As mentioned last week, the gay jocks of America have successfully brought about the death of disco as the media know it, although the jocks themselves of course refute this. At the Billboard Dance Music Forum session which dealt with ‘Programming Today In The Club’, the British contingent were appalled to hear the moderator, supposedly respected New York DJ and famed disco remixer Jim Burgess, say without any note of irony that he was playing to “drugged gays” and if he varied the music it would bring them down, thus restricting him to an inflexible programme of fast tempo music for the whole night. This nugget was greeted with approval and understanding by the majority present, and another panellist – apropos of a discussion about using microphones – shrieked out the admission, “when I get really drugged I open the mike and scream!”
Obviously what’s right for some is not right for others, so these guys know what they’re doing in relation to their own audiences, but their ears seemed to be totally closed to any suggestions from outsiders whose own experience is surely just as valid.
The point that we rather heatedly were making is that their audience, in its drugged state and without any verbal (or even visual) contact with the DJ, was quite obviously not a likely market in which to sell enough records to influence the Hot 100 pop sales chart. A comparison between the US Disco and US Singles charts at the back of Record Mirror will bear this out – yet Billboard in compiling their Disco chart heavily weight their returns from the gay discos. In Atlanta, for instance, Billboard take charts from five clubs, of which four are gay – but fewer than half the clubs in the city are in fact gay.
In our fury with the way in which mechanical gay “disco” music was still being foisted onto the media as the real disco sound, the British contingent (Chris Hill, Froggy, Barmy Steve Haines, Stan Barrett and myself being the main spokesmen) were even being hissed . . . although afterwards a lot of people came up to say how much sense we were speaking, and that the situation was totally different outside the overly-influential gay clubs. Our point that we were playing funk, soul and jazz in Britain even seemed to be missed by many bunkered bigots in the audience, label owning Ray Caviano even saying that obviously what we were into was rock music!
In point of fact there seemed to be a lot of discussion about rock, in the form of the Flying Lizards and the B-52s, who appear to be getting played by some disco DJ’s almost out of a sense of duty as if they knew that a change was in order. But when the expression “DOR” was explained to me as meaning “Dance Orientated Rock” I knew it was pointless trying to talk to these idiots. Live and let live, to each his own . . . but don’t blame us when people say that disco is dead!
Odds ‘N Bods
After all that, Greg Davies’s disco forum was cancelled at the last minute for a variety of unconvincing excuses – maybe nobody is interested in yet another thrash about DJ mailing lists?! . . . Brothers Johnson ‘Stomp!’ turns out to be on 12in (AMSP 7509) at 120 bpm and chops nicely out of a suitable climax if you start at “everybody take it to the top”, the flip being a bumpy 126 bpm ‘Let s Swing’ instrumental . . . Toots & The Maytals ‘Chatty Chatty’ (12WIP 6544) and Don Armando ‘Deputy Of Love’ (12WIP 6557) are now on 12in, while up-coming are Brass Construction ‘Movin’’ / ‘Changin’’ (UA 12UP 617), Herb Alpert ‘Street Life’ (A&M AMSP 7511), One Way ‘Now That I Found You’ / ‘Rock’ (MCA MCAT 553) and Sharon Paige’s ‘Tonight’s The Night’ (Source) . . . Pye’s Morgan Khan, inspired by my US bootleg ‘Dedley Medley’ DJ cut-ups, has masterminded an official ‘Calibre Cuts’ due soon with white labels of the hit snippets-filled 12in out even earlier . . . Players Association’s US LP sleeve is much less MfP-like than ours, while the hot cut is there titled ‘The Get-Down Mellow Sound’ and all the printed BPM’s are wildly inaccurate! . . . Ensign could be issuing some very interesting oldies culled from other labels soon . . . ‘You Are My Friend’ will be Sylvester’s soulful slow next single . . . DJF Governing Council Meeting is up in the land of the wally jock at Stranraer Buck’s Head Hotel on Tuesday (4) at 10 am . . . Jerry Gilbert & Theo Loyla may find Friday lunchtime a good time of day to meet the “disco leaders”, though I and others still prefer 2am at Gullivers! . . . Eargasm ‘This Is Lovers Rock’, which seems to have ended up at Island, in fact features D. Tyrone, Snoopy & Denis Pinnock . . . Russell “Arbie” Burtonshaw (whose Mum I finally met the other day) has some ex-chart hits (pop not disco) to get rid of, so send an SAE to 53 Galway Crescent, Retford DN22 7XU . . . LA’s Record Depot of 1604 N. Highland Avenue (at Hawthorn) in Hollywood sells ridiculous disco bargains, my own snips being 10 cent 12in versions of Luther Rabb ‘Make A Little Move’, La Pregunta ‘Shangri La’ and – to annoy Robbie Vincent! – ‘Disco Bouzouki’ . . . Pete Tong is currently turning on the Mafia with Leo’s Sunshipp ‘We Need Each Other’ (US Lyons LP) from 1978, featuring some Finished Touch members in an earlier grouping, while Chris Hill’s hotsie is a direct-cut US Columbia re-recording of Herbie Hancock’s ‘I Thought It Was You’ on the ‘Direct Step’ LP . . . Bunny Mack ‘Love You Forever’ mixes on superbly into Stop ‘I Can Feel It’, while Kool ‘Too Hot’ into Jan Akkerman ‘She’s So Divine’ (LP version) into Slave ‘Just A Touch Of Love’ is another goodie . . . Whispers ‘And The Beat Goes On’ obviously can’t be disco – nor can 17 other chart entries – because after all, disco is dead!
UK Newies
LEON HAYWOOD: ‘Don’t Push It Don’t Force It’ (20th Century TCD 2443) (BNDA debut 2/23/80)
Dynamite chart-leaping 114bpm 12in “rock” smacker that crosses ‘Ladies Night’ with Kellee Patterson to come out Al Hudson flavoured, with brassy bits borrowed from Blood, Sweat & Tears.
RONNIE LAWS: ‘OTBA Law (Outta Be A Law)’ (from LP ‘Every Generation’, UA UAG/TCK 30289)
Bass-snapped steadily pushing 115-113-114-113bpm instrumental jazz jiggler is currently hotter than the Isleys-like decelerating 134-129bpm ‘Young Child’ sax squawker, though the latter is now on slightly faster 12in (12-UP 619), while the title track at 35bpm and the 36bpm ‘Love’s Victory’ are gentle vocal slowies, ‘Tomorrow’ is a spurting 117(intro)-118bpm jiggler with chix, and ‘As One’ a 90bpm ‘Rise’-type jitterer.
SLAVE: ‘Just A Touch Of Love’ (Atlantic K 11442T) (BNDA debut 1/12/80)
Terrific solidly chugging monotonous thudder is finally on 112-110-111-110bpm 12in, so should now break nationally out of the South-East (where it’s been el monstro!). Continue reading “March 1, 1980: “The gay jocks of America have successfully brought about the death of disco””
James Hamilton's Disco Page 