Eager to inject some fun into the burgeoning French house underground, le Friant borrowed the name Bob Sinclar (from a character in the well-known French film Le Magnifique) and in 1997 produced his first Sinclar EP, A Space Funk Project. Soon enough, he had an entire Bob Sinclar LP ready to go, and Paradise appeared on Yellow just in time for summer 1998. One of the album`s tracks, "Gym Tonic," began getting some club play in France thanks to its bouncy house vibe and incessant singalong chorus (lifted from a Jane Fonda workout record). A huge anthem during the summer season in Ibiza, "Gym Tonic" looked ready to explode on the charts until Fonda sought legal action for the illegal sample. Perhaps wary of overly burdensome commercial success, the song`s co-producer -- Daft Punk`s Thomas Bangalter, who`d just recorded his own breezy house delight, Stardust`s "Music Sounds Better with You" -- refused to have even a remixed version released as a single. Nevertheless, assorted bootlegs cropped up and by October a mysterious artist named Spacedust -- probably just a major-label-fronted cash-in attempt -- hit the top of the charts in Britain with an almost identical remix of the Sinclar-Bangalter original, entitled "Gym and Tonic." (Another crass Spacedust move, covering Bangalter`s solo hit with the slimly disguised title "Music Feels Good with You," dropped like a rock.)
