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Hall and Oates: They won't go for nostalgia
by Conrad Astley5/ 5/2005
HALL and Oates may have been the biggest selling duo in the
history of popular music and have a glorious 30-year legacy behind
them.
But many people's only knowledge of the band is a dance tune
sampled from a computer game.
Uniting Nations' remix of their single Out Of Touch - a huge US hit
in 1984 - made a big impact on the charts at the end of last year
and for several months was difficult to avoid.
Stockport DJ Daz Sampson, the man behind the tune, was happy to
admit he had never heard the song until he came across it while
playing the Playstation Two game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. The
notorious game, in which players steal cars while completing
missions for various underworld crime bosses, is set in the 80s and
features a soundtrack of hits from the period.
Daz and his musical partner, Glasgow police officer Paul Keenan,
took the song's chorus and put it to a house beat.
But, speaking from his US home before embarking on a British tour,
singer John Oates said he was able to take this as a
compliment.
He said: "I'm always pleasantly surprised when people take your
music and go back to it. What I was most surprised about though,
was that there was no verse - it was all chorus.
"When I met them in London that was my first question. They said,
`in our world verses don't matter' and I thought that was
interesting. In the world of dance music it's all distilled down to
the most essential elements, which as far as that song is concerned
is the chorus, and the hooks.
"I don't follow contemporary dance music. To me when you hear dance
music on the radio or in a shop, that's not really what it's all
about.
"It's meant to be heard in a certain environment and in a certain
state of mind. When you listen to it out of context it doesn't
really do what it's supposed to."
Oates added he was well aware the song had been used on the
computer game and was pleased it had been introduced to a new
generation of fans that way.
He said: "A few years ago a girl we were using as a babysitter came
up to me and said she'd heard my new song.
"I asked her what she was talking about and she said she'd heard it
on Grand Theft Auto. I told her that song was about 20 years
old.
"My son plays the game now, and he's singing along to stuff like
Toto. It's cool people are getting to hear all these old
songs."
The band had to make a decision on whether to allow Uniting Nations
to use the sample, but said they weren't the first dance act to do
so. Oates said Out Of Touch was the most sampled song he knew of,
and had found its way onto at least 10 dance tunes - something
which will inevitably lead to a renewed interest in the band's
extensive back catalogue.
He said: "It'll go over a lot of people's heads, and they'll think
`I like this for what it is today' but other people will get into
it.
"It's not like the entire dance world will come over to our side,
but we've definitely got some new fans from it. You can see it in
the audiences we get, there are new people coming to our
shows."
However, he insisted Hall and Oates were anything but a nostalgia
act, and anyone coming to their shows expecting something like the
recent Here And Now tours would be very disappointed.
Unlike many 80s artists, who disappeared for the best part of two
decades before making a big comeback, Hall and Oates had never been
away. They spent a few years concentrating on solo projects in the
90s, and Oates moved to Colorado to build a house and raise a
family, but the pair began working together again in 1996 and
haven't stopped since.
Their new tour, just two years since their last set of UK dates, is
to back up recent album Our Kind Of Soul - mainly covers of soul
artists such as Al Green and The Temptations who provided their
inspiration when they first got together as Philadelphia students
in the late 60s.
Although the band are mainly known for their 80s work, their first
album was released in 1972.
He said: "People seem to be responding to our material and our live
shows have always been the backbone of what we do.
"We've continued to play live, people don't see us as a nostalgia
band. We never disappeared and came back with a big tour.
"We just continue to play and update our original sound, but at the
same time, we've got this 20-30 year legacy of music behind
us."
Hall and Oates play The Apollo on Monday.
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