Full Force Get Busy One Time

You mean to tell me I’ve never posted about 80’s R&B / funk masters Full Force? The genius of Bow Legged Lou, Paul Anthony, B-Fine and the rest of the fellas have never been discussed at length on the self-indulgent and hopefully sometimes entertaining- to-others blog named IckMusic? Well, that’s just plain wrong.

You’ve heard Full Force before. If you’ve heard the beats, backing vocals and instrumentation behind Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam (“I Wonder if I Take You Home”, “All Cried Out”), Samantha Fox (“I Wanna Have Some Fun”, “Naughty Girls (Need Love Too)”), or UTFO’s “Roxanne Roxanne”, you’ve heard Full Force.

Based out of Brooklyn, the boys in Full Force didn’t really get it going until they wrote and produced Lisa Lisa’s debut in 1985. From there, they released their own debut the next year. Check out a snippet from All Music’s scathing review: “This 1986 debut included the mildly entertaining “Alice, I Want You Just For Me!,” but was mostly either uneventful love tunes, haphazard novelty pieces or unfocused and formulaic quasi-raps.”

Well color me stupid, I was a fool for their unfocused and formulaic quasi-raps! They released a few more albums in the 80’s and 90’s (as well as one comeback / tribute / greatest hits album in 2001). But they stayed busy as a production team through the years (I lost track of the boys around, oh, 1988).

I give you two 12″ extended remixes recently pulled from my vinyl collection. One with Full Force in front of the mics, one behind.

Full Force: Alice, I Want You Just For Me (mp3)

U.T.F.O.: Ya Cold Wanna Be With Me (mp3) – written & produced by Full Force

• Check out Full Force’s Greatest Hits on Amazon.
• UTFO’s tune comes from Lethal.
• Did you know…. Full Force is credited with background vocals on Bob Dylan’s “Death is Not the End”, from his 1988 album ‘Down in the Groove’? I wonder how that collaboration came to be…