Turn Around was included on Now That’s What I Call Music! 43, which I bought in desperation for a gig in late 1999. At the age of 41 I had no feel at all for the contemporary dance scene and was very apprehensive when I accepted a booking to play for a bunch of 13-14 year old boys who were celebrating the end of cadet camp at the army barracks in Warcop. I was still playing vinyl at gigs, reliant on my collection of old 45s which went back to the 1950s but not much further forward than 1985 – before my young audience had even been born.
Phatts and Small have endeared themselves to me for two reasons. When I started DJ-ing again in 1999 I had some catching up to do. I hadn’t followed the charts for about fourteen years and promoted myself very much as an oldies act. I used to joke wishfully that in my part of rural Cumbria the 1970s had never really gone away. There was a certain amount of truth in that, but people still wanted the current hits.
I bought Now 43 and Top of the Pops ‘99 Volume 1 (a Now rival which also contained Turn Around) in an attempt to get up to speed. I played them non-stop for a week to familiarise myself with “what the young people were listening to these days” and expanded my two-turntable DJ rig with my domestic hi-fi CD player and my CD Walkman. The set-up looked exactly what it was – cobbled together by someone who had never run a disco using CDs.
The Now That’s What I Call Music! series has been the dominant compilation brand in the UK since its launch in 1983. It is, in its 107 volumes to date, the nearest thing to an audio history of pop music since then. Inclusion on a Now ensures a kind of immortality for a pop act and Phatts and Small returned the favour by calling their debut album – what else could it have been called? – Now Phatts What I Small Music. A sense of humour goes long way with me: Reason One to like the duo.
The video for Turn Around was filmed in and around Brighton, the home town of Jason “Phatts” Hayward and Russell Small. Turn Around was their first and biggest hit, reaching #1 in Britain and Belgium and the Top Ten in seven other European countries. It made #10 in Canada but did not chart in the US or South America.
The track is a very basic exercise in sampling. The rhythm is a loop of just one bar from a 1980 disco hit, Change’s The Glow of Love. Change were label mates with disco gods Chic at Atlantic Records and showed the considerable influence of Chic in their own singles. The bands used the same backing singers in the studio and – although he isn’t heard in the Phatts and Small sample – lead singer on The Glow of Love is a then unknown Luther Vandross.
The Turn Around vocals are lifted from the first verse of Reach Up, a post-disco hit for singer Toney Lee in 1986. Phatts and Small mashed vocals and rhythm together and introduced variety by the simple trick of playing around with the EQ – boosting the treble or the bass, a technique pioneered by Daft Punk at the time.
I was apprehensive as I arrived at the barracks. A soldier on duty at the gate waved me in. I felt I was under surveillance both by the army and by the toy soldiers I was supposed to be entertaining.But the boys were so excited to be getting their own disco and to be going home the next day that they danced to night away.
They were only too happy to advise me on what to play. Out of 79 titles, my two double CDs had about fifteen credible dance tracks between them. Interspersed with older disco hits I played the chart music over and over again, to the delight of my audience – they cheered Turn Around each of the five times I played it. Reason 2.
I bought every new edition of Now That’s What I Call Music! from then on as well as seeking out earlier volumes and investing in a proper CD DJ rig. By the time I retired in 2006 I had every one from Now 26 to Now 76. At time of writing Now is well into its second century. One man, Ashley Abram, compiled every Now from Now 2 to Now 81. Since the first Now in 1983, all but one, Now 4, has reached #1 in the UK charts.
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