Sharon Redd – ‘Beat The Street’

At this particular time Prelude was bringing out kind of electronic disco records – ‘Rockers Revenge’, ‘D Train’, that kind of stuff – and Sharon Redd was part of that. It was coming out of traditional bands, with a bass player, someone on the maracas, the drummer's trying his best to be in time after a few pints the night before, all that. But I was really taken aback by the electronic side of what's happening here. Funk and soul is still in the music but it had the undertones of synths and drum machines driving the bottom end and I loved that. "Beat the Street" wasn't Sharon Redd's biggest tune over here, but it was the more underground side of her, the title is sort of literal, those beats you were hearing were the beats on the streets - and I'd never heard anything like it at the time. It was electronica, it was soul, and there's a proper, proper song there that takes you up, down, all over the place.