School Disco.Com - Summer Holiday

CD One begins with the 80s classic "Club Tropicana" by those mullet-heroes, Wham! Nice to see the original version is featured here and not the awful remixed variant that was released a few years back. The same also applies to Bananarama's "Cruel Summer", another biggie from the decade that taste forgot. There's also a good mix of 80s 'summer' songs that don't really have 'summer' stamped all over them: "Ride On Time" (Black Box), "New Sensation" (INXS), "Don't You Want Me Baby" (Human League), "Cuddly Toy" (Roachford) and "Somewhere In My Heart" (Aztec Camera).....songs that aren't necessarily connected with summer, but you can't fail to conjure up thoughts of that time of year. Naturally, with this being a 'summer' album, you'd expect at least a couple of well-known holiday songs, and CD One features two of the biggest of all time: "Summer Breeze" (The Isley Brothers) and "Summer - The First Time" (Bobby Goldsboro) - two songs worthy of the title 'summer classics'. Other great songs to mention from CD One are: "Hot In The City" (Billy Idol) again, the original and better version, "Cosmic Girl" (Jamiroquai) and the often ignored but equally good "Cuba" (The Gibson Brothers).

CD Two has a more 'feel good' factor to it, and what better way to kick things off than Cliff Richard's "Summer Holiday". If this won't make you think of summer, nothing will! Following this is the often used "Grease Megamix". It was fun listening to this the first time around, but how many times in recent years has this been used on a compiliation CD? **Note to record companies: why not use the 1998 Grease Megamix version that was much better than the original?** If CD One focused heavily on the 80s, the second Disc pays homeage to the 70s with such timeless classics as "Mr Blue Sky" (ELO), "Lovely Day" (Bill Withers), "In The Summertime" (Mungo Jerry), "Dreadlock Holiday" (10CC) and a song from the beginning of the modern-day package holiday era: "Y Viva Espana" (Sylvia). And it doesn't get much cheesier than Barry Manilow's "Copacabana" (similar to The Nolans' "I'm In The Mood For Dancing" featured on the first disc!) Other great songs to mention are: "Summertime" (Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince), "Dance Little Sister" (Terence Trent D'Arby), "I Don't Wanna Dance" (Eddy Grant) and an anthem from my own school days, "Teenage Kicks" (The Undertones).

Even if "School Holiday" is meant to evoke memories of summers past, some of the forty songs on this compilation seem out of place here. "Ace Of Spades" (Motorhead) *may* be a rock classic (a fave of mine too), but is is a summer song? Nope. The same can be said for "Music" (John Miles), "Africa" (Toto) and [Hit Me Baby] "One More Time" (Britney Spears). Still, you'll be hard pushed to find a 'duff' song on this double CD, and it's one I recommend highly.

Jon

The double cd contains lots of great tracks from over the last 40 years that have brightened up our summers and made being away from school even more memorable. Wham! kick things off with their great Club Tropicana and Cd 1 (or 1st Period as it's called here) never lets up from here. Including familar hits from Rod Stewart, Human League, Motorhead and The Nolans as well as less heard classics from Aztec Camera, Roachford, Baltimora and Ryan Paris, disc one is just fun pop music. Disc 2 which is just as good has a mre laid back feel with Mungo Jerry, 10CC and Bill Withers but still has some other great upbeat tracks from Lightning Seeds, Eddy Grant and Billy Ocean as well as the classic Teenage Kicks from The Undertones.

This CD is great and is a good soundtrack to summers of the past with loads of huge hits and other classic songs at your disposal and it carries on the great fun filled albums we now expect in the School Disco.com series. If you just want a good fun album then go for this, it doesn't disappoint.