Most people look at him with terror and with fear - but to Moscow chicks, he was such a lovely dear

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts.

28/01/79 : Nightflight To Venus - Boney M


Our third, and thankfully final, visit with Boney M - it's fair to say I've not been a fan, but this looks like it has the best potential for me to at least tolerate it. Bizarrely, it's not available on Amazon, but I suspect that's because the various factions of the group aren't able to agree on anything any more - YouTube to the rescue!

Well, it starts with the title track which I don't think I've ever heard before - it goes on forever and is a completely bonkers combination of vocoder and percussion, but quite amusingly so. And that's then followed by "Rasputin", which even I have to admit is well done - I particularly like the bizarre "Rasputin, eh? What a naughty boy!" vibe it takes. I can also tolerate "Rivers Of Babylon", "Brown Girl In The Ring" and "Painter Man", which are the other singles on the album - the rest of the album isn't quite so enjoyable, but it's a huge step up on previous visits. It also has a couple of bizarre covers in Roger Miller's "King Of The Road" and Neil Young's "Heart Of Gold" - they're not terrible but seem odd picks (apparently "Painter Man" is also a cover, but that works well enough). I'd also say 52:55 was a bit too long, but it could really have been far worse.

We're at #9 in the charts this week on their 28th week of an incredible 49 week run, with it having spent four consecutive weeks at #1 - people really loved Boney M back then, didn't they? The top five this week were the Don't Walk - Boogie compilation (finishing a run of three weeks at the top), Elvis Costello (finishing a run of three weeks at #2 - he must have been amusingly pissed off), the Action Replay compilation, Blondie and the Wings best-of (I feel that has to be a short album) and the highest new entry was Chic (#28).

Wikipedia tells us this is their third album and it was pretty damn successful - and that's about it. What was also very successful was "Rivers Of Babylon"/"Brown Girl In The Ring" which sold over two million copies here and their '78 Xmas single "Mary's Boy Child / Oh My Lord" sold almost as many, making them the only group to have two million selling singles in a year in the UK. Critically, people were nice enough about the album but I think they knew no-one really cared what they said because this stormed the charts all over Europe - but not so much in the US, getting to #134.

No-one's going to spend a fortune on this are they? discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent copy for £1.50 but you can somehow spend £45.22 on an original gatefold version - I will not be doing any such thing. However, I do have to admit this was an odd but perfectly tolerable album - it's bizarre it was quite so popular, but sometimes this things just catch a wave and ride it.

21/01/79 - Two fine tracks at least
04/02/79 - Fine but forgettable

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