Septimus; Here I Go Again (1987)

Sounding a decade too late for the disco era, Septimus were a black outfit from Seattle built around singer/guitarist and producer Herman Brown who originally recorded a version of this song in '83 with his band Ozone.

Just five years too late.

Seattle-born Brown had been a successful studio musician in LA until he moved back home in the early Eighties and started Ozone as an outlet for his talents.

They recorded for Motown but the group had broken up by '84 so he looked around for new opportunities.

It came with a Roland drum machine which he deployed here alongside Willie Fisher Jnr and conga player Enrique Bell.

Ironically the band enjoyed more success in Canada than in their own clubs, and that is where this song -- which features his brother Coleman on the searing guitar part which takes the song out -- was recorded.

Aimed directly at dancefloors, Here I Go Again retained a large slab of funk at its core, an element missing from a lot of late Seventies disco dancefloor music.

Here I Go Again isn't a lost classic or anything like that, but it's a damn fine slice of dancefloor music . . . and it turned up on the compilation album Seattle Funk, Modern Soul and Boogie Volume II 1972-1987 from the Wheedle's Groove label (through Southbound in New Zealand).

Across 18 tracks of obscure artists from the Seattle area, it makes persuasive evidence that the Pacific Northwest had its own soulful styles which owed something to the greater movements elsewhere, but always put its own twist on things.

And when you consider the great history of music out of Washington state from the mid Fifties onwards, that is hardly a surprise. 

For more oddities, one-offs or songs with an interesting backstory check the massive back-catalogue at From the Vaults.