Seona Dancing
More To Lose (Extended Version)
You’re On My Side

I can’t believe I found this in a used records bin for 300 yen. This thing goes for close to a $100 online these days.

That’s of course, not because of the song’s quality (which I’ll get to in a bit) but because of the new romantic looking dude on the right. That would be Rick Gervais. As I’m sure many of you know, Seona Dancing was Gervais’ early attempt at stardom, but they only managed to release less than a handful of failed singles before fading into obscurity (save for the Philippines, where they are legendary one-hit-wonders). Do a YouTube search of the group and you’ll uncover countless uploads of their few songs, as well as bits from various talk shows where the hosts drudge out clips from the group in an effort to embarrass Gervais, who has no doubt long gotten sick of the joke by now.

I wonder if any of the talk show hosts who play these clips realize that the few songs that Seona Dancing put out were, actually not that bad? Sure, they’re very dated and not entirely original, but that goes for a lot of fantastic music from that era. You’re going to tell me that “More To Lose” is somehow an embarrassing relic while songs of similar quality by B-tier acts like General Public, Spandau Ballet, or any other act featured on a John Hughes soundtrack are any better?

“More To Lose” should’ve been a hit. It has a fantastic feel of melancholy, the opening piano melody is a hell of a hook, and Gervais’ early-80s Bowie impersonation is spot on. For me, it’s evocative of “Don’t You Forget About Me,” only slightly less epic and far less annoying. (The only people who are more sick of that song than me are Simple Minds.)

“You’re On My Side” isn’t as good, and a far more obvious Bowie knock-off. It’s way too minimal, with zero hooks. It’s just some drum beats, two keys on a keyboard, and Gervais’ howling, which is where the faults in his voice become a bit more glaring. Still though, is it any worse than any other mid-level synthpop song of the time? Not really.

There are dozens of rips of these tracks online, but most are: A) On YouTube and B) sound overly compressed or scratchy. I’m sure I’m not the first person to provide high-quality rips of these online, but I must be the first person in a while, as I can’t find any right now. I doubt that it’s going to get re-released anytime soon. Someone I was talking to on Twitter suggested that Gervais’ is crazy for keeping this out-of-print. But I highly doubt that he owns these tracks. London Records (now part of Universal I believe) probably has better things to do than pull this one out of the cellar, even if they could find the masters, which I doubt. And maybe with Gervais’ recent move to “I’m going to offend you AAAAAH” style of comedy, maybe they just don’t want to deal with any baggage a re-release might entail.

Shame, it’s one of the best things that edgelord asshole ever did.

Update: Okay I know yinz mean well by pointing out the other blog that has these songs. And I’m not mad at anyone who did that. But that other blog posts often posts (not so good) rips of legally available music. Additionally, that other blog routinely PLAGIARIZES written content without proper attribution. I refuse to link to them, or name. I hope it burns to the ground.