Albums I Listened To in September

This month, I started off exploring disco and disco/funk, but that kind of went in a different direction. Some bullet points before the fun begins:

- I was born in '74 so I missed the whole disco explosion of the mid-to-late 70s. When I got old enough to start paying attention, disco had come to mean something universally agreed upon as awful. 

- I don't think I personally challenged that until the 90s, when I started getting into techno. I recall someone saying The Lords of Acid's Lust album, which was big among me and my friends at the time, was a 90s update of (and, in this person's opinion, vastly inferior to) Donna Summer. I didn't know what that meant at the time. (Now I do: sex-sounds over computer grooves. There the similarity ends, though - not quite apples and oranges, but definitely dissimilar acts and sensibilities.)

- Similarly when The Avalanches's Since I Left You, another album that was big among me and my friends at the time, came out, I remember the guy at Narragansett Disc (where I bought it, since closed, alas) saying "It's just a disco album; why is this getting so much buzz?" This was around 2000, and I think 70s-retro was just beginning to be a thing (as was 80s retro but that's a different story). 

- If you told 18 year old Bryan he'd be hunting for Patrick Cowley's work with Donna Summer 26 years down the road, he'd have absolutely no conception of how he could possibly have gotten there from where he was. I often say this about my 18 year old self, like, if I met him, the first thing I'd say is "Look: I can explain."

And let's do some of that, in the order in which I listened to them - onwards:

1.

GENE PAGE

This soundtrack is kinda hard to find for some reason. Who can figure this crap out. Are my sensibilities really so out of whack? Put the right marketing round this - and you wouldn't even have to do too much; the music sells itself - and re-release the film, even, (which I've never actually seen) and it's raining dinero. Call me crazy. 

I forgot that Blacula was a recurring character on The Electric Company in the 70s. Wow! (Note: not really Blacula.)

Two great tracks from the Hues Corporation in here ("I'm Gonna Catch You" and "There He Is Again"). They never topped the majesty of "Rock the Boat," but hey, who could? That song's freaking perfect. It's not in Blacula, but no matter how often you hear "Rock the Boat," another spin is always fine.) but the album belongs to Gene Page. Personal favorites: "Good to the Last Drop" and "Firebombs."

As for:

1974 - produced by Barry White.

this could've doubled as a great soundtrack for some of the scenes in Live and Let Die. Not that I'd ever advocate getting rid of such fine work from George Martin, of course. But yeah, it's easy to picture that movie while listening to this.

Some might write the album off or misidentify it as background Love Boat music or Muzak or on-hold music, and it's unfortunately true that those associations do kind of work. But that's not the fault of the source material. Gene Page sure as hell didn't sit down and say "I'm going to record an album of killer on-hold music!" Or hell, maybe he did; the 70s were weird. I was too young to notice much firsthand. I do, definitely, retain some very vivid memories of hot pants and disco and music like this floating round in the air, even if it was fading by the time I started noticing things in the late years of the decade.

"Gene's Theme" or "I'm Living in a World of Gloom" and "Don't Play That Song" are favorites. They're all fantastic, though. Widely imitated, blueprint-setting, it seems to me, very much a composition of its era, but it's interesting to consider: if this was repackaged as a 70s Orchestral Suite for Rock Band and Strings, I think Gene Page might have a legitimate claim to a place in the same canon as all other 20th century composers. Maybe that's crazy talk. I can't tell anymore. If Beck put it out in the 90s, though, they'd have given him a Pulitzer, probably.

If I had any complaint, it's that most of the songs don't quit while they're ahead, but I think the trance-repetition of it/ relentless tonality is also part of the design. (Something disco and later techno - and earlier minimalist movements in the concert hall - took to greater extremes than here on Hot City.)

2.

1976 (l) and 1978 (r). And

1979

Everyone knows "Always and Forever" and "Boogie Nights" and "The Groove Line," if not by name instantly recognizable once played. (Here's a pretty cool remix of "The Groove Line.") was their other one. Great tracks, all. I'd add "Raise a Blaze" from Hot Property and "Beat Your Booty" from Too Hot To Handle to the seminal Heatwave list.

The drummer for this band was pretty tight. I kept saying that listening to these albums. I was happy to see the internet was way ahead of me as per usual - apparently I'm not alone in my admiration of Bilbo Berger. (Great name!) That link underscores two things that really jumped out at me when I looked any of this stuff up: (1) for as much as it was technology driven, so much of this music relied on actual musicians supplying most of the sound, and (2) disco/funk was a real international and multicultural affair. Commies and capitalists, blacks and whites, gays and straights, chicks and dudes and all points in-between: working together to be groovy.

The pursuit of happiness, friends. God forbid we go back to that. 

3.

Another Barry White-produced affair. I've got to be honest, this one didn't do it for me too much. With the notable exception of "High-Steppin' Hip-Dressin'Fella" which is awesome.

4.

This West German disco band (and isn't that description a lovely evocation of the Cold War?) achieved their disco immortality with the title track to their 2nd album, but for me "Get Up and Boogie" is eclipsed (and by a wide margin) by "Fly, Robin, Fly" from 1975's Save Me. What a great track. The supermarket in my neighborhood has it on their mega-mix, and after hearing it a few times while shopping, I finally looked it up when I got home. 

Were they considered Abba knock-offs at the time? I could see that. I had a bunch of other stuff written, but the long and short of it is outside of "Fly, Robin, Fly" I could take it or leave it. (And mostly leave it.)

5.

PATRICK COWLEY

Patrick Cowley was a widely influential pioneer of the American electronic music scene, mostly known for his disco remixes and singles from the late 70s. I first heard of him in a New Order interview where Barney said both Joy Division and New Order were heavily influenced by Cowley. 

Catholic is a pretty wild sign of the Post-Punk age to come, making it fairly ahead of its time (even if we're only talking about a handful of years in the 70s). You can hear Devo, Bauhaus, The Sisters of Mercy and - yes - Joy Division in all of its tracks. My favorite was probably "Robot Children". But of all the Cowley I listened to in September, my favorites were these two singles:

"Mind Warp" is pretty friggin' awesome. Cowley was sadly dying from AIDS-related complications - before anyone had identified AIDS as anything people might be dying from - at the time. Sad story. What a swan song, though - I have listened to this easily fifty times this past month.

"Megatron Man" got a similar play count. It's easy to see the influence on New Order in this one, particularly the Pump Panel remix of "Confusion," famously used in the bloodbath scene in Blade. 

Cowley was way ahead of his time. Had he lived, would his career have withered with the changing times, or would he have segued into film scoring/ techno? On some (especially groovy) level of The Tower, that question was explored comprehensively, one hopes. His other best known work was his remix of Donna Summer's "I Feel Love." Which is a fine segue into:

6.

DONNA SUMMER

With frequent collaborator Giorgio Moroder.

Donna Summer was one of the biggest superstars America ever produced, maybe ever will produce. I knew her as a kid mostly from her 80s hits like "She Works Hard For the Money" "This Time I Know It's For Real," and of course stuff like "Hot Stuff" or "Bad Girls," which were played all the time when I was growing up. And probably all the time when you were growing up, too, in some fashion, if you were born anytime after 1974.

I didn't listen to every Donna Summer record - I actually barely scratched the surface. But what I did listen to I listened to about a gazillion times. Disco (and later techno) were very trancey - drugs and sex and being fabulous (also like techno, I guess, except swap "fabulous" for "cyberpunk goth whatever-you-like) so I think that helped. Here's my report on just three things:

(1) "Love to Love You Baby" was the song that put Donna on the map, and it's easy to see why. The sound suite is about as ethereal-disco as it comes, and all the moaning and purring and reverb whispers certainly don't hurt. I enjoyed learning that radio stations would play the whole 17 minutes. I can just picture that driving people nuts, but I'd have loved it.

(2) This concept album from 1976:

On first listen I thought this was amazing. After several, I walked it back some. The vocals are fairly indistinct in parts; there are conspicuous stretches of "Spring Affair" and "Autumn Changes" where I can't quite convince myself I'm hearing what the lyrics say I should be hearing. Why didn't do they do another take on Donna's vocals? Or whomever's clearly singing things like "Sing a pear" or whatever instead of the chorus to the first track?

I watched this in-the-studio video to see if there was more to the story, but all I came away with was how cool everything sounded, particularly when the clip switches to recording the "Summer Fever" chorus. That chorus - and "Summer Fever" in general - is the best part of the album for me, though "Winter Melody" is a pretty classy tune.

And (3) "On the Radio." I cued up that link a little before the break-into-higher-gear, to better appreciate how effortlessly the song transforms from one section to the other. Great track. This came out in 1979, just like Apocalypse Now and John Krasinski.

One last thing: I can never hear "Hot Stuff" without hearing my departed pal Klum bitching about it in my head. When he worked at the New Neon when we lived together in Dayton back in the day, The Full Monty trailer played before some movie that the theater kept there for way too long, so Klum saw it a gazillion times and got more and more irritated every shift. I can still hear him singing "don't want another night on my own!" and yelling about it. God bless ya, ghost friend. 

7.

CHARANJIT SINGH

Ten Ragas To a Disco Beat 

(1982)

Not for everyone. But I love it. It's either like being trapped in a really weird haunted house, or on a piece of renegade exercise equipment. Disco (like techno later would be) is a natural pair-up for India ragas.

When I was going to raves and awash in the techno audio adventures of the 90s - ignorant at that time of all the Kraftwerk and disco and whatever else that preceded it - there used to be an all-night "Spin Zone" on some Boston station that I would listen to occasionally. It was during one of these after-midnight tune-ins that I first heard this:

which I bring up in this Ragas section because that blend of tripped-out-secular-excess, with all its associations, all pursuant to some hazy spiritual or self-actualization objective, had and has great appeal to me. So, techno led me to ragas and chants (which were kind of big at that time at the raves I was going to: there was a whole scene of spiritual evolution / chakra-re-alignment through coordinated bleeps and bloops and trance-tones / Alex Grey) which led me to disco, which ultimately led me back around to something like this, which, again, is like the treadmill you get on in Heaven's gym. 

Finally, I listened to both

and

which I'd intended to include in this post, but there wasn't much to say. They were a fun look back for sure, and it was nice to get "Beat Street Strut" stuck in my head for a few days. (And while we're here, the Art of Noise's "Beat Box Diversion One" is pretty cool, too.) Revisiting them, though, led me to throw in:

8.

 
I love both of these records, even if they're really more of a CD-singles padded out with remixes. Who cares, though? One of the best work trips I ever took was when I listened to this driving around northern IL in the rain for company. Great atmosphere. I've been listening to these two records albums forever, and I've never gotten sick of them.

“Jam On It” (the wikky-wikky song) will probably always be the group’s most well-known song, though a few of have been used in videogames like “Computer Age” in Matt Hofman’s BMX. Which was, if memory serves, kind of a fun game; there was a demo for it on the Tony Hawk PS2 game that my friends and I played quite a bit just prior to Y2k. 

I digress. I love how Jam On Revenge starts with basically a self-confessional about being a robot from outer space here to show us how to get funky, followed up by another robot track ("Automan") and then track 3 is "I'm Not a Robot." I mean, make up your minds, guys. It might be some concept album that just got away from them, who knows. If you like the first album, definitely check out the 2nd, which has possibly my favorite Newcleus track, "Cyborg Dance."

One of those bands with inexplicably a hundred people in them. All the weirder because they're an electronic band where one or two people could handle everything. Except, please forgive me, they're not a band; they're cyborg emissaries of the intergalactic funk.

~

As per usual, there were more albums than the above, of course, but that's a fair representation of September's musical mood, Two Thousand and Eighteen. Onto October's spooky selections... see you next time.