An interview with Black Box and why Ride On Time was not of its time

Here's a Fat Roland flashback (a Flat Rolashback?) to an interview I conducted in 2019. I spoke to Black Box's Daniele Davoli about the band's massive 1989 hit Ride On Time. Labels said the vocals were “very aggressive” and it barely shifted a copy of its first pressing. "It completely cleared the floor," he told me when the tune hit the clubs "It was heartbreaking."

So how did it become such a big hit single? Read on for a preview. You can read the full piece over at Electronic Sound.

In a dusty room above a garage in northern Italy, a musician brandishes a vacuum cleaner. Scattered along the walls is a guitar, some old keyboards, a half-broken mixer, and a speaker with a wonky tweeter. 

Outside, a bell tower shatters the silence and next door’s dogs yap in response. In this damp, distracting space in Reggio Emilia, Daniele Davoli is trying to rewrite house music history.

“The bell tower was ding dong, ding dang dong,” recalls Davoli, “and the neighbour’s dogs were woof woof woof. If we were recording vocals, we had to stop. There was no insulation, it was just a bedroom without the bed.”

This story ends well. Davoli will go on to form Black Box, whose Ride On Time, released in July 1989, popularised choppy Italo house piano lines. But we’re not quite there yet. As the group formed, sample culture had become the socks-and-sandals of dance music: a shortcut for naff. Where Paul Hardcastle once stood, now there was Harry “Loadsamoney” Enfield parodying Pump Up The Volume. Ride On Time was against trend – and its journey to success had more stumbles than the Stutter Rap.

Davoli was DJ Lelewel, banging out soul and disco hits at Rimini’s Starlight club... [continue reading this article on Electronic Sound]

Further Fats: Is Fat Roland my real father? Norwegian woof. *click* (2011)

Further Fats: 5 great new dance hits from January 1989 (2019)