Boney M - Live In Concert (Vienna 1 Nov 1979)

April 17, 2023 8:31 PM

In 1979, German-Caribbean band Boney M [Wikipedia] were at the peak of their powers. One of the biggest recording group in Europe at this point, they appeared Live In Concert (Vienna 1 Nov 1979), presumably a television airing for a national holiday, and did an hour of their material, singing their own parts. (They were a bit Milli Vanilli in the studio.) It's a delightful concert of most of their biggest hits, with peak 70s disco costuming and wonderful performances.

The songs I'm Born Again, El Lute, and Gotta Go Home were all singles off the album they had released only in September 1979.

posted by hippybear (23 comments total)

The wikipedia page for the late Bobby Farrell begins thus:

Roberto Alfonso Farrell (6 October 1949 – 30 December 2010)[2] was an Aruban dancer and singer. He was the male member of the 1970s pop and disco group Boney M.[3] [emphasis mine]

Well, that's awfully reductionist. /hamburger

Note that one of Boney M's biggest songs was "Rasputin." Farrell, like Grigori Rasputin, died on a December 30 in St. Petersburg.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:10 PM on April 17, 2023 [8 favorites]

Well, that's awfully reductionist. /hamburger

So, what's it like to be the male member of Boney M?
posted by hippybear at 9:14 PM on April 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

[WARNING: KINDA DISTURBING RECONSTRUCTED SCENE OF AN INJURED MOUNTAINEER]
Here's that scene from Touching the Void where Simon Yates talks about being delirious while trying to crawl his way back to base camp, getting a Boney M song stuck in his head, and thinking he was going to die with that earworm.

That was my introduction to Boney M.
posted by not_on_display at 10:17 PM on April 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

We recently had a 70s party and, for some reason I decided I wanted to use music that was taken only from live performances. So I discovered Boney M's performance from the Sopot festival in Poland that same year. The Rivers Babylon for example.

(Re "Brown Girl in the Ring" - I would recommend Alan Lomax original recording of kids singing it, to see that Boney M did to develop it).
posted by rongorongo at 10:59 PM on April 17, 2023

They were huge here to the extent where bands bearing the name were still playing corporate Christmas parties in the early 2000s.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 11:11 PM on April 17, 2023

I've watched a lot of Boney M performance videos. Gorgeous costumes, energetic dancing, delightful catchy music.
posted by one for the books at 11:38 PM on April 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

When you go back to that age you have to realise that many TV studios didn't have the equipment to do a decent live music performance for broadcast and artists were forced to mime to a recording that could be easily piped into the feed.
posted by krisjohn at 1:40 AM on April 18, 2023

I have cognitive dissonance about Boney M.

I love listening to them and watching them, but their founder Frank Farian was an absolute shit person.

He was also the founder of Milli Vanilli, and he apparently exploited and ruined the lives of its two nominal leads. He got away clean, while Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus got turned into a joke.

He's the epitome of the shittiest parts of the music industry.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 4:00 AM on April 18, 2023 [7 favorites]

Beautiful. Boney M were huge when I was a kid and just thought all music was like this.

Decades later, I was a semi-regular bass player at my church. One Sunday, one of the congregation was joined by his daughter, and she was persuaded to sing a worship song for us. And that's how, for one tune, I was Elizabeth Mitchell's bassist. She was awesome, I was adequate.
posted by YoungStencil at 4:17 AM on April 18, 2023 [4 favorites]

I love listening to them and watching them, but their founder Frank Farian was an absolute shit person.
I found Boney M: The Biggest Hoax In Music History interesting.

Farian is one of those people who has an absolutely squeeky clean Wikipedia presence compared to what it might be. It does seem that if Farian had simply been a little less shy and self conscious: able to either front the bands he was creating and writing for - or to properly step aside so that somebody else would - then a lot of the shitty outcomes could have been avoided.

Bonus: Eurotrash talk about Frank Farian.
posted by rongorongo at 6:27 AM on April 18, 2023

My grandfather was born shortly before World War I, and I cannot recall that he ever expressed enthusiasm for any music ever, with one exception. He was not a killjoy, demanding people shut the radio off or anything; he’d have the radio tuned into some fairly middle-of-the-road hits station, so when I was a kid and he was senior citizen age, he’d have Wings or Abba or Eric Clapton playing quietly. In general, he seemed quite indifferent to recorded music.

The one song he ever did declare he really liked was “Brown Girl in the Ring.” Go figure.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:31 AM on April 18, 2023

Looking forward to taking some time to watching this. Rasputin was a big favorite for my competitive karaoke league team and when any of us get together to sing (which we haven't done since the Before Times, obviously) we still sing it.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 8:20 AM on April 18, 2023

Meat Beat Manifesto sampled Boney M's "Rivers of Babylon" to make "Radio Babylon," which plays on an FM frequency in my head 24/7/365. Whoo! Alright! [electro bass line]
posted by infinitewindow at 9:23 AM on April 18, 2023 [3 favorites]

Man, infinitewindow, that takes me back.
posted by Chuffy at 9:33 AM on April 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

I was totally unaware of Boney M. until the late 90s when a South Asian co-worker of mine played "Rasputin" for me. He was surprised I had never heard it before, because it was a global hit everywhere except the U.S.

I'm a fan of the mid-60s British Freakbeat band The Creation, perhaps best known to modern audiences from the use of their song "Making Time" in Wes Anderson's movie Rushmore, commercials and The Great Pottery Throwdown. (Though my introduction to the band was a cover of their song "How does it feel to feel" by Halo of Flies.)

Anyway, Boney M. did a cover of The Creation's art school anthem "Painter Man".
posted by larrybob at 9:46 AM on April 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

(They were a bit Milli Vanilli in the studio.)

Literally so, since Farian was behind Milli Vanilli
posted by Going To Maine at 10:51 AM on April 18, 2023

Ra Ra RasPutin animation

Just Dance 2 - Rasputin (side by side)
posted by ActingTheGoat at 11:02 AM on April 18, 2023

I'm sorry, but "Rasputin" just reminds me of Doctor Who now.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:10 AM on April 18, 2023

If Hell was set up as an 80s office party, Boney M would be what's playing. Yecch.

YMMV, of course.
posted by Artful Codger at 12:04 PM on April 18, 2023

...because it was a global hit everywhere except the U.S.
Wow, Rasputin was so massive here in Canada, I couldn't imagine it not being a hit anywhere.

I shrugged about the big Milli Vanilli scandal. It seemed obvious they were lip-syncing to pre-recorded tracks, and it didn't seem like a big deal to me (perhaps a minority opinion).

Also, looks like a new Milli Vanilli BioPic coming down.
posted by ovvl at 12:36 PM on April 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

My Grandpa (Scottish Presbyterian minister) liked them - my aunts chose to play "By the Rivers of Babylon" as the last song at the committal at the crematorium, so it's a song that hit me emotionally when I heard it again in a 70s mix.

Gotta go home I first heard sampled in the Duck Sauce song "Barbara Streisand". It's a banger though.

Thanks for sharing!
posted by freethefeet at 3:41 AM on April 19, 2023

Interesting how much of Boney M's music is Caribbean related:
The Rivers of Babylon - Rastafarian chant based on palm 137 and released originally as a song by The Melodians
Brown Girl in the Ring: Playground song sung by schoolgirls on many islands. Here is a rendition from Jamaica.
Mary's Boy Child - original calypso by Jester Hairston here - then covered by Harry Belefonte.
Do You want to Bump?- developed from Prince Buster's Al Capone
Ma Baker - this one is Tunisian in fact - but here is the original Sidi Mansour
posted by rongorongo at 5:00 AM on April 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

Oh my, thanks for that Ma Baker track!
posted by ovvl at 9:11 AM on April 19, 2023