Klein & M.B.O. - Dirty Talk (Greg Wilson Edit)

Greg Wilson says: " ‘Dirty Talk’ is a track with a bit of history, going back to my time at Legend and Wigan Pier during the early 80′s. I bought it in from Spin Inn in Manchester, the North’s main import suppliers back then (the essential shop outside London for DJ’s like myself, who specialized in upfront black music) – it was on an Italian label called Zanza. This was a track that I could quite easily have missed, as it had been ordered in by Harry Taylor, who looked after the DJ’s who were playing in the regions gay clubs, where they went for a more European sound (the overwhelming majority of tracks played in the black clubs were imported from the US). However, aware of the Electro-Funk direction I was pursuing (at a time when pretty much everyone else on the scene had dismissed this new musical development), Harry brought the track to my attention, knowing that, although I wouldn’t have touched the vocal version with a bargepole, the instrumental ‘USA Connection’ would be right up my street.

There was no such term as Italo Disco at the time, this wasn’t coined until the following year (by German label ZYX), so ‘Dirty Talk’ was, and will always remain, full-blooded Electro in my eyes. The upshot was that it became one of the biggest tracks of 1982 within the black clubs up North, having perfectly fitted into what I was playing at my venues, then the most popular nights on the scene. It wasn’t the first Italian 12″ to go big with the black crowd (although most people would have been completely oblivious as to the European origins of these tracks) – others included Harry Thumann’s ‘Underwater’, Firefly’s ‘Love Is Gonna Be On Your Side’ and Electra’s ‘Feels Good’.

However, this record’s influence would be felt far beyond the black scene. Hewan Clarke, a DJ I knew as a Jazz specialist who appeared on the same bill as me at numerous All-Dayers, had become the resident at a new Manchester club that had opened a few months earlier, in May ’82 – this was The Haçienda. Although their clientele mainly consisted of students and Indie kids, Hewan, obviously clued-up to what was happening in the black clubs, picked up on ‘Dirty Talk’s’ success and began to play it himself. One night whilst it was on, a couple of the guys from New Order came into the DJ booth and asked what the record was and if they could borrow it from him as they were working on some new stuff in the studio and wanted to take it in as a reference. As things turned out, it became a key influence on their next single, the record that would bridge the gap between Indie and dance, taking them high into the charts and breaking them big style commercially – the mighty ‘Blue Monday’ (which became the best selling 12″ of all-time).

It was something of a ‘what goes around’ moment when I was approached in 2007, a quarter of a century on from when I first played ‘Dirty Talk’, to put together a new edit for Flexx, a Belgian label, who’d acquired a license for the track from Tony Carrasco, who co-wrote and co-produced it. I added a few overdubs and incorporated a loop from the follow-up single, ‘Wonderful’ (which was also a big black tune), for my version."