Wang Chung are an English New Wave musical group formed in 1980. The name Wang Chung means “Yellow Bell” in Chinese (黃鐘 — “Huáng Zhōng” in Pinyin) , and is the first note in the Chinese classical music scale.
The group found their greatest success in America, with five Top 40 hits in the US, all charting between 1983 and 1987, including “Dance Hall Days” (#16 In the summer of 1984), “Everybody Have Fun Tonight” (#2 in 1986) and “Let’s Go!” (#9 in 1987).
The band originally went by the name “Huang Chung” during the period 1980-1982, at the beginning of Huang Chung’s career, all the members performed under pseudonyms. Jeremy Ryder was “Jack Hues”, Nick Feldman was “Nick DeSpig”, and Darren Costin was “Darren Darwin” (and later, just “Darwin”). “Jack Hues”, incidentally, is a play on the French term “j’accuse”.
Huang Chung were originally signed to the Arista label and their last UK release was the single “Dance Hall Days” in 1982, the original 12″ Dance Mix was produced by Tim Friese-Green (Talk Talk) and was backed by a US Remix of the band’s previous single “China”.
The band’s manager recognised that “Dance Hall Days” was a potential hit and encouraged them to jump to Geffen Records where they changed their name to Wang Chung and became the first UK act signed to Geffen.
Geffen released “Dance Hall Days” in the UK and Europe in a remixed version (8:02) in 1983 and then in the US in 1984 (7:22)
The track was their only song to make the Top 75 charts in the UK, narrowly missing the Top 20. In the U.S. it peaked at #16 on the Hot 100, reached #8 on the Mainstream Rock radio chart, and went all the way to #1 on the Dance/Disco chart, their highest showing on the latter two charts.
“Dance Hall Days” has become one of the best known songs from the 80’s and has appeared in the movies To Live And Die In LA, Romy And Michelle’s High School Reunion, Bachelor Party, Adventureland, The Informers, Duplicity and the TV series Breaking Bad.
The original Arista recording of the single has never been made available again on any format.
Dance Hall Days (Dance Mix) 5:23
China (American Extended Remix) 6:54
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