Seventh Avenue - The Right Combination
This lineup of Seventh Avenue was the one that went on to become Big Fun. At first they signed to Jive, after leaving my label, and tried to keep the name Seventh Avenue, but I fought them on it and won. Their previous release, "Love's Gone Mad", had been a huge club hit without hitting the pop charts, and yet sold in bucketloads. I find it amazing that such a classic High Energy anthem sold fifty thousand copies without ever showing in the charts. In 1985, this kind of music was selling by the truckload out of specialist shops, not least of which was Record Shack itself, and therefore these vast numbers weren't contributing to the Gallup charts of the time. But in Scotland, it was the biggest record of the year in clubs, and in Record Mirror, it topped the High Energy charts for a staggering twelve weeks, being the overall biggest record of that year. By the time their American hit, "The Love I Lost", came out, Seventh Avenue had changed line-up four times since the AVI days of "Midnight In Manhattan". They were the first "Boyband" ever to present a sexy, somewhat homoerotic image. "The Love I Lost" was a major release in the USA, on Atlantic records, and very big on the Billboard dance charts. The original 1979 album had been a disco concept album, but by the time "I Hear Thunder" and "Ending Up On A High" had become so big, the identity of a sexy homoerotic boy band was set, paving the way for Take That and Boyzone. This song, "The Right Combination" was their second single on the Nightmare label, and they performed it in Heaven in 1987 at that legendary night, "A Nightmare On Villiers Street".