Baltimora

Baltimora was not a conventional band, but rather a sonic experiment with an image so strong that it ended up overshadowing everything else. Their sound was crafted in Milan in the early 80s, when Maurizio Bassi —a session musician with a knack for commercial appeal— gathered a group of instrumentalists to record tracks that blended bright synthesizers with catchy melodies. The result was an italo disco where the vocals glided between the ethereal and the danceable, but always with an impeccable production touch. What’s curious is that, although the group presented itself as a unit, most of their recordings hid a detail: the lead voice on their most famous songs wasn’t Jimmy McShane’s, the visible face of the project, but Naymi Hackett’s or even Bassi’s own, with McShane limited to lip-syncing in videos and shows. This play with identities ended up being part of their charm, as if the character they sold —the dancer in baggy clothes and red glasses— was just the tip of a much colder, more calculated musical iceberg.

The turning point came in 1984, when Bassi met McShane in Northern Ireland. The producer was looking for a frontman who could embody the essence of his music: someone with stage charisma, but no need to sing. McShane, an emergency medical technician with a nightlife in Belfast’s gay community, fit perfectly. They recruited him to be Baltimora’s image, gave him an extravagant look, and launched him to stardom with a hit that, ironically, he hadn’t recorded. "Tarzan Boy" exploded in 1985, climbing European charts and crossing the Atlantic, where it became an unexpected phenomenon. The album Living in the Background —short, with just six songs— sold like hotcakes, though its success turned it into a ghost: suddenly, everyone associated Baltimora with a single song, as if the rest of their work didn’t exist.