"Lift Off," Patrick Cowley (1981): Disco did not die in 1979 but had a big litter of hyphenated disco babies. And should countdowns to Lift Off and exploding rocket engines count as Space Rock?
"Magic Fly," Space (1977): I think Space also might figure somehow in the Italo Disco story that gets crazy big popular in Europe in the 1980s. I don't really know but I know there are scads of CD compilations of Italo Disco from the '80s with scores of acts doing something a little closer to Eurythmics Brit New Pop than Tantra or Space's proto-Eurodisco. But the Space Disco thing remains such a big thing all the way through the Italo Disco early 1980s; so big I've seen a best-of Italo Space Disco collection. I've read a couple of books I liked about Spaghetti Westerns but none yet about Italo Disco or Italo House; or maybe it should be 1980s Eurodisco? Like the Spaghetti's nickname leaves out Spanish, German, and other contributions from other parts of Europe in the making of Euro-Westerns. Presumably, the Italian designation means a lot of the production happens in Italy but this record is from France. I do remember reading somewhere (probably Wikipedia) that the production of Italo Disco records really doesn't take off in the early '80s until after the music industry in America abandons disco in 1979 (b/c, remember, some classic rock longhairs burn some disco records in effigy at a Chicago White Sox game in the late summer of that year). When the American disco imports dried up young people into disco in Europe had to make their own records, the story goes, but "Magic Fly," No. 1 in France, proves they were already making their very own disco, Space Disco, even before American disco imports had stopped. Another one for Team Disco.
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