You may remember Paul Hardcastle for "Rain Forest" or "19" but "Sound Chaser" was definately his baddest jam. Anybody into this one?
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[Edited 3/4/08 7:12am]

Andy, Andy, for someone who constantly criticizes shithop you sure are into old school Hip Hop and Electro stuff .but I know where you´re coming from.

I still have a lot of old vinyl stuff by Paul Hardcastle...funny thing is, I was wondering what he´s up to these days before I discovered this thread.
Rain Forest was the bomb back in the day....are you also familiar with that Zero One record he did ?
I don´t recall Sound Chaser off the top of my head but will check it out in a few seconds, gotta dig in the crates.
I also liked King Tut and almost any of his old stuff.We´re getting old, aren´t we ?

"Do not waste time trying to escape from the Sound Chaser!"

Man, you guys are aging me here. I have a special love for old-school Paul Hardcastle. I remember hearing Rain Forest and 19 around the same time back in '84-'85. I found a cassette at the time that Profile Records put out in the states. It had Rain Forest, King Tut, Sound Chaser, AM, Panic, Forest Fire and Loitering with Intent. I wore that tape out. That was/is some of the coolest electro stuff on the planet! I just found a CD quality copy of his self-titled debut and Zero One a week or two ago. While I'd love to have that original Rain Forest compilation, those were a close second. That self-titled album is finally available on iTunes with the original 19 12" and other bonus material, including Loitering with Intent. While I still respect Paul and his newer smooth jazz material, it just doesn't compare with his early stuff (not even close).

underrrated single.

its aiight, I thought it was just a b-side

great tune. My favorite is still the Wizard.

I've been bumping "King Tut".


His songs seem so 12" related that I haven't considered tracking down an LP. Isn't it all about the single versions?

Whatchu talkin' bout, that jam was pure funky ass shaker. As for shit hop though, hip hop didn't become shit hop until the early 1990s. Rap, especially in the early 1980s, was just as uptempo and funky as funk. What really tripped me out is when hip hop became shit hop in the early 1990s, it became so homophobic. For a genre so homophobic, they sure didn't mind having a Judy Garland tempo. Sounds like some closet queens to me.




The only Paul Hardcastle I've ever heard is the 12 Inch I have which is "Rain Forest" and "Sound Chaser" which was the B Side. Also, the 45 I have of "19". I heard he had an album but I never saw it in any of the record stores in my area.

It was the B Side to "Rain Forest". The radio stations in my area never played "Sound Chaser" but the skating rink DJs made it a crowd favorite.

hate to see you missing out on the lp's. I mean 19 was the jam about the young cats going to war.

by the way, I heard a remake of rainforest (not the old remakes) but a nice mellow version of it. does anyone know what who it is by?

I can't help you with that one. I don't do mellow. Mellow is one of my complaints about remakes these days.

vainandy said:

That Judy Garland remark is on point

I once rad an article about homophobia in HipHop about half a decade ago in VIBE magazine. I think it´s always been homophobic since most of those cats gotta pretend to be soooo tough and macho, hence the homophobia, which is one aspect of Hip Hop I don´t agree with ( and I´m hetero) .
You should definitely check out some of Hardcastle´s LPs, as I said above, the Zero One project was pretty cool and his other albums were also nice.
You can find Sound Chaser on Youtube.

Oh, by the way, wouldn´t it be interesting to start a thread about homophobia in Hip Hop ? As far as I know, one of the founders of Hip Hop, the one and only Afrika Bambaataa , is gay, so it´s kinda weird to see what Hip Hop has turned into over the years.
But, looking back ( and I´ve been into HipHop since 1983) , it´s always been pretty homophobic, IMO.

Really? That would explain why he could throwdown so hard. The majority of gay people I have been around love some good uptempo dance jams and love to party harder than straight people.

Gay people partying hard really surprised me though. Growing up, straight people had stereotyped gay men as being weak, limp wristed, nerds who listened to nothing but slow classical music (that's why I love to make fun of shit hop's tempo ). I hung out with the straight guys growing up and they listened to mainly hard uptempo funk like I do such as Cameo, Rick James, Zapp, etc. Fans of tamer, slower folks like Lionel Richie or Peabo Bryson, were usually females. Of course, things changed in the late 1980s, unfortunately.

When I came out of the closet in 1990 and went to my first gay club, I was surprised as hell to see gay men partying to house music which was much harder and more uptempo than what straight people were listening to at the time which was folks like Keith Sweat, Shitney Houston, Anita Baker, etc. For the first time, I felt proud of what I was instead of being ashamed. Then I couldn't understand how we could party so hard but straight people (which were supposedly superior) had lost their hardness and coolness and were becoming the dorky slow listening waldos they had made fun of previously.




I don't remember too many of the artists themselves being homophobic on the records until the 1990s. I'm sure some of them were but didn't talk about it but I don't remember all that hatred in the early days. Hell, Grandmaster Flash and the guys dressed like The Village People.

Back in the 1980s, what used to trip me out were the heavy metal fans. Not the artists, but the fans. They were quick to call Prince a fag but folks like Motley Crue looked like full fledged drag queens with lipstick and the whole works.