FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD Bang… The Best Of… (WEA/ZTT 450993912-2)
For a long time, Holly and Co were tarred with same brush as Sigue Sigue Sputnik. This is a trifle unfair for a band who, despite all Paul Morley’s PR hype and overkill, produced the last great sex and anti-Cold War anthems just months before AIDS and Gorby took the shine off such relevant issues.
The crunching ‘Relax’ (back in the charts a decade later), the magnificently epic ‘Two Tribes’ and the touching ‘Power Of Love’ were the first three Frankie 45s, and all topped the charts, a virtually unequalled record. The LPs Welcome To The Pleasure Dome and Rage Hard didn’t exactly fade into obscurity either.
One of Frankie’s proudest boasts is that their funky feel and surplus of mixes pre-dated rock’s shift towards the dancefloor in 1989 —
Phil Strongman