Saturday, March 14, 2015

The Roussos Phenomenon



I am a bit slow on the uptake with this one, so a belated R.I.P. to Mr Demis Roussos, who for a few short years enjoyed stratospheric levels of success. As a boy, I couldn't get far enough away from his music fast enough. I was, thus, surprised to discover, in the early years of this century, that Roussos was not just "My Friend The Wind". (See the record cover above, where he would appear to be trying out for a spot in the Bad Seeds (or, more likely, Grinderman) circa 2007.)

He was a member of Aphrodite's Child, at the end of the sixties, with Vangelis (how's that for a before-the-fact supergroup?), notable in particular for the "666" album, released on Vertigo in 1972, a time when that label could, seemingly, do no wrong. But the song I want to highlight here, and which I am indebted, as ever, to the (we hope) temporarily dormant Art Decade for bringing to my notice, is "I Dig You", a Moog-tastic song from 1977, produced by Vangelis and, in fact, originally recorded (as "Who") by him under the alias Odyssey in 1974. ("Forever and Ever" it ain't.)



Bonus beats: "L.O.V.E. Got A Hold Of Me", a ten-minute disco epic that wouldn't at all have been out of place on disc two of the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack.