Perhaps the Most Perfectly-Titled (If Not Perfect) Song, Ever

I remember Tom Waits saying in an interview many years ago, "A lot of music sounds better when you're hearing it on a shitty speaker from several blocks away."

This is one of those songs. It's a song that's followed me throughout my life. A number of times over the years I've heard it off in the distance while it was pumping at some party from a block (or two, or three...) away. You know it as soon as you hear it, because it can't be mistaken for any other tune. The beat and the voice -- that voice -- always carry strongly. What usually doesn't carry is the dubbed-in party chatter that undergirds the track, which doesn't matter because the song usually generates its own party noise whenever it's played -- the sort that travels clearly with the rhythm in nighttime air. Each time I hear it, it prompts the same immediate compulsion -- to leave my apartment or the low-key party I'm attending, follow the groove to its source, and see if the dancefloor at the gathering in question has the same come-one-come-all policy that the song compels. As you'd expect, this usually happens in the middle of the night or in the earliest hours of the morning.

And I mention it now, because it happened again last night.

At any rate, perhaps the weirdest time this ever happened was about four or five years ago. It was about 11 AM and I was standing on an El platform on the south side of Chicago, catching a northbound train to make the 60-block commute to work downtown. And there it was -- that song, bumping away somewhere nearby. Actually, it was a house remix of the tune -- a remix that managed to build on the quasi-Latin groove that fueled the original (rather than, y'know, squashing it). The song caused a few of us on the platform to turn in its direction, quickly tracing its source to an aged three-story townhouse located about a block away, where it sounded like a party was going on.

Broad fucking daytime. Not even noontime, yet. On a weekday. Who knows how long that party had been going on. An hour? Maybe ten? Whatever the case, the song soon ended and another began, at which point a pair of police cruisers came rolling up in front of the place with their blue lights blazing atop. From our elevated vantage point, we saw the back door to the place fly open and a number of the party's attendees -- all young and able-bodied -- come scrambling out into the rear alleyway, taking flight in every direction. Those of us on the platform who'd watched the whole thing transpire turned to look at each other, exchanging variations on the same slightly bemused, arched-eyebrow expression. Each of us had turned to look, to follow the sound. Maybe we'd each had the same urge upon hearing it. No matter, our existence dictated that we had other places to be. And even if we'd gone with that impulse, it was clear that we'd have arrived too late.

The Beginning of the End

By most accounts, today marks the 35th anniversary of the grand opening of Studio 54 in New York City. The club's heyday would -- depending on whose recollections you trust -- epitomize either the apex or the nadir of the disco era.

Hence the clips above. Chances are you know the song, which was a big smash at the time, for what would ultimately amount to one among many one-hit wonders of the time. I remember it very well. I was in seventh grade at the time, and the tune was pretty much the tune of the autumn of 1978, having followed hot on the heels of other era-defining hits like Taste of Honey's "Boogie Oogie Oogie" and Heatwave's "The Groove Line." All three songs were regularly a part of my junior high school's pep rallies that season; the cheerleading squad having worked out dance routines for each, with the Foxy tune usually being the 'big finish" number that got the kids in the bleachers the most worked-up.

So it came as some surprise seeing the clips above many years later, and finding out that the artist in question was another non-African American funk outfit of the White Wild Cherry variety. In actuality, Foxy was a Cuban-American outfit that hailed from Miami and landed themselves a spot on the roster of Miami-based TK Records, the label previously responsible for giving the world KC & the Sunshine Band. The band featured -- curiously enough -- a son of Tito Puente in its lineup, as well as one member and contributing songwriter who'd previously played in Paul Revere & the Raiders.

The reason for having two clips of the same track might be obvious once they've rolled. Viewing them many years after the fact, both strike me as deeply comical -- comical in a way that vastly exceeds the usual fashion hazards of period-specific quaintness. First, there's the way the song -- upon revisitation -- pimps certain formulaic clichés to optimal, cartoonish effect. Then there's the matter of the group itself -- the ill-advised shiny makeup and overdone pouting (grimacing?) of the first clip, the overdone (if not overcompensatory) thrusting boogie moves, the fact that the bass player vaguely resembles Borat. If there's one thing that unifies the two clips, its the very sketchy charade of pretending to play along to the song; especially the parts of pantomining along to the absentee female backing vocals (the one element of the thing that went the furthest toward putting the song over, making it a hit).

In a way, the whole thing is a shambles -- deliriously over-affected in a way that seems to carry the stench of the impending death of disco all over it. Inasmuch as it reeked of decadence, it wasn't so much decadence of the debauched variety as that of the aesthetically degenerative kind. Sure enough, the nine months that followed in the song's wake would bear this harbinger out. Chic's "Le Freak" would quickly follow, shooting to the top of the charts and making the group a huge success. (The irony being, of course, that "Le Freak" song started off as "Fuck Off," originally penned by songwriters Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers as a response to Studio 54's discriminatory door policy.) By mid-summer, jumpcut to Chicago's Comiskey Park where the unintended melee that was AM radio disc jockey Steve Dahl's "Disco Demolition Night" gave testament to a growing public antipathy. Come autumn of 1979, the pop charts were starting to clutter with disco tunes by non-disco artists who were, under label duress, trying to poach a hit out of the "craze" while it lasted. But it was too late, the tide -- as such things happen -- had already turned.

Clams on the half-shell...and roller skates, roller skates.

You Can't Stop The Music

I used to love The Village People when I was a kid, but in a way that I suppose is fairly unusual, in that I took them entirely literally. Being only eight or so years old when they first appeared (and perhaps naive even for a kid of that age), I didn't see the gay subtext (or in their case just plain text) at all. Which meant that I viewed them as a peculiarly big-hearted group who liked to write encouraging, optimistic songs about institutions that were normally overlooked by pop (homeless hostels, the U.S. Navy etc.) and to dress up in cool gear for the pleasure of us kids (because who else could they be dressing like that for?)



In fact, I even viewed the dressing up as a sign of their sincerity. When I was in infants school, the last day of term was always looked forward to partly because it was the one day we could dress how we wanted to, and this became a kind of ritual in which every kid would bring an outfit, so the classroom was invariably full of cowboys, spacemen and medieval knights in plastic armour. One of the great suspicions I had about adults was that these were people who could dress how they liked, and yet they all somehow conspired to dress as boringly as possible. And here were the Village People showing that it could be done - all you needed was the chutzpah to get on and do it.

Just think about this for a minute or two. Right now, you could be wearing a silver construction worker's helmet. Why aren't you?

Going Solo, Selling Out

An artist for whom 'Faustian' surely applies ('sell-out' back in the days when it actually meant something), George Benson was considered the world's greatest jazz guitarist during the 70s. Getting a considerable leg-up from his appearance on Miles Davis' Miles In The Sky he was in huge demand as a session player and solo performer; and managed to sell millions when jazz was either retreating into  avant-obscurantism, curating museum pieces, or shooting itself in the pedal with the increasingly absurd indulgences of 'fusion'. Around 1976 his highly complicated, deceptively accessible, playing became complemented by his rather nice voice (arguably imitating Stevie Wonder's imitation of Donny Hathaway). Radio programmers and pop audiences loved it. Scoring huge mainstream hits and radio play after Breezin' and tunes like the below, his career changed course to focus on his talents as a polished purveyor of pop-soul.

After this decisive career turn, the hits got blander and less convincing; and the guitar faded further back into the mix. Disco for the middle-aged isn't noted for its longevity. Like so many other pop-soul stars, he was barely resistant to the onslaught of Thriller and MTV. After the golden touch of Quincy Jones, platinum pop hits and Grammies (and shameful performances at apartheid Sun City) his reputation as one of the 70s greatest jazz musicians didn't quite recover. To mention his name now conjures dreadful memories of bland MOR disco-lite pap and dinner party naffness: Music for Mike Leigh characters. Returning to his real talent (and skin colour - 'lightening' being a worrying trend among 80s black pop stars) he still packs houses, but these days 'cool' or 'cutting edge' are rarely applied to Benson. Pop is a fickle beast, but I have to remind readers that as a jazz musician Benson was - and is - peerless. For that alone, he deserves his due. That broad showbiz smile only ever seemed convincing when he was letting rip on his guitar.

Don't Blame It On The Sunshine

I'm a dancin fool

Youwsa, youwsa, youwsa

I got it all together now

With my very own disco clothes, hey!

My shirts half open, to show you my chains

And the spoon for up my nose.

- Frank Zappa, 'Dancin' Fool'

“You know the Woodstock generation of the 1960s that were so full of themselves and conceited? None of those people could dance.” 

- The Last Days Of Disco (Wilt Stillman, 1988)

"Musically, disco developed out of the main styles of early 70s black music: the polyrthymic funk inspired by James Brown and George Clinton, and uptempo soul music, especially extended versions of Philadelphia International hits. Socially, its primary sources lay in the gay rights movement that gathered momentum follwing the Stonewall Riot of 1969"

- Craig Hansen Werner A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race and the Soul of America

“The tone of the place is sufficiently gay that a woman can protect herself by adopting a fierce gaze to indicate dykishness, or by staring fixedly at herself in a mirror, for self-absorption is respected here.” 

- Harpers magazine article on disco, 1976

"Disco... was a beautiful artform. It made the consumer beautiful. The consumer was the star." - Barry White

“Studio 54 was the embodiment of the most decadent social period of any city in modern history. By 1978, Dionysus had hired a press agent and New York was headlong into an era of staggering permissiveness.” 

- Steve Gaines Simply Halston: The Untold Story

"I first noticed it the first time I threw a party. The staff of Punk magazine came, as well as members of several of the hottest CBGB's bands, and when I did what we always used to do at parties in Detroit - put on soul records so everybody could dance - I began to hear this: "What're you playing all that nigger disco shit for, Lester?" 

- Lester Bangs, 'The White Noise Supremacists'

"Disco seemed to arouse something like castration anxiety in rockers."

- Alice Echols Hot Stuff: Disco And The Remaking Of American Culture

"It felt to us like Nazi book-burning. This is America, the home of jazz and rock and people were now afraid even to say the word 'disco'."

- Nile Rogers, Chic