I drew on the walls too. Before there were Magic Erasers…

Ready for some nifty rhymes to help put your Monday morning back together again?  Well, of course you are… so grab your pail and let’s head up that hill!  It’s time for The Nest to stick in its thumb and pull out a plum that’s slightly past its freshness date from that pot pie full of mystery meat we like to call the Dusty Vinyl Archive!  DJ Scratchy’s sitting on her tuffet, ready to spin the next platter full of curds and whey, while the Sponkies are busy chasing the dish and the spoon.  It’s time to prove that the DVA’s cupboard is never bare…

The late 80’s saw a surge in popularity of the club dance song that lasted right on into the new millennium, as you need only turn on your radio to hear the latest deejay mix that was hot to trot down at the local discotheque.  One of the singers who was able to briefly capitalize on this fad was a British diva by the name of Cathy Dennis.  Dennis gained a reasonable amount of short-lived fame on both sides of The Pond, with a handful of hits that featured that unmistakable club beat.  Today, she is probably best remembered for the 1991 #2 hit “Touch Me (All Night Long)“….

Uhhhh, no, not this version.

Never confuse club music with its predecessor disco.  I love a lot of disco songs, but most club music is just…. meh.  And don’t get me started with those abominable remixes those meddling ass deejays come up with that murders my favorite songs.  The music was just fine how it was, OK?

What, you don’t like it when I loop the chorus of “Summer of ’69” over and over again? Too bad!

So it’s not particularly odd that the one song of Dennis’ that I actually like is also the only one of her hits that is definitely NOT going to be playing on a dancefloor near you anytime soon.  In fact, short of maybe catching it as the background music in a store or restaurant, you probably won’t hear it playing at all anymore.  Except, of course, for on the Dusty Vinyl Archive, where we give airplay to great lost songs like Cathy Dennis’ smooth but spunky hit “Too Many Walls”…

Edited 5/10/21: The music video keeps getting booted off YouTube… so for now, here’s the audio only as a placeholder.

That song is practically the definition of Adult Contemporary, and I love it!  “Too Many Walls” peaked at #8 on the US Hot 100 in the summer of 1991, and was a decidedly non-bouncy entry from the queen of the club beat.  That it wound up becoming muzak and was played often in my early years at Mecca two decades ago is what kept this song on my radar while it dropped from the playlists of pretty much any station fairly quickly.

While Dennis’ singing career fizzled out shortly after her early 90’s burst of success, she found her niche as a songwriter… penning 21st Century songs you know such as Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” and even the iconic Katy Perry career launcher “I Kissed A Squirrel Girl!”

You’re doing it wrong….

I’ll smuggle another lost hit over the wall next Monday…