Dancing, naturally

Disco Dream Album? Almost, still worth having

I needed an incentive to wake up this morning. I stayed up reading last night and it was cold out, so I made sure that, apart from my alarm, I had something I had to wake up for besides work. Last night, after I had found an album on Amazon mp3, I made myself wait until the morning to put it on my iPod.

This little trick worked! I was out the door and listening to my new tunes. New OLD tunes, that is. Click here for the Amazon mp3 album.
Donna McGhee was a singer who got the Patrick Adams/Greg Carmichael treatment. These two produced disco that truly has no peer. There are many lights in Disco's heyday, but these two made music that, I believe, doesn't even sound like disco.

Oh, it's disco. A big kick drum, walking bass line, and occasional string section can be found on their tracks, for sure.

Donna McGhee had two big songs with them: "It Ain't No Big Thing" and "Love Bug." The first is something transcendent, wrapping the entire space in a huge, warm blanket of sound. It's so amazing that it doesn't really inspire dance, instead it invites contemplation. There's a guitar part on this song that sets it apart from all other disco. Listening to it today, it struck me as something that a 70's jazz guitarist might play, definitely not a rocker. It hangs back in the song, slowing it down a little more.

I feel "No Big Thing" and "Love Bug" are most likely to be danced to with the hustle, slowly. Perhaps when no one's around. Perhaps when someone's practicing for the next night after everone's left. Perhaps, even if no one will ever come back, because the night is over, maybe the last night disco will ever have.

The album has a third single, "Make It Last Forever." No hyperbole, this song joins the others in high Disco style.

One thing on this album, moreso than other Patrick Adams/Greg Carmichael stuff, is that the sound is really mixed together. It's so mixed that it comes near to the random anonymous Eurpoean disco tracks that sound like a waiting room in West Germany. Those records sound like background music and usually have a skinny, soft backbeat. BUT, but, it's not that mixed. It's just about as good as it gets. Again, you won't hear music like this anywhere else, ever.

The one thing that drags on the album, sadly, is a song that needed a bit of restraint. Clocking in at 10:10, Do As I Do starts with such a wicked bass line and chanting chorus. For most of the song, though, Donna McGhee is making orgasmic sounds. There's nothing wrong with a little enticing whisper, moan, or chuckle that's made to sound like the real thing, especially in Disco. Many of the best disco songs have it (Salsoul records seemed to be very OK with putting this in the mix). But 10 minutes of it? It starts to worry me. This would be a good song to mix in/mix out of though.

I haven't met someone who doesn't love the Patrick Adams stuff. (That is, once they hear it!) If you're interested, you should check out the compilation "The Master of the Master." The CD version has two CDs while the mp3 version compiles it to one CD. Trust me, get the 2 CDs. It has the classic Black Ivory track, "Surrender," and more of the early Patrick Adams stuff. Oh, and ignore the comment that it doesn't sound good b/c it's vinyl rips. I'm not sure that they are vinyl rips, and anyways, it does sound good!

Yes, this is music that people nerd out on, but at least there's a really good reason why. Like King Tubby on Dub, like Brian Eno on New Wave, records that were worked on by Patrick Adams and Greg Carmichael are frequently sensational and unique, raising the standard for others to achieve.

Make It Last Forever

My parents were baby boomers, both born in 1948. They spent their 20's doing as best they could, but by the late 70's it was clear to each of them that they were ready to settle down. Sure enough, when my dad moved to Louisville and was chosen as a part of a double-date, they met, ditched their partners, and married six weeks later.

The drama of the meeting and quick marriage that has lasted 28 years has a way of blotting out the other details, and I can't say that the details are so important: where they were working, where my Dad had lived before, each of their previous relationships. One detail, though, is the keepsake that I adore from the shoebox of memories surrounding their relationship: they met at a disco.

Louisville, KY, was not a big disco city. But, in 1978, disco was everywhere and bar owners saw a way to liven up the crowds by putting in a DJ, a disco ball, and maybe a lighted floor. Disco music kept charting on the airwaves, disco was pop, and many respectable musicians recorded disco songs so as not to be left out of any charts. Disco, unlike rock music at the time, brought people to dance together and it didn't hide the implications between couples sharing a song. If my parents had met at a Led Zepplin show, I don't know if they would have spoken again, but with disco, the possibilities of love were expounded in every song.

My parents were the fruits of the Greatest Generation, when Americans came together to fight a common cause. I was born of the hippie/disco generation, and my birth in 1981 puts me in a small category I will call the Disco Boom. Babes whose parents most likely listened to disco and danced to it at least once.

This is, of course, wishful thinking. Disco was so big that the choice for a date spot in Louisville was fairly made for them. Later, they could enjoy time at the racetrack, Lousiville's main attraction.

Before Disco fell off, there were thousands of tracks that would never see the light of day again, except for collectors and fans. I would even argue that outside of a handful of singles and two movie soundtracks (Car Wash and Saturday Night Fever), Disco isn't well known. When I deejayed on New Year's Eve, I was hounded by coworkers who listed songs from this handful or Saturday Night Fever and were dismayed when I didn't have them. Never mind that I did have several songs that are still played on the radio at times, never mind that some songs are so catchy that I can see the bar patrons shuffling about, trying to find their way into a dance step. These coworkers said to me that if I did not have these songs, I couldn't call it a Disco night. I shouldn't have to list their requests, but for completeness' sake: Sat Night Fever all, Gloria Gaynor (only one, though! I Will Survive), Donna Summer (probably Bad Girls, On the Radio, or Last Dance), and Diana Ross.

I like all those songs, but for a second it would be nice if they could have stopped to enjoy songs like Andrea True Connection's "More, More, More," and Earth, Wind, and Fire's, "Let's Groove." These are songs that have been around for a long time and are also great tunes, just like the ones they listed. The difference, sadly, is that they didn't add those songs to their disco playlist. It wasn't something that they thought of first.

Their requests became complaints, and all I could do was appeal to their logic. I showed them my stack of 60 disco records and explained that, in this limited way, I couldn't fulfill their requests.

What is disco, then, to those who don't abandon themselves to a deejay's music; for those who need to know ahead of time what they will listen to in order to enjoy themselves; for those who, essentially, need that control over their night? It comes down to a handful of singles and two movie soundtracks. And, when Car Wash was played, the coworkers looked at each other knowingly: that was a disco song, played at a disco night.

Take all the talent of American Soul, Funk, and many from Jazz, plus new guys from Europe, plus established Rock Groups. Add in a new breed of deejays whose job it is to play songs all night to crowds ranging from 100 to 3000, demanding crowds looking for the night of their life and sensitive to the changes the DJ makes to the songs. All of this exploded in 1976 and continued through 1979. Isn't it likely that there are more good songs than a handful of singles and two movie soundtracks?

In fact, there are hundreds of great dance songs from that time period. Of course, there's a lot of garbage too. Disco does not have a complex song structure: it's super-repetitive. If the main harmony or rhythm is mediocre, and the hook isn't juicy, it's not a very special record. In my opinion, the singer has to be very special, whether it's Andrea True and her off-hand, almost passive lyrics and vocals or a big voice like Loleatta Halloway, who probably could have cut some huge tracks back in Aretha's heyday. Some people don't even like vocals on the record, putting even more emphasis on the rhythm, harmony, and hook.

This is the plaintive cry of someone who loves a genre and sees all the possibilities, but can't get in the door of a culture dominated by individual choice. The same lament could come from aficionados of all kinds of recorded music, and even dance music. Instead of having one person select songs for a night, maybe people would like it if we could take all the personal music collections of all attendees, add them up, and then make a playlist from the most popular of those songs. It doesn't matter what the night is called, it fairly represents everyone's taste and is approved by the authority that is the club's sound system.

Without something like this happening, which is actually very possible and achievable, I think to myself that I have no problem turning my night over to a dance DJ. Whatever the music: 50's Rockabilly, 60's Psyche and Go-Go, 70's Funk or Disco, 80's Hip-hop and Electro, 90's trance, I'm willing to step on the floor and give it a few turns. All the music listed finds itself on the 4/4 beat and the beat is familiar and consistent. If I don't know the songs, then I at least recognize what they sound like. I came into adulthood thinking that was the point of dancing. The music plays and you have an excuse to move your feet.

America, of 300 million strong, is not a dance culture. We like music choice, but we don't like to abandon ourselves to dance. Ironically, Europe is a dance culture, but (in my observation) it's highly segregated and people know what they're getting before they arrive at the club. There are those who would dance to "Las Ketchup" every night for two years, those who like established dance genres, and those who like retro genres.

Americans as a whole aren't willing to turn their music choice over to someone else and dance at the same time. It doesn't matter that one song has many of the same aspects of a song they know, it has to be the song they know. For people who profess to love music, which is a great number, it surprises me that they're not ready to add one more song to their favorites or that they have to know what's played first. This is a new phenomenon; when radio was more dominant, frequently you would hear a track without hearing the announcement. If it was good, you kept it in your head until you could hum it to someone or catch it again. If you were dancing to the radio, you didn't stop dancing because you didn't know the track. Now, though, it's as if the club or bar deejay has to affirm the music choices of the audience.

Some of my greatest memories are of hearing a really great song for the first time. I didn't know what it was, I heard it, and I changed a little, forever.

Since when was knowing anything the key to fun anyways?

21st Century update: Portable Synth Very Interesting

The Nintendo DS is a fliptop portable gamer with a writing wand that you can use much like that of a Palm Pilot. Hooray! Though I, like many people, don't play video games. Hooray! For others.

Hold up. Now there is a 'game' that is actually just a KORG synthesizer. Walking by the Nintendo Store yesterday, I wanted to see if I could play with one. They did not have it out on display. Notably, though, they were sold out of it. The last copy was sold to a woman who ran in asking for it at the top of her lungs, and then after learning it was the last one, vaunted her purchase to the store. She got super double happiness off of that purchase, probably more than was intended.

I do want one. But I don't even compose on my fancy Apple Computer (Garage Band), so perhaps I should start there.

Click here to looky look at it. You can see he's using the "Kaos pad" which lets you change the sound by rubbing over a big square. I believe the effects from it are somewhat randomized.

Balearic

It's time for me to get new dance music. At least, in my fantasy world where I'm booking two deejay nights a week, I'm having to make a shift to the largely anonymous songs that make up a dance club. Songs that blend into one another so even the soberest of club patrons is not sure where one begins and one ends.

Yesterday I went to Turntable Lab for some record cleaning supplies. What can I say? They do sell brushes and needles--things that you need if you actually play records. They even sell records, and since I buy so few new records I committed to purchasing something made in the last year. I grabbed some stuff:

DFA's Metro Area man Morgan Geist

Rong Records which has something to do with MOMA's P.S.1 I BELIEVE

"Pool Party Remixes" - no link, sorry

Eskimo Records' Balearic Beat Comp

So, I played the records on their turntable (yes, you can listen to new records there!), and the Rong Records' record was pressed on noisy wax which disqualified it. Morgan Geist, too jaunty. I needed something more cathartic, I wanted to listen to music to deactivate, not to get energized or think. This came through on the Eskimo records' E.P.: the big falling synths, space sounds, and 'sampled percussion sounds' struck me as the solution. In my fantasy D.J. residency, guys and girls might fade to nothing as they followed the Balearic sounds from Eskimo records.

The crowning feature of Eskimo's compilation was the big emphasis on warm melodic synths: each song centered around this. Too distracted in trying to make purchases and leave, I grabbed the record and went home. Later, after a couple hours of T.V., I plugged into the record to enjoy the experience again. On the second listen, though, I realized that this record had a close classic rock affiliation, which made it less anonymous than I originally hoped.

As Pink Floyd pushed through the seventies, they also used big, warm, melodic synths. The album that heralds this sound is Wish You Were Here, which is both cathartic and emotive. The album opens and closes with spacey fuzzy synth notes played over background synths. Within the album, though, Pink Floyd has emotive and painful songs that balance out the initial, "live from Outer Space" sounds.

Close to the center of the album, the title track, "Wish You Were Here," uses a bare, electrified (sounds a bit, doesn't it?) acoustic guitar, which is near opposite of a synth. "Wish You Were Here" is a crying howl of a song much like "Tears in Heaven" or "Leaving on a Jet Plane": it sounds like something reserved for wakes and once-in-a-lifetime hugs between friends. How do they contain this emotion? By placing "Welcome to the Machine" before it, which sounds like something based on the movie "Metropolis" or "Modern Times," and "Have a Cigar," which is a caricature of a record exec but so dominated by synths that it seems to be an exec from the future, promising sales on music contained solely on, aak!, computers.

Wish You Were Here helps define the difference between synths and guitars (at least, until they became nearly ubiquitous). In the mid seventies, synths didn't have nostalgia like guitars. A guitar, though, is chosen to reference a guitar from the past: rockabilly, country, blues, metal, Spanish, surf, garage, grunge, folk, slide, Ben Harper. So, Pink Floyd's album, largely based on synth, is more self-referential than anything, looking at its own catalog: Meddle and Dark Side of the Moon. It's the sounds of the Pink Floyd universe.

Sitting with my headphones turned up to club levels, I realized that the synths on the Balaeric record were recreating airs from Wish You Were Here. I was a little disappointed because it ruined the numbing effect I was looking for: As an overly emotive teen, I listened to Wish You Were Here whenever I had a sad face. So, this record brings me back to those confused times, just like if I listened to a pop song with a folk guitar, banjo, and mandolin, I'll probably think of the Grateful Dead album American Beauty and the sixth grade.

Pink Floyd does not own all synth sounds and melodies, so it would be possible to create a similar record that doesn't sound like Wish You Were Here. That would be the record for me: stripping away the classic rock roots that defined my, and many others', childhoods.

Liquid Liquid to appear in New York City

When it comes to infectious percussion with No-Wave Cool, the two well-compiled masters are Liquid Liquid and ESG. Oh, there are plenty more. Konk, Bush Tetras, and the Contortions all come to mind, and if you like percussion with no dance beat, try the Golden Palominos' first album.

Liquid Liquid, this will be a concert for the ages. WEDNESDAY, NOV 19th.

CLICK HERE TO BUY YOUR TICKET.

-signing off, Standardsmus of musicmus.