Tune of the week: Marcel King - Reach for love

I recently got my hands on the compilation set Palatine: The Factory Story 1979 - 1990. One of the tracks that has stood out for me is the above track by Marcel King. It's a track that should have been a hit in the '80s - '90s and seems a little incongruent with Factory Records' other acts.

Marcello Carlin, who maintains the brit music blog "The Church of Me", articulates this incongruence more explicitly by saying:

Produced by Bernard Sumner, it received enthusiastic, if slightly baffled, notices in the music press but sold minimally, even though it filled the floor of the Haçienda regularly; to this day [Happy Mondays lead singer] Shaun Ryder regards it as the best record Factory ever released...

Listening to "Reach For Love" now, it seems like a pop single just slightly out of its time - it should have been a huge hit, but Factory's legendarily crap distribution and marketing facilities militated against that, as did lack of radio play. There is also the question of whether "Reach For Love" was slightly too intense a song and performance to become that huge a hit.

I got the video quote above from the excellent BBC america blog "Anglophenia".

What fascinates me about this track is how little known it is despite it's awesomeness. I would have surely hit the dance floor with my "side punk" hairdo when I was a teenager ;) I see some parallels between this track by Marcel King and Lee Osler's "Back to Ypsilanti" that I raised in a previous blogpost. Both are tracks that have a very obvious pop/dance appeal and in my opinion should have been much popular. But for one reason or another, both tracks and their performers have faded into pop obscurity.

I did a little investigation into Marcel King and apparently he was the lead singer for a motown-esque band called Sweet Sensation that had a number 1 hit with a song called Sad Sweet Dreamer. I am sure you've heard it before. I've attached the youTube video below for good measure.

Tragically, Marcel King has since passed away. The result of a brain hemorrhage, as stated on the "Find a grave" website (???).