17092015 - Heatwave "Too Hot to Handle"

Heatwave? Ring a bell? No? I'll save you the trouble. The song you have heard before is "Boogie Nights", and that's the song you've heard. That goes for most of us, anyway. It's their biggest hit, and one of those songs a lot of people recognize without necessarily knowing who's playing. And yes, I'm guilty as charged myself, as I thought for years that the song was by Earth, Wind & Fire. The rest of this 1976 album is not bad at all, and if funk/disco with some sweet'n'soft soul ballads is your thing you could do a lot worse. This was Heatwave's debut album, and they would go on to release five more records, with Keith Wilder - one of the band's two vocalists - the only member still in the group for their final release in 1988. Keyboardist Rod Temperton, who wrote all the music on "Too Hot to Handle", stayed on for the next Heatwave record, and would go on to write for other artists, including three of the songs on Michael Jackson's "Thriller", making him filthy stinking rich today. Meanwhile, bass player Mario Mantese also played on the band's second album, released in 1978, and would later that year get stabbed in the heart by his girlfriend after leaving a party. After being clinically dead for six minutes he was reanimated, operated and spent months in a coma before he woke up, blind, mute and completely paralyzed. Today he sees, walks and talks again, and is still in touch with the woman who stabbed him... With whom he also has a child. Bass players, eh?