love A Certain Ratio -- well, love certain things by them - but really, at the end of the day, they were just a washed-out, slightly stilted, sub-arthouse/existentialist version of Heatwave, weren't they?

a song-less, and hitless, version of Heatwave, at the end of the proverbial day...

although one of the things I like about Heatwave's sound is actually a certain proto-ACR-ish ghostliness, those blank colorless vocals....

bizarrely grim and grisly story, Heatwave's, with two members of the group involved in stabbings, one fatal and the other calamitous:

"Rhythm guitarist Roy Carter replaced [Jesse] Whitten after Whitten was killed in a stabbing incident. They began creating their first album Too Hot to Handle in the fall of 1976."

....

"Heatwave were about to return to the studio, when [Mario] Mantese attended a party at Elton John's house in London. He was with his girlfriend, who decided to go home early from the party, reason unknown. When Mantese arrived home, she was furious with him, perhaps from an incident that happened at the party and stabbed him. The knife hit him in the heart and for several minutes, he was clinically dead. When, after several months, he awoke from coma, he was blind, mute and paralysed in his entire body. To date, he has no memory of this tragic event. He decided not to press charges against his girlfriend, and moved in with her after leaving the hospital. Mantese was replaced by bassist Derek Bramble"

"Decided not to press charges... and moved in her with after leaving the hospital" - making him the Rihanna of his day!


Now tell me people, what the fuck happened to Rod Temperton, one of the greatest songwriters and groove-makers of the 20th Century???

 The funkiest white Englishman ever, this side of Chas Jankel?

(Chas J, who also had an involvement with Quincy J)

Temperton's Wikipedia entry more or less ends after the Quincy J/Michael J moment, although there's a mention of a Grammy nomination for his co-write of a song on the soundtrack of The Color Purple.... 

He did go on to write a whole bunch more songs for a whole bunch more people, including this one, theme song to a cops 'n' robbers movies, sung by Michael McDonald, and for which I have a soft spot (actually reviewed this wack movie, would you believe, for Melody Maker)

Presumably with a net worth estimated to be 150 million  Rod T  probably doesn't need to work..