Peter Brown - Back To The Front [Expanded & Remastered] (2013) FTG

The BACK TO THE FRONT album was originally released in 1983 and this will be the first time it has ever been released on CD - The release is expanded with 4 bonus and has been remastered from the ORIGINAL MASTER TAPES at Battery Studio s New York by Sonys Sean Brennan. Born in the Chicago suburb of Blue Island, on July 11,1953, Peter Brown was the first artist to have a million selling 12 Inch single with Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me. Released on Drive, a subsidiary of the legendary TK Records label in 1977, neither it nor its flip-side, the dub-influenced underground dance club and proto-house music favorite Burning Love Breakdown were your generic disco fare, and Brown was far from the anonymous studio creation with which that scene was too often attributed. Intended as a demo and recorded in his bedroom on 4- track, the slowed down, intoxicatingly minimalist Do You Wanna Get Funky inaugurated a short period of late 1970s classics for the producer and multi-instrumentalist, including the magnificent Dance With Me (which featured Betty Wright on background vocals and for which Brown was nominated for a Grammy) and It s Alright. By the time Peter Brown s third release Back To The Front was issued in 1983 on the RCA label, the short and let s be honest not always sweet hold that the disco bubble had on mainstream music had burst. Due to a string of bad decisions not too mention an industry suffering from recession and its own over-indulgence, TK Records had gone bankrupt and Brown s momentum was slowed by legal disputes, as well as a changing musical climate that saw dance music s throne overtaken by the vanilla corporate rock of the likes of REO Speedwagon. Yet dance music was entering an incredibly fertile period thanks to the revolutionary trails of DJs like Larry Levan at New York s Paradise Garage and Frankie Knuckles at Chicago s Warehouse, respectively. Also in ascent were the likes of Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna ( for whom Brown co-wrote Material Girl with Robert Rans) who were blurring the lines between disco and new wave on a path to macro-moolah success. Making its CD debut, the self-produced (with an executive production credit by Four Season Bob Gaudio) Back To The Front remains an enduring document of early 1980s pop-soul and Peter Brown s oft-neglected yet substantial musical talents.