Baccara - The Collection

The Sensational Baccara

Put your serious mood to one side before reading this review:

Baccara...what a group! The original purveyors of sexy-disco. Those spanish accents! Those lyrics! Those strings! But enough flattery...Why is it darned-impossible to get a Baccara collection that has all of their best (by which I mean funniest) material on it? We all know that every CD worth it's salt is going to include "Yes Sir I Can Boogie" and "Sorry I'm A Lady", but the tracks that make up the rest of the many best-ofs out there always seem to leave something good out. Of course you need "Parlez-Vouz Francais", with it's side-splitting spoken intro, and yes you also need "Ay Ay Sailor"...no need to expand on the merits of that one, the title alone should do it. "Yummy Yummy Yummy" is another essential track, a cover version (of course) that perfectly suits the Baccara sugar coated, nudge-nudge musical style.

But for every album with these golden hits included, you have to go without something else. The lyrically challenging "Koochie-Koo" is a must have comedy classic, Hearing these bargain basement sirens gasping "Koochie-Koo, I wanna play with you!" over and over again in exactly the same style as the afore-mentioned two hit singles is an experience I wouldn't want to pass up. Nor would I go without "Love You Till I Die" - now that's a very hard one to track down, it was originally the B-side to "Sorry I'm a Lady", and is actually a rather dreamy ballad, or to be precise, it sounds like a dreamy ballad you might hear through the haze of an all night drinking binge, with it's hypnotic echoing synthesised string background constantly droning away in your head...I love it, needless to add. It is actually available on the first "real" Baccara album, but buying that means you don't get "Parlez Vous Francais" and other must-haves. When are we going to get all these songs combined in the one package? I guess the point I'm trying to make is that at least this CD ("The Collection") has the best available selection of tracks of all the ones I can see for sale. Shame it's so expensive. 19 tracks by Baccara is quite an ordeal to sit through, as their music style has all of one (count 'em!) facets to it. They might as well be 19 of the very best.

By the way, has anyone else realised that "Yes Sir I Can Boogie" completely rips off Thelma Houston's "Don't Leave Me this Way"? It's ok, I forgive them...just look at those misty, doe-eyed mug shots on the Baccara CD sleeve - who wouldn't?
August 16, 2005

Lightweight but entertaining disco music

Music can be serious, but it doesn't have to be serious all the time. Baccara, with their European accents, their sexy voices and their lightweight songs, made disco music that was never meant to be taken seriously. Their music was pure fun, and never meant to be anything else. If anybody doubted that, listen to their cover of Yummy yummy yummy. It was a silly song when first recorded by the Ohio Express in the sixties and sounds every bit as silly by Baccara, but it suits them.

Baccara topped the British charts in the late seventies with Yes sir I can boogie. The follow-up, Sorry I'm a lady, provided them with a top ten hit. These are the best tracks here, though there are some other wonderful tracks, especially The devil sent you to Laredo and Parles-vous Francais.

Baccara did not make music that could be called essential, but they had a style all their own that provides a refreshing change from more serious music. March 7, 2005

HOW VERY SEXY !

this was the music of my childhood and i passionately hated back then .. i thought kraftwerk and bowie was "it"..but now older and wiser i know better, this is the music to take a vacation in an hedonist southern French town and have naught affairs with married german business men ! "yes sir i can boogie" and "parlez vous francais" especially classy and sensual beyond words..so what if they cannot pronounce "W"s ! December 8, 2001

The baccara challenge: to sit through this one in one go

According to their website, 'in 1977 on the Spanish island of Fuerteventura, Mayte Matee and Maria Mendiolo were performing flamenco and singing traditional Spanish songs in cabaret for the many tourists who went there for the solitude and beautiful beaches, when their 'huge potential' (sic) was spotted by RCA exec Leon Deane'.

The rest, as they say, is history. As are Baccara, to the tremendous fortune of music lovers around the world (and, one imagines, holiday makers seeking solitude on Fuerteventura). Nevertheless their legacy remains, encapsulated on this astounding 19 track CD, which gamely steps beyond the sassy disco for which they became famous (most notably 'yes sir, I can boogie' and 'sorry I'm a lady') and plumbs the possible depths to which a record executive's judgment can sink.

Okay, 'yummy yummy yummy' and 'parlez-vous francais' might survive and even flourish in the harsh environment of 70s formula disco (one-riff drum beat, thumping bass, occasional glissando on the strings and a wah wah chickety chuckety sound panned hard right), but 'the devil sent you to lorado'? This is hellish stuff. It would be a resolute individual indeed who could listen to all this material in one uninterrupted sitting.

It would be nice to say that Baccara represent the Ed Wood Jr. of pop music, but sadly the last forty years are littered with efforts far worse than this, to the point where 'yes sir, I can boogie' sounds positively classy.

At least until you get to the bit where they sing 'boogie voogie' because they can't say their Ws, at any rate.

Olly Buxton January 12, 2000

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