Champagne (band)
Champagne was a Dutch pop quartet (mixed doubles in the style of ABBA) that had some small to medium-sized European hits in English between 1976 and 1981. Biggest success: Rock and Roll Star .
The members
When Paulette Bronkhorst, Trudy Huysdens, Bert van der Wiel († 2009) and Jan Vredenburg were put together for Champagne in 1976, each of them had already worked as a front or background singer in other Nederpop projects (e.g. Mouth & MacNeal , Flashback, Johnny Kendal Machine).
The career
Champagne was produced in Rotterdam . Their melodic sound corresponded to the conception of Europop at the time, was more characterized by white easy listening and folk than by black influences. The Dutch pop and rock veteran Wally Tax (together with composer Martin Duiser) mainly wrote the mostly soft pop songs for the mixed doubles. In order to vary the obvious musical reference to ABBA, at least optically, the quartet was initially given a Roaring Twenties nostalgia look, as it was in the mid-1970s with films such as The Clou, Chinatown, Death on the Nile, Ken Russell's Valentino or The Great Gatsby was quite en vogue. Champagne was mostly nostalgic and elegant: pinstripes and hat veils formed a clear contrast to popular pop outfits like disco glamor, glam rock glitter or punk dirty.
At the end of 1976, the first (and most successful) single, Rock and Roll Star, was first released in BeNeLux, then in early 1977 in many countries around the world. A musical travesty that only Europop of the 1970s was able to produce: the harmonica intro sobbing with longing is followed by fast, folk-like chords in 2/8 time. The structure with the rising chorus is reminiscent of ABBA's 1975 mega-seller SOS . The song was completely unsuitable for the discos, it was simply not danceable. Nevertheless, it worked out to orientate itself on successful sound patterns: Rock and Roll Star reached number 2 in the Netherlands, number 12 in Germany and, the high point of the international success, number 83 in the American Billboard Hot 100. In the course of their career, the band reached Placements and a. in Italy, Belgium, Eastern Europe, Israel, South Africa and Asia.
The second single, Oh me oh my, good-bye , was a slow, romantic track with a sentimental goodbye-to-all-that attitude not dissimilar to that in the English salon novels by Foster or Galsworthy. The melody was vaguely reminiscent of ABBA's Dancing Queen and the beats of Knowing me, knowing you . The song was number 3 in the Netherlands, climbed into the top 25 in Germany. The third single, Valentino, is considered by Champagne connoisseurs to be their best and most ABBA-like. A song about the silent movie star of the same name, which in turn became a popular top 5 hit in the Netherlands. Thus, in the season 76/77 , Champagne had three singles in the top 100 annual charts of their homeland. In Germany, "Valentino" just missed the top 50 despite brisk radio broadcasts. At that time, MediaControl only published 50 chart positions every week. The song did not reach that mark. All of the following Champagne singles in Germany share this fate; If the "Top 100" had already existed, the balance would certainly be different. Almost at the same time as "Valentino" the first album with the simple title Champagne was released - a pleasing, ballad-heavy long player, produced in the full and rich sound of Neder-Pop typical of the time. The record contained new songs, new recordings of the single B-sides "Kiss you baby" and "The last song", old material by Wally Tax (released by himself as a soloist in the early 1970s), the ballad "Annabelle", the Trudy's daughter of the same name is dedicated and the Hollies cover "The air that I breathe". Despite the successful singles it contained, the album only climbed to 33rd place in the Netherlands.
Champagne received the prestigious Dutch Conamus Export Prize in 1977 for their complete oeuvre to date. The four were well known in their homeland and were booked a lot, including for print advertising for the underwear brand "Bon Giorno". The quartet was one of the most promising newcomers on the European pop scene. It completed numerous international gigs, e.g. B. as a guest act in front of 40,000 people in Italy or at live concerts in Israel. In France the group was called "Dutch Champagne", in South Africa "Bubbley". In Germany she was seen in popular television programs such as “ Musikladen ”, “ Disco ”, “MOT”, “ Plattenküche ”, “Die Drehscheibe”, “ Ein Platz an der Sonne ”, “ Current Schaubude ” and the “ZDF New Year's Eve 1977” . Even the television of the GDR invited the popular Dutch, among other things to a special of the music program "Rund" and in "Burgparty".
Duiser and Tax took many months to build on their initial successes. In 1978 only one new single was to be released with Light up my eyes . It rose to number 11 in the Netherlands. From 1979 onwards, the nostalgia and Gatsby scam got away more and more and tried, following the zeitgeist of the time, the disco sound. The lively dance pop titles up until 1980 were called: That's life, Black Jack, Rollerball, Captain, Sjooh sjooh sugar . While they became small chart successes in the Netherlands, they consistently flopped in Western Europe. The greatest hits album Rollerball was therefore only released in the Netherlands in 1979. The last single Captain was no longer released by Ariola, but by A&R Records.
Champagne was officially dissolved in 1981. By that time, they said they had sold around 2.5 million singles and 320,000 albums. Paulette Bronkhorst, now a mother of four, immediately joined the short-lived duo La Chica after the group ended and later worked occasionally as an author and editor. Trudy, who had temporarily formed the Chrome Trio with Bert and Lang Tall Ernie's saxophonist, married the renowned jazz musician Jack van Poll and moved with him to South Africa in 1995 for a few years. The couple has lived in Belgium since 2003. Bert is said to have gained a foothold in the hotel industry in Rotterdam later. Only Jan Vredenburg, who briefly joined the band Shampoo, remained loyal to the Champagne project for a while: in 1983 he attempted a comeback with the singles Woman I know and A little bit of soap . He was joined by two new singers: Rosina Brochard and Jean Cariot, two experienced musicians. But not even at home the three were granted a notable success. Vredenburg meanwhile worked for a distribution of classical music. In his own blog, which focuses on the past eras of popular music, lovers can communicate with him via the Internet. On a German fan page Jan announced in October 2011 that he wanted to move his residence from Holland to Thuringia, where he would like to buy a house with a river plot. There he might also start work on a new musical project.
Since the end of their years together, none of the four has really worked in the pop industry. Paulette, Trudy, Bert and Jan rarely came together to provide information about the old days, as on June 21, 2005 in a special on the show Vergeten verhalen on the Rotterdam TV station RTV Rijnmond. In the absence of global super hits, Champagne's career is much less well documented than that of other Dutch acts of the time such as Pussycat , George Baker Selection or Luv ' . For a long time neither the victory of the CD over vinyl nor the 1970s revival, which was rampant throughout the 1990s, could induce the record companies to put their songs on CD. That is why almost only Nederpop insiders remember the once so hopeful band, which was described in music magazines as a mixture of ABBA and Manhattan Transfer .
comeback
On March 19, 2007 SonyBMG Holland finally released a best-of album in the Netherlands, which not only contains all the singles from the Ariola era, but also many album songs. For the first time, almost all of the material is officially available on CD, around 25 years after the introduction of this medium. Meanwhile the first fansite exists on the internet. It was compiled by German fans and contains a biography, discography and extensive photo material. On November 19, 2006, the Novum agency announced that Champagne was reuniting and that they were planning a tour with a nostalgic show program through Dutch hotels and theaters in 2007/2008. The quartet mainly wanted to perform popular songs and pop standards from the 1950s. Because of an illness, Bert van der Wiel could not take part in the rehearsals in the summer of 2007, so the dates of the performances were never officially confirmed, but the tour project as such was never really canceled. In September 2008, the act "Tom Toddnick vs. Champagne" released a 4-minute dance version of "Rock and Roll Star", for which the 1970s title was underlaid with house beats. The track is officially available as MP3 from many well-known download portals and also appeared on the Toddnick album "Wispy things". On June 29th, 2009 Bert van de Wiel died after a short but serious illness.
Discography
Albums
- 1977: Champagne
- 1979: Rollerball - Greatest Hits
- 2007: The Best of Champagne
Singles
| year | Title album |
Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes) |
Remarks | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 DE
|
 US
|
 NL
|
|||
| 1976 | Rock and Roll Star Champagne |
DE12 (17 weeks) DE |
US83 (4 weeks) US |
NL2 (12 weeks) NL |
B-side: Kiss You Baby
|
| 1977 | Oh Me Oh My Goodbye Champagne |
DE25 (8 weeks) DE |
- |
NL3 (9 weeks) NL |
B-side: The Last Song
|
| Valentino Champagne |
- | - |
NL5 (8 weeks) NL |
B-side: Ain't No Fun To Me
|
|
| 1978 | Light Up My Eyes Rollerball |
- | - |
NL11 (6 weeks) NL |
B-side: Don't Cry
|
| 1979 | That's Life Rollerball |
- | - |
NL23 (4 weeks) NL |
B-side: Music Is My Living
|
| Black Jack Rollerball |
- | - |
NL21 (5 weeks) NL |
B-side: Reason
|
|
| Rollerball rollerball |
- | - |
NL23 (5 weeks) NL |
B-side: No Love At All
|
|
| 1980 | Sjooh Sjooh Sugar |
- | - |
NL33 (3 weeks) NL |
B-side: I So I So I Want You
|
More singles
- 1978: Santa Clause is Coming To Town (contribution on a Christmas sampler)
- 1980: Captain / Just Open Up Your Heart
- 1983: The Woman I Know / All That I Can Give
- 1983: A Little Bit Of Soap / With The Sun In Your Eyes
- 2008: Rock and Roll Star (Tom Toddnick Vs Champagne)