Silver Convention

Silver Convention
General information
Genre (s)	Disco
founding	1974
resolution	1979
Founding members
singing	Linda G. Thompson (until 1976)
singing	Penny McLean (1975-1978, 1979)
singing	Ramona Wulf
former members
singing	Rhonda Heath (from 1976)
singing	Jackie Robinson (1975)
singing	Roberta Kelly (1975)
singing	Betsy Allen (1975)
singing	Lucy Neale (1975)
singing	Jackie Carter (1975)
singing	Zenda Jacks (1978-1979)

Silver Convention was a German disco formation from the 1970s.

Band history

The Silver Convention group was founded in Munich by producer Michael Kunze . The composer was the then studio pianist Sylvester Levay , whose nickname "Silver" gave the group its name. The group was a typical representative of the so-called Munich Sound , a subspecies of 1970s disco music . For their first recordings, Kunze and Levay hired studio musicians and studio singers. After they had a hit in the UK in 1975 with the first single, Save Me, under the name Silver Bird Convention , they had to find real faces for the studio formation. They finally hired Linda G. Thompson , an ex-member of The Les Humphries Singers , Penny McLean and Ramona Wulf for the live performances. Penny McLean had already released several records as a solo singer and as a duo, and Ramona Wulf had already released numerous hits under her stage name Ramona.

After the initial success with Save Me , Silver Convention achieved an international top hit in 1975 with Fly, Robin, Fly . The complete text of the song consists only of the repeated phrase "Fly, robin, fly, up to the sky". They reached number one in the US charts and the song about a flying robin also won the makers Kunze and Levay a Grammy Award for the best R&B instrumental performance.

The successor title Get Up and Boogie reached number two on the US charts. The following singles mainly offered a repetition of the once successful sound. With No, No, Joe and Everybody's Talkin '' Bout Love , Silver Convention was able to achieve two medium chart listings. In late 1976 Linda G. Thompson left the band and was replaced by Rhonda Heath . In 1977 Silver Convention represented Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest in London with the song Telegram . They ranked eighth and reached the top 30 in the German charts for the last time. In 1978, the line-up changes again. Zenda Jacks came on for Penny McLean, but she only belonged to the group for a year. The last single with new material was then re-recorded in 1979 with Penny McLean.

The members of the initial cast also made solo recordings and released both singles and albums. Linda G. Thompson released the singles Ooh What a Night and Come Softly, Ramona released the singles Save the Last Dance for Me, Natural Man and Parlez-moi d'amour as well as the album Natural Woman . However, these were not very successful commercially. Only Penny McLean was able to achieve two solo successes in Germany with Lady Bump and 1-2-3-4 Fire with top positions in the charts, as well as notices in the middle ranks. The albums she released were titled Lady Bump, Penny and Midnight Explosion .

Discography

→ Main article : Silver Convention / Discography

Studio albums

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)					Remarks	[↑]: treated together with the previous entry; [←]: placed in both charts
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US
1975	Silver Convention also known as: Discotheque Volume 1 and Fly, Robin, Fly	DE19 (16 weeks) DE	-	-	-	US13 (24 weeks) US	First published: November 15, 1975 Sales: + 50,000
	Save me[DE: ↑]		-	-	-	US10 gold (25 weeks)US	First published: November 15, 1975 Sales: + 500,000
1976	Madhouse	-	-	-	-	US65 (12 weeks) US	First published: February 1976
	Get up and boogie	DE48 (4 weeks) DE	-	-	-	-	First published: April 15, 1976
1977	Summernights also known as: Golden Girls	-	-	-	-	US71 (10 weeks) US	First published: 1977
1978	Love in a sleeper	-	-	-	-	-	First published: August 12, 1978

gray hatching : no chart data available for this year

Web links

• Silver Convention at Discogs (English)
• Penny McLean on the Internet