april 14, 2025

Published april 14, 2025 by ad-vinylrecords with 0 comment

Working Week - Working Nights (1985) LP- €10,00

posted by ad-vinylrecords.com

Working Week were a British jazz-dance band active in the 1980s and 1990s.
Working Nights is the debut album by the British jazz dance band Working Week, that was released by Virgin Records in 1985. Politically left-wing, their first album, Working Nights, contained a cover of Marvin Gaye‘s Inner City Blues. The album reached #23 in the UK album charts in April 1985

Working Week was formed in 1983 by guitarist Simon Booth and saxophonist Larry Stabbins from the band Weekend, which ended when singer Alison Statton left to become a schoolteacher. 
The duo released their debut single “Venceremos (We Will Win)” during the following year. 
The song was a tribute to Chilean protest singer Víctor Jara, with vocals by Robert Wyatt and Tracey Thorn (the latter from the band Everything but the Girl). 

Many contemporary music and cultural commentators disparage the UK's '80s pop scene as a time seemingly in thrall to new technologies, and whose throwaway commercial hits are long forgotten—and rightly so. 
Is that really how it was though? Others look far more fondly on the decade's music, remembering its brief dalliance between pop culture and jazz with affection. This is, after all, the decade which saw the emergence of Loose Tubes, saxophonist Courtney Pine and Working Week—and which put those acts on primetime television. This comprehensively annotated and extended rerelease of Working Week's debut, Working Nights (originally released in 1985 on Virgin Records), is a happy reminder of the best of those times.
Working Week was the brainchild of guitarist Simon Booth and saxophonist Larry Stabbins, who worked together in Booth's previous band, Weekend. Stabbins was also a leading light on the European improvised music scene. 
Julie (now Juliet) Roberts joined them for this album, adding her soul singer's power and sensibility. 
Stabbins and Booth wrote most of the songs, skillfully matching killer grooves and memorable melodies with lyrics that drew on political inspirations (Booth's "Venceremos" was dedicated to the Chilean singer and activist Victor Jara) as well as the familiar theme of loves lost.

The extensive list of guest musicians and singers is a veritable who's who of the best, most forward-looking, performers of the time, such as trumpeters Guy Barker and Harry Beckett, saxophonist Chris Biscoe, trombonist Annie Whitehead and drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo.
These players add a real spark to the music: Dave Bitelli's clarinet on "Venceremos" heightens the song's intensity; Whitehead's powerful, raw solo energizes "No Cure, No Pay"; while Beckett adds his own fiery solo to the same track. Stabbins is also an emphatic presence on the frontline, showing his technical and emotional range with a soprano sax solo on "Autumn Boy" and tenor solo on Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues."
The guest vocalists are also stellar. Tracey Thorn, of Everything But The Girl, and Robert Wyatt duet on all three versions of "Venceremos (We Will Win)," while Julie Tippetts leads on "Storm Of Light." These three voices have their own soulfulness, a contrast to Roberts' more raw-edged sound but still full of emotion and commitment.


Side A
A1. Inner City Blues (5:44)
A2. Sweet Nothing (3:39)
A3. Who’s Fooling Who (5:04)
A4. I Thought I’d Never See You Again (6:26)
 
Side B
B1. Autumn Boy (6:33)
B2. Solo (4:40)
B3. Venceremos   (Vocals [Additional] – Claudia Figueroa) (4:41)
B4. No Cure No Pay (8:28)
 

Companies, etc.

Credits

Notes
Release: 1985
Format:  LP, Vinyl
Genre:  Soul jazz, latin jazz
Label:  Virgin Records
Catalog#  206 950-620

Vinyl:  Goed (VG)
Cover:  Goed (VG) (Gatefold)

Prijs: €10,00

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