This is yet another Record Store Day reissue, and I don’t know if there’s even any great demand for a reissue of a seminal but very well-known disco/pop crossover like Andrea True Connection’s “More, More, More.”
But it’s worth checking this out for multiple reasons, outlined thusly:
1. Every aspiring producer/remixer (which are the same thing now anyway) should snap back and forth between the original production of “More, More, More” and the Tom Moulton Mix for a better education than you can get at Full Sail University. Despite the passage of nearly 50 years, it’s STILL hard to put into words exactly what a remix should do. The answer is not “get my shitty tech house track on a chart with shitty nu disco tracks.” If that was your answer, you failed. The original mix of “More, More, More” was demo quality – thin with a lack of depth, like a faded photograph left on a windowsill and bleached by the sun. Moulton used all of his powers to reinvent this track and breathe life into it. He did such a tremendous job that nobody even remembers what the original sounds like anymore. This is a masterclass in mixing from the acknowledged master.
2. Andrea True’s past in pornographic films is a part of the “legend” that has grown around “More, More, More” but it isn’t half the story. Few of the jagoffs who wagged their tongues at the “disco porno queen” back in the day (which was basically all of them – every fucking boomer music critic in history) paid attention to the sleazy history of Buddah Records which released Andrea True’s album. The label – once best known for bubblegum pop – had been shaken down by Colombo mob wiseguys back in the 1960s and became a vehicle to launder money from THEIR OWN pornographic films, including the most famous one of all time, Deep Throat. Deep Throat had been partially financed by Sonny Franzese, who “obtained” a share of ownership in Buddah and other record labels. Franzese is otherwise best remembered for being captured on tape giving other mobsters DIY instructions on how to dispose of bodies (“It’s better to take that half-an-hour, an hour,” he advised, and cut up the body in a kiddie pool, dry the bones in a microwave and then grind them up in an industrial-grade garbage disposal.) Franzese was later tried and imprisoned in his 90s when his own son testified against him and, inexplicably, is still alive and just celebrated his 102nd birthday. Happy belated, Sonny!
Read More: A Tom Moulton Interview
3. Before her death, Andrea True allegedly managed to regain control of at least some of the rights to her works; from a podcast by the Rialto Report (one of the best I’ve ever heard, to be honest), the revenue seemed to have made her last years a little easier. Original producer Gregg Diamond died in 1999. Tom Moulton might be the only person originally involved with this – other than the immortal Sonny Franzese, I guess – still with us.
The reissue of the Andrea True Connection’s More, More, More is out now from Buddah Records.
Andrea True Connection: More, More, More / Buddah
A1. Andrea True Connection: “More More More” (A Tom Moulton Mix) (6:17)
B1. Andrea True Connection: “What’s Your Name, What’s Your Number” (6:34)
All praise to DJ Hyperactive: Chicago’s techno godfather is back and he’s on the cover of 5 Mag issue 171 with Red Rack’em, Manuel Tur & more. Help support 5 Mag by becoming a member for just $1 per issue.
And what “rights” were those. True’s name is not listed as a writer on any song from the first (and only reasonably) successful album. n fact, in an interview, Diamond claimed that he was so disappointed with her vocals, that he hired better singers to replicate her vocals on the rest of the songs on the album. While she did have another hit (N.Y., You Got Me Dancing), that was nearly the end of the Andrea True Connection. Diamond worked with some fantastically gifted vocalists (including Luther Vandross). I’m sure he was always disappointed, that his most famous song was by someone who could not sing.
Badly phrased. The New York Times, BBC and other obituaries stated she received royalties “until the end of her life.”