Shake Your Pants! Robinsongs Goes "Insane" With New Cameo Reissues

Shake Your Pants! Robinsongs Goes “Insane” With New Cameo Reissues

In 2010, Cherry Red’s Superbird imprint combined Cameo’s first two albums, Cardiac Arrest and We All Know Who We Are, in one package. Now, five years later, Cherry Red’s Robinsongs has just reissued the funk supergroup’s third and fourth outings, 1978’s Ugly Ego and 1979’s Secret Omen.

Originally founded as The New York City Players, Larry Blackmon and his big band soon changed the group name to Cameo, to avoid confusion with the Ohio Players. Prior to this, Blackmon (the band’s percussionist and also its chief creative force as songwriter and producer) and keyboardist-arranger Gregory Johnson had played together in the band East Coast. Taking their cues from not only the Ohio Players but George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, Blackmon and his crew knew how to get funky – but also had their sights on the dance floor.

Released on Casablanca’s Chocolate City imprint, Cameo’s 1977 debut Cardiac Arrest went Top 20 on the U.S. R&B chart and also spawned two R&B hits (“Rigor Mortis” and “Funk Funk”); sophomore LP We All Know Who We Are yielded another R&B chart entry with “Serious.” Ugly Ego, recorded in New York and Burbank, featured a nine-piece iteration of the group; its line-up had been somewhat fluid since Cardiac Arrest. Former jazz bassist and veteran arranger Johnny Pate (Curtis Mayfield, Bee Gees) supplied string charts for the album. Upon its release in September 1978, the chart placement of Ego was anything but ugly, as it reached No. 16 R&B (just one notch below We All Know Who We Are). The funk jam “Insane” reached the R&B Top 20; the ballad “Give Love a Chance” made the lower reaches of the R&B chart at No. 76.

Cameo picked up creative and commercial steam with the second release on this set, Secret Omen. With seven members from the Ugly Ego line-up remaining in place, Omen took Cameo into the R&B Top 5 for the very first time. Recorded in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, it also included the band’s biggest hits on the R&B singles chart yet: the exuberant No. 3 smash “I Just Want to Be,” and the silky No. 10 “Sparkle.” The album took inspiration from disco, funk and even Philadelphia soul and set the stage for Cameosis. That LP kicked off the 1980s for Cameo with a No. 1 R&B album.

Robinsongs will follow the release of Ugly Ego and Secret Omen in March with another two-fer, of Cameosis and Feel Me, both from 1980. In addition to reaching pole position, Cameosis also crossed over with a not-too-shabby Top 25 Pop placement. Album No. 6, Feel Me, wasn’t quite as successful despite two more Top 30 R&B singles (one of which, “Keep It Hot,” hit No. 4) but the successes kept on coming for Cameo. 1986’s Word Up! finally cracked the U.S. Top 10 Pop chart and earned the group its only charting album in the United Kingdom, as well. Since that peak, Cameo has released a further five albums, and Larry Blackmon continues to tour today with an iteration of the group he founded.

Ugly Ego/Secret Omen is available now, while Cameosis/Feel Me follows on March 9 in the U.K. and one week later in the U.S. Both include new essays by Lois Wilson and Charles Waring. respectively. Remastering on both release is courtesy Alan Wilson. You can order below!

Cameo, Ugly Ego/Secret Omen (Robinsongs CDMRED648, 2015) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

I’ll Be with You
Insane
Give Love a Chance
I Want You
Ugly Ego
Anything You Wanna Do
Friend to Me
Two of Us
Energy
I Just Want to Be
Find My Way
Macho
The Rock
Sparkle
New York

Tracks 1-8 from Ugly Ego, Chocolate City CCLP 2006, 1978
Tracks 9-15 from Secret Omen, Chocolate City CCLP 2008, 1979

Cameo, Cameosis/Feel Me (Robinsongs CDMRED652, 2015) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Cameosis
Shake Your Pants
Please You
We’re Goin’ Out Tonight
I Care for You
On the One
Why Have I Lost You
Shake Your Pants (Bonus Track – 7” Version)
Throw It Down
Your Love Takes Me Out
Keep It Hot
Feel Me
Is This the Way
Roller Skates
Better Days

Tracks 1-7 from Cameosis, Chocolate City CCLP 2011, 1980
Track 8 from Chocolate City single 3210, 1980
Track 9 from Feel Me, Chocolate City 2016, 1980

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Joe Marchese

JOE MARCHESE (Editor) joined The Second Disc shortly after its launch in early 2010, and has since penned daily news and reviews about classic music of all genres. In 2015, Joe formed the Second Disc Records label. Celebrating the great songwriters, producers and artists who created the sound of American popular song and beyond, Second Disc Records, in conjunction with labels including Real Gone Music and Cherry Red Records, has released newly-curated collections produced and annotated by Joe from iconic artists such as Dionne Warwick, Diana Ross and The Supremes, Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, The Spinners, Johnny Mathis, Bobby Darin, Meat Loaf, Laura Nyro, Melissa Manchester, Liza Minnelli, Darlene Love, Al Stewart, Michael Nesmith, and many others.

Joe has written liner notes, produced, or contributed to over 200 reissues from a diverse array of artists, among them America, JD Souther, Nat "King" Cole, Paul Williams, Lesley Gore, Dusty Springfield, BJ Thomas, The 5th Dimension, Burt Bacharach, The Mamas and the Papas, Carpenters, Perry Como, Rod McKuen, Doris Day, Jackie DeShannon, Petula Clark, Robert Goulet, and Andy Williams.

Over the past two decades, Joe has also worked in a variety of capacities on and off Broadway as well as at some of the premier theatres in the U.S., including Lincoln Center Theater, George Street Playhouse, Paper Mill Playhouse, Long Wharf Theatre, and the York Theatre Company. He has felt privileged to work on productions alongside artists such as the late Jack Klugman, Eli Wallach, Arthur Laurents, Betty Comden and Adolph Green. In 2009, Joe began contributing theatre and music reviews to the print publication The Sondheim Review, and in 2012, he joined the staff of The Digital Bits as a regular contributor writing about film and television on DVD and Blu-ray.

Joe currently resides in the suburbs of New York City.

1 thought on “Shake Your Pants! Robinsongs Goes “Insane” With New Cameo Reissues”

AC
March 6, 2015 at 10:00 am

It’s nice to see Cameo’s ’70s catalog getting some love in recent years. Though they weren’t held in quite as high esteem by the general public as monsters like P-Funk, the Ohio Players, and Kool & the Gang, funk cognoscenti knew all about Cameo and how great they were. And this was well before their ’80s commercial peak. Those boys could lay it down.

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