A micro pub close to me has a "bring your own" vinyl night every now and then. I have been a regular attendee this last year. The DJ seems quite taken by the little selection box of singles I take along, especially the 60s soul, and has been known to take a picture for future reference of a few of the ones he is unfamiliar with. As any good DJ should. he takes some of his own to play too in case there are insufficient BYOs, which is usually the case. We have very similar tastes although he is 10 – 15 younger than me so if he plays anything from the 90s or more recent I usually don’t know it so if I like it I, in turn, take a picture of it for my future reference. So it was a couple of months ago when he played a Cathy Dennis single. She was new to me but I was quite taken. I wasn’t paying much attention to music in the late 80s and 90s. I didn’t much care for what was being pumped out on the radio and none of it really encouraged me to dig deeper. Family duties were very much uppermost in my mind back then.
Anyway, the Cathy Dennis single left enough of an impression on me that over the next few weeks I immersed myself in her back catalogue. Her output is generally very much of its time, mostly upbeat dance pop confections aimed at the clubs (and maybe MTV?) which I have seen described as “synth pop” and “euro house”. It’s not music I would normally seek out, and no doubt there were any number of artists and producers pumping out similar tunes at the time, but for some reason I can’t begin to understand or explain I find her music quite uplifting. I like her voice and, watching some of her videos on You Tube, I like her style - ahem, I may be a little bit smitten! In short order I have acquired four of her singles, they're cheap as chips.
Cathy’s chart star shone particularly brightly between 1989 and 1994. The single Touch Me (All Night Long) was her biggest hit peaking at #5 in the UK charts in 1991. It is in fact a remake of Tuch Me, which was written by Patrick Adams and Greg Carmichael (names of note on the Disco scene in the 70s and early 80s) and released by Fonda Rae in 1984. I prefer Cathy’s version.
Cathy has gone on to be a very successful, and prolific, songwriter: Britney Spears' Toxic, and Kylie Minogue's Can't Get You Out Of My Head being just two notable examples. (Who knew? Not me, every day's a school day!)
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