real Thing performance below: "We have got a huge library of material but it is not that simple. But I think that when you have success particularly if you come off the street a lot of people expect different things and you find that you dont change but a lot of people around you do. Recorded with Ken Gold at the Roundhouse Studios, You to Me Are Everything is a warm, catchy, stirring dance single with perfect soul strings and a singalong chorus. [6], In March 1977, the song he co-wrote with his brother "You'll Never Know What You're Missing" was at No 23 in the Billboard chart, having been at No. They toured internationally with Essex, recording with him a number of popular songs, though none were big charters. The youth then werent as willing as the youth in the early Sixties had been to just accept things and go along with it. ray lake the real thing daughter You can get an online thing going now.". the real thing dance with me - YouTube *Real Thing CDs currently available include a budget Very Best of (all the hits and more) and a good value and virtually definitive thirty six track anthology Children of the Ghetto released in 1999 by Sequel Records, complete with sleeve notes. "Can You Feel the Force" ('86 Remix) climbed to No. Shot entirely on location in Liverpool, London, Bristol and Brighton, the movie features interviews with all the band members - Eddy Amoo, Chris Amoo and Dave Smith . They showed you can make timeless pop, and still address the realities of urban life. Years active. Can You Feel the Force had actually started out as a slightly different song (they called it Get the Message when it was in a raw demo form), but then Eddy got inspired by the film Star Wars; I remember going to watch it and being really impressed with the force is with you and all that. And, thirty years since their first release, they are still playing and recording; when I interviewed Eddy Amoo in July 2002, the band were just about to head off to a gig in Amsterdam. [7] "Can't Get By Without You (the Second Decade Remix)" rose almost as high to No. \"Can You Feel the Forces ('86 Remix)\" climbed to #24, but the band's final U.K. charter for the year, \"Straight to the Heart\", peaked at #71, remaining for only two weeks. As Eddie Amoo died during the production of the film, the documentary ended up being released two years after his death. Both of these pivotal changes happened while the young group were competing on prime-time TV talent show Opportunity Knocks (The X Factor of its era) in 1972, and provoked the ire of irascible host Hughie Green (We were beaten the next week by a yodeller, so that shows yer, deadpans Amoo). Their creative range inevitably made them harder to categorise for pop markets; after their floor-filling romantic tunes, their brilliantly gritty 1977 album 4 From 8 was initially regarded as a misfire. \"Can You Feel the Force?\" climbed to #5 in 1979, the same year that \"Boogie Down (Get Funky Now)\" hit #33. The Real Thing - The Real Thing Ray Lake of The Real Thing, London 1977 Stock Photo - Alamy As kids, Amoo, his siblings and friends would develop a love for funky, politically sharp trailblazers, such as Curtis Mayfield (in particular, his 1967 black pride anthem Were A Winner), Marvin Gaye, The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron. The Real Thing might have broken America but for the fact that during their US tour with David Essex, three dismal cover versions of You to Me are Everything sullied the Billboard Top 100. In March 1984, a single recorded with Debby Bishop was released on EMI. We pay for videos too. 20 the previous week. 40. Kenny Davis left the group relatively early on, and member Ray Lake sadly passed away in 2000. Visceral Apps > Blog > Uncategorized > ray lake the real thing daughter. Though she's not listed on those businesses' team lists,Alexandra does have photos of herself working the counter at one of the pasta places. 6, remaining for a consecutive 13 weeks. The Real Thing Page - soulwalking.co.uk Once I persuade Eddy that its definitely their song, he reflects on how valuable the song is to the Real Things career; Its brought us a lot of success. But the first thing that we noticed at the airport was the signs for whites-only/blacks-only toilets. It would have been Eddy's wish for us to carry on and still feel the force.. And their shirtless photo shoots had a subtext, argues Trevor Nelson: Were black men and if this is a threat to your white male sexuality, thats your problem. I tested this hypothesis wearing a waistcoat, Real Thing-style, while writing this. In the charts, the first hit song of the long hot Summer of 1976 was Abbas Fernando, the next was the excruciating Combine Harvester single by the Wurzels. And we were wrong!, The Chants signed to Pye, and released four singles on the label, starting with I Dont Care in 1963. Amoos late bandmate Ray Lake is a haunting presence throughout Everything; we learn of his troubled (and, it is implied, abusive) upbringing in childrens care, and we hear his prodigious music talent (he earned the studio nickname One Take Lake). When we were growing up in Liverpool, there was an invisible border around Toxteth, says Amoo. They scored a dance-floor hit, reaching No. We thought wed be playing to mixed audiences. Why were Justin Haywards vocals rather than Amoos used on the hit album? Significantly, unlike bands like Beatles and Oasis, the Real Thing never moved from their hometown to taste the joys, or otherwise, of London. She loves a good story, even if she has to write it herself. They worked with Jean Phillippe Illiesco who had just worked on the Magic Fly hit by Space which had emerged on the Casablanca label and been a genuine club hit in New York. A new film aims to end that, writes Arwa Haider. Ray's daughter, Alexandra Romano, got her start in Hollywood alongside her dad. We were writing pieces like the Liverpool Medley (an 11-minute album highlight, comprising Liverpool Eight/ Children Of The Ghetto/ Stanhope Street) because they were close to our hearts, says Amoo. The Chants were invited to sing on-stage with The Beatles that night; they signed a record deal, and were briefly managed by Brian Epstein, although their rave reviews didnt translate into commercial fame despite the fact that white-fronted mainstream music borrowed heavily (as it still obviously does) from black cultural influences. [8][11]\r\rDespite the band only have 1 US hot 100 hit with \"You To Me Are Everything\" they still made the US Dance/Disco chart with \"She's a Groovy freak\" No 55.\r\rIn 1986, the band enjoyed a chart resurgence with the remixing of several of their hits. James Brown had one of his biggest ever British hits in 1976 with Get Up Offa That Thing. In fact, not only was his daughter on 'Everybody Loves Raymond' named after Alexandra (the on-screen daughter was Ally), but . 18, "Let's Go Disco" at No. Chris Amoo - Wikipedia You didnt feel safe when you saw a police car appear.. To me that is totally bizarre., He still finds it hard to accept the way he was cold-shouldered when the number one artists were invited down to the Albert Dock; I just got up and walked away. Stanley House [a once-thriving youth community centre], where wed started making music, was gone, and the police were very heavy-handed. More like this: - Is this the ultimate comfort song? Playing Sun City was one of them. [5] The singles they released through EMI in 1972 and 1973 such as "Vicious Circle" were, despite their high quality, not successful sellers (and have not so far been included on any of the band's compilation albums). After a reasonable showing for song Rainin Through My Sunshine (off the Step Into Our World LP), the Real Thing hit gold again just as the 1970s drew to a close, with their 1979 hit Can You Feel the Force? (from the same LP, which was hastily repackaged as Can You Feel the Force?). If we stepped into the city centre, we werent necessarily welcomed, especially if we were with our friends. ), This page was last edited on 1 January 2023, at 11:40. By number of sales, they were the most successful black rock/soul act in England during the 1970s. The Real Thing represented a huge breakthrough in black British music. Gail Lake, Self: Everything - The Real Thing Story. [8] Who is Ray Romano's Daughter Alexandra, And What Does She Do? - TheThings We were sensible enough to realise that with any luck this is only the beginning and weve got to build on that and weve got to try now to get across with our own music; the usual naive thing young bands think when they have hits.. The Real Thing are pleased to announce that for the past few months they have been busy filming a new feature-length documentary about their long and eventful career in music. Some things just fall together, like magic., The record was a big success; We thought that would put us where we wanted to be, says Eddy, At the time we were really being looked upon as a serious band and people were beginning to forget the pop thing, and we thought wed got it together here, but we were wrong!, Looking back, he now believes that they chose the wrong producer for the follow-up album Saints or Sinners?. Weve always seen Toxteth as positive; it gave us grounding, and it was one of the safest places, because there was always somebody around., The proximity to the US Air Force base Burtonwood was also significant; Amoo recalls that black US servicemen would socialise in Toxteth in the 60s and early 70s and theyd regularly bring records with them. Movies. It makes sense, though, given her entire family's zest for experiencing and making jokes about everything in life. But I think it was possibly the wrong time for audiences to accept it, and radio stations werent interested in playing anything that wasnt commercially viable. Success brought unwanted attention. Christopher Charles Amoo (born 14 October 1952) is a British singer-songwriter and the lead singer of English soul group, The Real Thing. Is it definitely our Children of the Ghetto? Menu. Enterprise. The Real Thing: soundtrack to the Toxteth riots, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. The Top of the Pops viewers in our household cheered wildly when the Real Thing knocked the Wurzels off the top of the charts; at last something with a bit of class, something half decent to dance to at the youth club disco. ray lake the real thing daughter - atemporalart.com Maybe the same thing would have happened to me; maybe I would have got into trouble with the police, the way you do; basically, thats how its laid out for you.. [26] The latter act went on to be renamed The Real Thing by manager Tony Hall, after seeing the Coca-Cola advert on a large billboard in Piccadilly Circus. Our dear brother #RayLake passed away exactly 20 years ago today. The single flopped, and Pye were still in search of that elusive hit. Eddy was still in the Chants, but gave Chris every encouragement, sitting in on rehearsals, coaching the group; I liked the idea because I was into something that would keep them off the streets, so I was really up for it., Black American music had always been revered in Britain, and white youth had devoured releases on the Chess, Stax and Motown labels from the mod era and beyond; bands like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones had begun their careers in the early 1960s doing cover versions of Chuck Berry and Motown. RM 2JFBN91 - Guitarist with The Real Thing band performing at the Soultasia music festival in Promenade Park, Maldon, Essex, UK RF 2K2J1D2 - Explaining his ideas. The Real Thing (UK band) | Culture Wikia | Fandom The bands commercial breakthrough, though, came in their international, enduringly joyous hit collaborations with songwriter-producers Ken Gold and Michael Denne: You To Me Are Everything and Cant Get By Without You. Today, Cokes rights department would shut that rebrand down before you could say Id like to teach the world to sing. The family is still close, of course, even though all of the children are now grown. ), Stewart Morris (Prod. He reflects: We couldnt have done anything else but music; all we had was our talent. That talent was raw, rousing and true The Real Thing.