Dark Disco: A Lament

"Dark disco was our fado, our flamenco, our blues; it spoke of things in a voice partly melancholic, partly bemused by life, and wholly sexual. Dark disco was the song you sang to yourself on the first night of winter in New York walking down one of those long, dark, deserted blocks in Chelsea, when you realized anew that New York is also a winter city, a city where for one long season life turns indoors and we pursue freely our darker desires."

"What I used to think was as wonderful and mysterious as the dancing madness of the Middle Ages or the rites of Dionysus was now a page in the annual corporate report of Gulf & Western."

"In those days, when you went out to dance, disco had no uniform sound. There was no one word to describe the variegated music we spent the night with. It was distinct enough for the discaire [DJ] to begin a set quietly, build gradually to a climax, then let you down to start all over again. Do you remember that vanished custom? It happened three or four times a night if you stayed long enough, and you could follow the tantalizing process by which the discaire laid a solid foundation of slow songs and then subtly (if he was good, as they all seemed to be in those days) built you up to the catharsis, say, of Deodato’s “2001.” One thing for sure: disco was different then. The music was darker, sexual, troubled. Today the dark has vanished and the light is everywhere."

Andrew Holleran, 1976

Dark Disco: A Lament

Hot Tub Time Machine: Soul Hits of the '70s

 "Love Rollercoaster," Ohio Players (1975): "Say what?" Number 1 in 1976 and a monster at school dances and probably the discos, I hadn't been to one quite yet. Dr. Funkenstein, George Clinton, doesn't like the disco blahs but discos sure do like the funk. Bohannon, Eddie Kendricks, Archie Bell, Earth, Wind, & Fire, Isley Brothers, Kool & The Gang, Jimmy Castor, War, Chic, and the Ohio Players could all be funky as it gets and were big hitmakers in the discos. 

"Shake, Shake, Shake (Shake Your Booty)," KC & Sunshine Band (1976): As a pretentious pimply adolescent I resisted KC's lyrics, which all more or less encourage you to shake your booty. Not that I was opposed to shaking my booty, properly lubricated, but couldn't they be not so freakin' obvious about it?! Now I think the dancing dogma accentuates KC's singular focus on making irresistibly catchy Latin funk pop. This or "Get Down Tonight" my Sunshine Band peaks. They emphasize the fun in funky.  

"You're Everything I Need," Major Lance (1975): By the '70s and the disco era Major Lance is a throwback, raw early '60s soul, like early Motown but still a little rougher around edges, more mistakes and sometimes more enthusiasm and that all-join-together churchy musical energy that made soul music sizzling hot in 1963 and still a dance music breakdown-sound, which Sly took to glorious pop heights, favorite in the '70s discos. Especially big in the discos of northern England and dubbed Northern soul. 

"The World," Sweet Inspirations (1970): A lot of early gay disco was taking Philadelphia International, Motown, or Atlantic soul music like this, as DJ's naturally started with a special appreciation for the longer stuff, more time between record transitions, Eddie Kendrick's "Girl You Need A Change of Mind" or The Temptations "Papa Was A Rollin Stone," both going way past five minutes, for early disco examples, and then stretching these proto-disco models even longer, lovingly adding symphonic intros and outros, elaborately funky bridges, endless buildups and exquisite climaxes. Producer Tom Moulton made a whole career out of this. This Atlantic single is more country than Moulton's mixes, the Sweet Inspirations bring more churchy old school fervor into the disco, but the mix conveys Moulton's kind of disco love for original soul music sources. Some of the love behind the Sweet Inspirations should also be credited to Jerry Wexler as well, the guy who coined the phrase rhythm & blues. The SI's were backup singers for Aretha, Elvis, Dusty, and a bunch of other Wexler production credits, and put out eight albums of their own between 1967 and 1979. 

Herbie Hancock Group Funks It Up On Danish TV, 1976:

I'm no expert on solo projects related to Miles Davis' electric period; I've heard albums by Weather Report Mahavishnu Orchestra, Keith Jarrett, Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, Chick Korea, and Herbie Hancock but not even close to all of them. And what I've heard has their charms but most strikingly they always seem to back up my sense of how wildly out there and singularly awesome were those Miles electric records. None of the members of his electric albums on their own ever sound very much like any of those Miles records to me. If anything comes close it'd be some space rock patches on Herbie Hancock's Sextant (1973) or Thrust (1974), everything else by Hancock is way too pop funky for the dark heavy space rock explorations of Bitches Brew or Live Evil, etc. (BTW, where does that space rock sound on the electric Miles come from, anyway? Drugs maybe play a part but I think it's at least in part Miles' infatuation with Stockhausen inspired bleeping and atmospheric goofing on the keyboards.) Anyway, this longish Hancock live set appeared on Danish TV in 1976. It goes with the long instrumental passages in early Earth Wind & Fire or the Crusaders more than any Miles. But I'm still stanning for groove music like this, as its own reward, no lesser step child to free jazz or pop music with words; if, in this particular comparison, not as beloved to me as Miles' electric albums. Nonetheless, Hancock's jazz-funk is its own thing and I like it just fine. Sure, there are some smooth jazzercising genteel affectations to Herbie-- you ought to see him later in his tinted glasses and neck scarves (Jackie Chiles on Seinfeld, right?)-- but he charts in the classic funk period ("Chameleon," '74) and the early hiphop era ("Rockit," '83) and, again, in the acid jazz phase of the EDM explosion in England in the early '90s ("Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)"); that's three decades on the dance music charts. Feel the groove. 

Hot Tub Time Machine: Morning After World Blues Rock

 "Toxika," Plastic People of Universe (1974): I've been thinkin' maybe it's ab time to pull out those Milan Kundera novels again or take another look at that German film The Lives of Others (2006). But some Plastic People will have to do, for now. This track comes off an album called Egon Bondy's Happy Hearts Club Banned. So definitely no "Good Day Sunshine," even if that song comes off Revolver. The Plastic People recorded Egon Bondy in 1974 but the record circulated only by cassette until 1978 because it could not be officially released under the Communist regime of Czechoslovakia. Sometimes in my sampling of their work they sound like musicians trained to play orchestral music trying too hard to play rock music. And then there's "Toxika," where they make rock music with the serious, relentless, rigor of chamber music and it all makes sense. Work it, worry it, grind it, and pound away at it until it feels right again, and then get up and do it again tomorrow. Enduring the wasteland. Jamming as a blues thing, with an Eastern European folk music backbone. Job well done. 

"Engel Der Gegenwart," [Angel of The Present], from a soundtrack to a Werner Herzog film, Heart of Glass (1976). The story is set in an 18th century Bavarian village known for producing brilliant ruby glass. When the master glass blower dies, the secret of the production of the ruby glass is lost. The villagers are driven mad trying to recover the lost secret that provided an identity to their home town, and they more or less took for granted only a short time before. Weirdly, maybe even illegal somewhere, all the acting was performed under hypnosis. The people look like harmless zombies, in my dim memory of seeing the film at Cinema 21 in Portland in the early '80s. Popol Vuh's audio accompaniment is warmer, not quite so austere and melodramatic as the narrative, more bucolic, ritualistic, grieving, slow building acoustic and electric guitar grandeur that promises some spiritual release in little evidence in the story. The music is consummate bluesy ambient folk music with historical gravitas, even if entirely imagined by Florian Fricke in a house in the German country side in the 1970s. BTW, check out the Spaghetti western music allusion in the intro. 

"It ain't easy, it ain't easy, it ain't easy to get to heaven when you're going down." "It Ain't Easy," David Bowie (1972). Gives Three Dog Night song more of an epic blues rock My Generation-feel, the way Bowie gives mythic glitter to everything he touches at this point. Turn it up. 

"Beat on the Brat," Ramones (1976)

In my early years teaching, on particularly bad days, after school, no more students, the coast more or less clear, I'd shut the door to my classroom and blast this and feel like slam dancing off the walls as I angrily straightened desks and stack books and papers, trying to restore some order to my chaos before heading home. 

The habit reminds me of this anecdote about the early years at Creem magazine. Several summers, pivoting around 1970, some staff members shack up outside the city of Detroit. Lester Bangs, Dave Marsh, and, the publisher, Barry Kramer, were the regulars, I think, but at any rate the house they were sharing was owned by Kramer. Bangs and Marsh were there possibly to escape the city heat in summer but definitely to save on rent. They get along okay but all cooped up like that for weeks on end they need some escape and downtime. Bangs said he found his solace by regularly retreating to his small room, closing the door, and blasting Black Sabbath at full volume. 

I was doing something like that with this Ramones song. I remember at least one time when a student walked into the room on afternoon when I had this song on and the volume turned up to eleven. Initially there was incredulous shock at how loud I was playing the music. But I turned it down quickly, although not off, and helped them. The song continues to play in the background, like a runaway subway train, if now muted, the student, a nerdy boy, into video games, standing around while I find some paper they need. Finally, the student exclaims almost quizzically, "beat on the brat with a baseball bat"?!  

"Of course, I would never," I chuckled nervously. 

Two seminal forms of pre-'77 punk anger: The Stooges were angry punk and dangerous; and The Ramones were angry punk and funny. Unsuspecting students were lucky I didn't play "Search and Destroy"! 

"Thank God for the Rain," Bernard Hermman, Taxi Driver, 1976.

 Neo-Noir psychological thriller dark soul of the night vibe that David Lynch would move to the West Coast, add some sly Neo-Beatnik humor, and make a career out of (Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive); with Angelo Badalamenti's help, of course. Taxi Driver, Vertigo, Psycho, Hermman is on the short list of great soundtrack composers.