Love in space and time..

Dee D. Jackson - Automatic Lover (Original Promo Video)



Found this great video on YouTube a while back.. I haven't really gotten any of Dee D. Jackson's (AKA Deirdre Cozier) albums yet, but this video is something else.. The soft-focus lens, those costumes, that robot! It's dreamy, glamorous and a veritable camp explosion all at the same time. Same goes for the song, written and produced by Gary and Patty Unwin, it's an epic, if not slightly campy piece of spacey, electronic disco. That angelic refrain "See me, feel me, hear me, love me, touch me.." is just the ultimate.. It's like a bright, beaming silver lining, the one element that really seems to bring everything together and make this thing work..

Gary Unwin was, for the most part, a bass player on many of the disco productions that came out of Munich, apparing on many productions by Giorgio Moroder, Jürgen Korduletsch, Kunze/Levay, Anthony Monn, Frank Farian etc.. Given some of the people he's worked with, I guess it's no surprise he decided to go in an electronic direction when taking his turn on the production side.. I first heard this song several years back on the indefinitely defunct (?) site deepdisco.com. A great site that was one of my favourites and something of a pre-cursor to mp3 blogging.. The version that deepdisco.com put up was actually the Sylvia Robinson (of Mickey & Sylvia, Sugar Hill Records and "Pillow Talk" fame) cover version.. It was pretty much an imitation of the original, albeit a rather cheap one. I'm guessing it was an attempt to get a hit before the Dee D. Jackson version got proper stateside distribution..

That said, the best cover version of this song, in my opinion, is the more recent version by Swedish electro-crooner Jay-Jay Johanson. It was from his "Antenna" (2002, RCA) album from several years back and really zeroes in on the sublime beauty of the song.. The video is visually stunning and the cover version itself is just as good, if not even better than the original..

Jay-Jay Johanson - Automatic Lover (Promo Video)



When Ms. Jackson was asked on one of her fansites, "what is the favourite song that you've recorded?," she replied "my favourite song has yet to be released." Perhaps she wishes her fame could have gone beyond "Automatic Lover," nevertheless, she's still around making music, and in fact today runs her own label, DDE Records, from her home base in Torino, Italy..

Here's one more video of Dee D. Jackson (and robot), performing "Automatic Lover" "live" on the Spanish TV program Aplauso in 1978.

Dee D. Jackson - Automatic Lover (Spanish TV, 1978)



LINKS:
DEE D. JACKSON - THE FANSITE
DEE D. JACKSON FANS WORLDWIDE
DEE D. JACKSON 2002 INTERVIEW
DEE D. JACKSON @ DISCOGS
GARY UNWIN @ DISCOGS
PATTY UNWIN @ DISCOGS

PURCHASE:
STILL ALIVE - DISCO OF THE '80s (PAL DVD) @ AMAZON.DE (INCLUDES "AUTOMATIC LOVER" PROMO VIDEO)

CATEGORIES: VISUAL DISCO, NUDISCO, WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO..