Resurrecting the lost 12″ mixes
Toto Coelo — I Eat Cannibals Part 1 (extended mix)
(Radial Choice Records 12″, 1982)
Is there a purer one hit wonder than Toto Coelo? Together barely a year, recording fewer than a dozen songs total, and forever known for one maddeningly catchy novelty tune, they are the epitome of the form. I mean, have you ever heard another song of theirs?
“I Eat Cannibals” was almost entirely the work of producer Barry Blue, a third-string mid-70s glam star who produced several of Bananarama’s early singles around this time as well. The handy captions on the flipside of this now-rare 12″ mix reveal that the members of the band were, from left to right, Ros, Lindsey, Lacey, Anita and Sheen. Wikipedia adds the surnames Holness, Danvers, Bond, Madhadervan and Doran, respectively, along with the trivia nuggets that Ros Holness was the daughter of veteran UK game show host Bob Holness and that Anita later was the lead singer of the Hanoi Rocks offshoot Cherry Bombz under the name Anita Chellamah.
–Stewart Mason
