Love Blonde – The RAK Years

CD box set, released on 23 February 2024 by Cherry Pop. The box set brings together Kim Wilde’s first three albums Kim Wilde, Select and Catch As Catch Can, originally released by RAK Records in 1981, 1982 and 1983, with a fourth disc entitled Special Disco Mixes, which features remix versions of ten key tracks.

Music

On the three album CD’s, a few bonus tracks are added. Kim Wilde features the bonus tracks ‘Shane’, ‘Boys’ and ‘He Will Be There’; Select features ‘Child Come Away’, ‘Bitter Is Better’, ‘Watching For Shapes’ and ‘Just Another Guy’; Catch As Catch Can adds ‘Rain On’ and ‘Back Seat Driver’.
The album Special Disco Mixes features remixes of Kim Wilde’s singles during this period. The remixes were created by Matt Pop, Project K and Luke Mornay. Six of the ten remixes were newly created in 2023 for this release.

Formats

Love Blonde – The RAK Years was released as a 4 CD box set only.
See also this page in the discography.


Leyla

The Swedish band Cotton Club released their self-titled debut album in 1984.It featured cover versions of contemporary hit songs, such as Thompson Twins’ ‘Hold me now’, Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet dreams’ and Kim Wilde’s Love Blonde. That song, translated into Swedish as ‘Hon Går Rakt Fram’ was also released as a single. The band’s lead vocalist Leyla Yilbar-Norgren was credited for this single release as simply Leyla.

Leyla released two more singles, in 1985 and 1986. In 2004 she wrote ‘Lenas Sång’ for the Swedish movie Så Som I Himmelen, on which she also sang.


Letchworth Wellbeing Centre

Letchworth Wellbeing Centre’s launch on Friday 24 February 2017 was attended by nearly 100 people, including special guests 80s pop star Kim Wilde and former manager of Cambridge United, Martin Ling. Also present were the chief executives of HPFT, Tom Cahill; Herts Mind Network, Julie Nicholson, and Paul Farmer, of Mind. The centre is on a prominent site in the old post office on Broadway, in the heart of Letchworth.


Live Entertainment Awards 2009

On 26 February 2009, Kim Wilde made an appearance during the Live Entertainment Awards, held at the Color Line Arena in Hamburg. She appeared on stage as part of a show by Dutch illusionist Hans Klok.


LG Internet Family

In May 2002, the London department store Harrods launched its own hi-tech version of the hit show Big Brother, by putting four members of the public in a shop window, completing certain tasks for passers by and viewers on the internet. The participants – Sarah Wooster, Carl Newman, Charlie Parker and Steve Wilson – were selected in an online vote and lived in the shop for a week from 20 May onwards.

On 21 May 2002, Kim visited the LG Internet Family as part of the celebrity challenge for today. In town for the Chelsea Flower Show, Kim showed the LG Internet Family how to make window boxes.

Results from the internet vote were counted at 12 o’clock and elected that the family would make the window boxes blindfold. In a two-hour gardening session, the family had to lay drainage gravel, cover with compost, dig in a variety of plants, and finally sprinkle with a watering can.

They might think they know the place backwards, but it got messy when they couldn’t see what they were doing. Steve and Charlie had to direct a blindfolded Carl and Sarah under the watchful eye of Kim. “They did really well,” she said, “it’s probably the oddest thing I’ve ever done, but all the same it was really good fun.”


Leigh, Lyane

Born as Liane Hegemann on 8 April 1969. She attended schools in Grubbenvorst and Venlo, then she studied at the School of Audio Engineers in Cologne until 1998. Her singing career began in 1987 with her first engagements on the Coconut Records label. First she belonged to the pop girl band Twenty-One. For the Euro disco project Bad Boys Blue she contributed the female vocals on the track ‘Come Back and Stay’ and also performed with the group. In 1989 and 1990 she was part of the German-language pop hit formation Xanadu, which narrowly missed qualifying for the Eurovision Song Contest in both years. In addition, she published several hit songs as a solo artist under the artist names Lyane and Lyane Hegemann. 

In 1994 she started the dance floor project E-Rotic with her former co-singer at Xanadu, now producer David Brandes. The music actually corresponded to the style that was very popular at the time, including “Marafrasi” (= man raps, woman sings, in alternating passages). However, what made E-Rotic special was its extreme focus on the subject of sex. The songs regularly contained moans from Lyane Leigh. Well-known titles of the internationally successful project includeMax Don’t Have Sex with Your Ex’, ‘Fred Come to Bed’ and ‘Sex on the Phone’. Although Lyane Leigh only appeared publicly for E-Rotic until 1995, she continued to sing for the recordings up to and including 1998, to which her successor Jeanette Christensen then lipsynched. The project ended in 2005.

Meanwhile, Early E-Rotic singers Lyane Leigh and Raz-Ma-Taz formed their own dancefloor project S.E.X. Appeal in 1996 (which Raz-Ma-Taz soon dropped out of). This project continued at least until 2017. 

Meanwhile, in 2008, Lyane Leigh released a solo cover version of Kids in America as a single.

In 2015, E-Rotic was revived and Leigh made a comeback as a studio singer and has since returned to public appearances. 


Lollies (the)

The Lollies were formed in the Reutlingen district in Germany in 1993. The band consists of Nicola Welsch (vocals), Andreas Welsch (drums, keyboards, bass), Martin Vogel (guitar, trumpet), Klaus Bahnmüller (keyboards, accordeon) and Ulrich Schmauder (bass).

In 1993 they released their first single ‘Feuer und Flamme’. Two years later they met the band Fools Garden, with whom they produced their second single. 

The song Wahnsinn, rewritten by the Lollies and released as a party hit, originally by Wolfgang Petry, was in the top 100 of the media control charts for five weeks under the title ‘Hölle, Hölle, Hölle’. After a few years and more singles and albums, the Lollies wrote a song for the 2008 European Football Championship entitled ‘Adler auf der Brust’, which reached number 64 in the German charts. 

In 2007 they released the album ‘Live Hits – Tour 2007’, which featured a cover version of Kids in America, recorded live.


Lean on Me

Song written and recorded by Bill Withers.
It was released in April 1972 as the first single from his second album, ‘Still Bill’. It was a number one single on the Billboard Hot 100 in the USA and reached number 18 in the UK singles chart. Numerous other versions have been recorded, and it is one of only nine songs to have reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with versions recorded by two different artists: Club Nouveau released their version in 1987 and topped the chart in the USA with it.

Kim Wilde version

Kim Wilde performed the song live during a concert for Tilehouse Counselling centre in Hitchin, together with guitarist Benny Smith, on 27 September 2019. It was the only time she performed the song.


Lyrics

Sometimes in our lives
We all have pain
We all have sorrow
But if we are wise
We know that there’s always tomorrow

Lean on me
When you’re not strong
And I’ll be your friend
I’ll help you carry on…
For it won’t be long
Till I’m gonna need somebody to lean on

Please swallow your pride
If you have things you need to borrow
For no one can fill
Those of your needs
that you won’t let show

You just call on me brother when you need a hand
We all need somebody to lean on
I just might have a problem that you’ll understand
We all need somebody to lean on

Lean on me
When you’re not strong
I’ll be your friend
I’ll help you carry on…
For it won’t be long
Till I’m gonna need somebody to lean on

You just call on me brother
When you need a hand
We all need somebody to lean on
I just might have a problem that you’ll understand
We all need somebody to lean on

If there is a load you have to bear
That you can’t carry
I’m right up the road
I’ll share your load
If you just call me

Call me
If you need a friend
Call me
Call me
If you need a friend
Call me
Call me
Call me
If you need a friend
Call me
Call me

 

La terra contro i dischi volanti

‘La terra contro i dischi volanti’ is the Italian title of the movie ‘Earth vs. the Flying Saucers’,  an American science fiction film from 1956. It was directed by Fred F. Sears, and stars Hugh Marlowe and Joan Taylor. The stop-motion animation special effects were created by Ray Harryhausen. The storyline was suggested by the bestselling 1953 non-fiction book Flying Saucers from Outer Space by Maj. Donald Keyhoe. The film was released as a double feature with The Werewolf.

The film was released in Italy in the middle of the summer of 1956, dubbed by the CDC. A couple of movie posters were designed for the Italian version. One poster served as the inspiration for Scarlett Wilde to create the cover artwork of the Kim Wilde album Here Come the Aliens. Another poster was the inspiration for the cover artwork of the lead single Pop Don’t Stop.


La French

French action crime thriller movie from 2014, released abroad as ‘The Connection’. The movie was directed by Cédric Jimenez and starred Jean Dujardin as police magistrate Pierre Michel (juge) and Gilles Lellouche as Gaëtan “Tany” Zampa, a drug gang ringleader. In the movie, a French police magistrate spends years trying to take down one of the country’s most powerful drug rings.

The soundtrack of the movie features the song Cambodia by Kim Wilde, as well as tracks by Blondie, Serge Gainsbourg, Lykke Li and Townes van Zandt.


Las Cartas

Song written by Dominic James Miller and Gordon Sumner. Based on the song ‘Shape of My Heart’, recorded by Sting in 1993 on his album ‘Ten Summoner’s Tales’.

‘Las Cartas’ was arranged by Juan Vincente Abardonado and recorded by Chico & the Gypsies, featuring Kim Wilde on vocals. It was released on the albums ‘Chico & the Gypsies & International Friends’ and ‘Bamboleo: The Greatest Hits of All Time!’ in June 2014.


Lyrics

Él reparte las cartas como una meditando
A otro no sospechan
No riporta el dinero
Que gana tempo per respeto

He deals the cards to find the answers
A secret geometry of chance
A hidden law of a probable outcome
The numbers lead a dance

Espadas son unas armas de guerra
Nos bastos son para lucar
Y el oro significan di cesa
Signo es for ma vece

He may play the jack of diamonds
He may lay the queen of spades
Qui sa tendra un rey en la mano
Hasta lor vida no todo

I know that the spades are the swords of a soldier
I know that the clubs are weapons of war
I know that diamonds mean money for this art
But that’s not the shape of my heart
That’s not the shape
The shape of my heart

Si te dijo que te quiero
Pensaras que algo no val
Yo soy un hombre di un solo lostro
No yo vo mascaran

But those who speak know nothin’
And find out to their cost
Like those who curse their luck in too many places
And those who fear are lost

Espadas son unas armas de guerra
Nos bastos son para lucar
Y el oro significan la cesa
Signo es forma vece
Esa no es y forma vece

Liquid Lava

Party band from Adelaide (Australia). Their recording of a cover version of Kids in America was posted on Soundcloud by band member Peter Ballinger in 2012.