James Hamilton

Thank you, Noel, for that.

It was first reviewed in Record Mirror by James Hamilton as an album track not yet scheduled for release as a single.

He pulled it out when reviewing the album and said, "It's Love to Love You Baby meets Autobahn, an odd pairing with a freaky Kraftwerk electronic rhythm that's a gas." And that led to the single being rush released way ahead of plans in the UK, and getting to number one fairly shortly thereafter.

In a lot of other countries, I Feel Love was originally a B side to another track on the album that nobody remembers.

We've got them the wrong way around." So there wasn't an immediate record company push to make this a number one.

It kind of took them by surprise as well.

James Hamilton's counterpart in New York, Vince Aletti, wrote a very highly regarded weekly review column for Record World.

Again, he picked it up as an album track and said, "It's a brilliant combination of whipped-up synthesizer.

And that's when, uh, there was a guy, Rich- uh, uh- Richard, Richard Hamilton, is that right? Um, in Record Mirror-

...

James Hamilton, sorry.

James Hamilton in, in, in Record Mirror, basically he brought people over, brought some DJs over from the UK to see Larry Levan play at the Paradise Garage in New York, and then went back on a mission to convert the UK to, to mixing records.

On, on the radio, we w-

Yeah, we, we-

I was driving and, and I asked someone, "Is there any- anywhere that plays, like, Roxy Music or...?" Bloke told me they got a Roxy room at Pip's, and I've become friendly with Greg Wilson, you know.

And, uh, I'm in a book, James Hamilton, have you heard that book? Which Ja- which Greg brought out, and it's even got all my playlists 'cause I, I...

He came and saw Depeche Mode at, at my gig, which was in a soul club.

So anyway, that was a hell of a long way to say that I was a DJ drummer in 1978.

This is Greg Wilson welcoming you to a special edition of Record Mirror Disco Charts where we veer slightly off the beaten path.

I'm joined as ever by Mike Atkinson, the editor of James Hamilton's disco pages 1975 to 1982 and dance pages 1983 to 1989 from which this list is sourced.

Not a random chart 20 to 1 countdown as normal but Mike will explain.

Yeah.

This is a special.

We are not looking at a specific Record Mirror disco chart.

Instead, we're looking at a list of tunes which James Hamilton published in Record Mirror in October 1986.

This is how James introduces the list.