Peter Godwin -- "Baby's In The Mountains" (1983)

If you're a New Wave fiend who relishes the more obscure acts, then Peter Godwin's your man. There are about five zillion New Wave record compilations, and you'll be inundated with the Stray Cats, Modern English, Men At Work and The Police, but good luck finding one with Peter Godwin (you can try Just Can't Get Enough, Vol. 12).

Together with Duncan Browne, Godwin was in the minor pop band Metro previous to jumping off on his own track.

"Baby's In The Mountains" was prototypical for the era -- layers of analogue synths driving a mid-tempo pumping beat, programmed drum machine with synthetic beats, what sounds like a deep Moog bass, and a highly affected vocal periodically backed up by female singers.

If there was one musical twist that singers liked to do at this time, and "Baby's In The Mountain" is a prime example, it was the slightly chromatically out of tune throwaway line. In this case, listen to the pre-chorus when Godwin sings "and there's NOTHING I can do" which kind of goes up and down an octave in those six words.

The song really took hold when Polydor had master mixer John Luongo did one of his classic extended remixes, jetting the song into the dance clubs at the time. Since making it big in dance clubs was still going strong from the earlier disco era, these 12" singles gave whole new lives to songs at the time (see my post on ABC's "Poison Arrow"). Luongo earned his chops with those disco songs, so when these New Wave acts came calling with their 4/4 dance beats, it was an easy transition for him. You can find his remix of "Baby's In The Mountains" on a "best of" Peter Godwin compilation on Amazon.

Here's a simple home-made video for "Baby's In The Mountains." Not much visually, but it's good to have the song out there: