Boney M.
Take the Heat Off Me

THE REVIEW

Memoirs of a Flirt. Part 1.

Ok, there are things that mark you.

Like: after weeks of stalking and ambushes in the corridors, immoral amounts spent at the school’s bar, and exhausting negotiations, you managed to convince that absurd busty blonde from the front row to come to your house with the excuse of studying. You’ve been staring at them for two hours, those boobs defying the laws of gravity, while she – damn goose – is actually trying to study!

You’ve offered her fizzy drinks, cookies, cigarettes, and everything else you could think of to distract her.

You strategize every way to stretch out a hand or stick out your tongue.

You try to control an absurd erection while those cursed ball-crushing jeans (blessed are the young ones who don’t know what I’m talking about! And not to forget those cruel high-heeled boots because of which, even today, you stagger even with slippers) are threatening your budding masculinity, which hasn’t yet had the chance to prove itself.

When she coquettishly says, “Ok, let’s take a break. Put on some music?”

Your hormones start doing a wave, you’re having an unstoppable attack of painful priapism, parched mouth, and sweaty hands.

You’ve made sure to hide the records of mopey singer-songwriters and those bands that make half-hour suites that you usually listen to.

You put on Boney M. You bought them specifically!

Deep and sexy voice, surrounded by the cooing of lasciviously rubbing chicks. A soft-porn cover (oh God, looking at it better, it seems more like a party with trans!). She will understand the message. She will…

You brought two glasses of wine. It’s boxed wine, but you served it in two glasses. After all, the healthy carrier of mammary protuberances, what does she understand about wine?

And then you put ice in it. Ice! (But how the hell did I survive puberty?)

You ordered your folks to stay away from your room. Everything is ready. “Daddy Cool” is heating up the atmosphere.

You sit, the next track is about to play. A sweaty, clammy hand also sets off.

“But it’s Marcella Bella!” – and she laughs in my face, the witch! (And when it’s deserved, it’s deserved…)

Damn! And damn it! It’s true, that track “Take the Heat Off Me”, is indeed a cover of “Nessuno mai” by Marcella Bella!

But I bought that record only for “Daddy Cool” (and for the cover). It never occurred to me to listen to the other tracks.

“Daddy Cool”, that was a great track! That deep, profound, and sexy voice, those famous lascivious chick cooings, that historically significant bassline and that string refrain…..

What a great track!

Which just goes to show, that deep voice wasn’t Bobby Farrell’s at all (who, by the way, was the one who danced and pretended to sing in the videos). And neither are the lascivious chicks exactly the three who rub against each other on the cover.

Because Boney M, in reality, are an invention of Frank Farian, a German producer and author who, aware of having the appeal of a colander (and a pretty silly face), had – for some time – decided to sing his pieces himself, but let others interpret them publicly.

Because, otherwise, why would they have invented playback, excuse me?

In the studio, he invented that deep and guttural voice. He used it to pull out a danceable track: “Baby Do You Wanna Bump”.

The fact is that “Baby Do You Wanna Bump” is doing great. Then they ask him to present it on TV and live.

Farian (the colander mentioned above), at that point, thinks it’s a good idea to hire four dancers - one male and three females - to show in his place, and thus he invents Boney M.

A name which is a tribute to Bonaventura, the protagonist of a series of rather unlucky Australian TV dramas.

And, maybe by luck or marketing genius, those four go like a charm. A few weeks later, Farian pulls out “Daddy Cool” and makes a big hit: Boney M will be second only to Abba among European Disco products.

But they also need to build an album around “Daddy Cool”.

That’s how “Take the Heat Off Me” comes out, and that’s why, along with those couple of tracks that will have to climb the charts, they also need fillers. Even crappy ones, do we care?

Like a cover of Marcella Bella.

But I couldn’t know that at the time. So we go back to the giggling blonde and me holding onto my erection.

This is where my path diverges from that of Boney M and (unfortunately) from that of the blonde and her blimp-model breasts.

But, while I have no clue what in the hell happened to that flirtatious busty girl, I know what happened next to Boney M: they continued to record albums and change formation. The Boney M brand is still around today in various forms. They have sold over 11 million records and still churned out quite a few more hits (“Rivers of Babylon”, “Rasputin”, “Sunny”….).

And they didn’t flinch even a little when Farias got involved in that colossal screw-up with Milli Vanilli (because Farias had taken it into his habit to have pretty faces lip-sync his songs).

And not even Farrell’s absurd death stopped them.

Yes, because Farrell, one day, goes to Russia, called to perform at a private show. In fact, in Russia, Boney M are very famous thanks to “Rasputin”. So Farrell sings “Rasputin” to the Russians and then goes to the hotel. But he feels sick. The next day they find him dead. It was December 30 and it was in St. Petersburg: the same city and the same day that Rasputin died.

And, in short, that’s why Disco and I have never really gotten along. I stayed there staring at that cover, wondering how many more weekends I would have to spend pretending to know how to dance, filling myself with hairspray, and drinking hideous long drinks with those damned high-heeled boots.

All for a single, vague, chimerical hope….

I didn’t know that an Englishman with rotting teeth was coming to save me, who just in those days had begun to frequent a strange boutique-place-hangout for misfits in London called “Sex”.