I’m a happy man, I became an uncle for the first time yesterday evening and met my niece, Iris, today. Now I may be a hard-drinking, womanising, quasi-toilet trained, party beast from the planet Rawk! but I’ve always been an absolute sucker for little babies. It’s the perfect little fingers and toes that floor me every time. Without fail.
So after a nice easy day which was happy in every other way too, I needed something to reflect that. Sadly in lieu of ISIS putting out an acoustic LP of campfire sing-a-longs, I’ve been moved to look elsewhere for my happy kicks tonight. I’ve cheated a bit too, I only got this record a couple of weeks ago, but my excuse is that I’ve owned the main track digitally for years*.
Disco, or ‘Dicso’ as I mistyped it three times in a row just now, is a bit of a latecomer to my affections, despite growing up with warm memories of various exotic looking space dudes dressed predominantly in Bacofoil disporting themselves regularly weekly on Thursday nights on Top of the Pops. After becoming a bit less of a rock snob in my later teens I began to buy edited highlights, a bit of Chic there, a chunk of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack there, but it took me much longer to get hold of any Donna Summer/Giorgio Moroder. I always had a bit of a thing for that icy cold quality that their music had, humanised, but only just, by Ms Summer’s wails, moans and coos. I bagged the LP Love to Love You Baby, which makes me blush when I listen to the orgasmic sex-act of a title track – which at 16:49 is damned unrealistic if you ask me, especially with my bad back, come on how about a 2:02 ’19 Years of Marriage Mix’ ?!
It took me a bit of research and prodding to work out which was the best way to get hold of my favourite DS/GM track I Feel Love. I mean who wants the 3 minute Greatest Hits version? or the 5 minute original LP version? or even the edited 8 minute version? not me. I wanted the full on 15:53 Patrick Cowley Megamix version which was released on Casablanca Records in 1982. Now that’s what I call D-I-C-S-O !! The 8 minute version on the B-side is just for wimps and wimpettes.
The original I Feel Love dates from 1977, but this still sounds like the future to me^ and something about it is so unearthly. As with all of Moroder’s best work, the synths sound cold and mechanistic and the man was just so far ahead in his use of beats it was scary, much as I love Kraftwerk and (blushes) Jean Michel Jarre, Moroder’s version of future music turned out much nearer the mark. Donna Summer’s vocals are just spot on too, her voice soars and swoops here, without resorting to the silliness of ‘Love to Love You Baby’. Before a bad PC crash robbed me of it I even had a really interesting BBC documentary narrated by the wonderful Alison Goldfrapp solely about this track, but I digress. Patrick Cowley’s megamix is the superior version for me, he emphasises the beats a little more than the original did, adds a whole breakdown section towards the middle before bringing it back for a rousing climax and is just MORE, MORE, MORE; which works a treat for me here. Purists do prefer the 8 minute version I’m told, and that’s fine, they are entirely welcome to their opinion, despite it being manifestly wrong.
So I’ve sat and listened to this 12″ about five times tonight, even risking a bit of a creaky jig around the room** when the family weren’t looking. I was happy anyway and I Feel Love made me even happier, which is something great dance music can do for me every time.
Those ‘Disco Sucks’ dudes from the clip that always gets shown on music documentaries had it all wrong, let’s face it Dicso Rocks!
235 Down.
*making this one of the few records in the entire 1537 that I didn’t get my heart broken to / spent an hour savouring on the bus home / put on a mixtape for my future wife. I could always make some history up for it though, if you’d prefer.
^The track ‘Giorgio By Moroder’ as well as being one of only two great tracks on the last Daft Punk LP, features the man himself talking about creating future music; ‘I knew that it could be a sound of the future but I didn’t realise how much the impact it would be’, as the great man says.
**or ‘your bloody awful disco mince’, as Mrs 1537 calls it; harsh woman that she is.
Congrats to Uncle 1537! Don’t have much to say on the topic of Disco but…
“warm memories of various exotic looking space dudes dressed predominantly in Bacofoil disporting themselves regularly weekly on Thursday nights on Top of the Pops”
Shouldn’t you be telling Operation Yewtree about all of this?
Thank you!
Hand on heart, have you never strutted your stuff to Kung-Fu Fighting, or Stayin Alive? Remember every time you lie in a comment an angel dies, it’s been scientifically proven and stuff.
I can honestly say I have never strutted my stuff to either of those tunes! Rod Stewart’s disco output may be a different matter entirely though… ahem.
I see, Rod gets a bye because he’s Scottish!
Haha he’s not really a Scot though. Just an honorary one.
Congratulations Uncle Joe! I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the arrival of a niece(and a new moniker you can add to your business card) than with a 15 minute coked-out Giorgio Moroder disco mix. Hell yeah! Summer was and will always be the disco queen. While I think towards the end of disco’s reign it began to get a bit generic(much like most musical reigns..hello, grunge), it’s prime(1975, 76,77) it was a beast. It was a producers/musicians playland. The “acts” were merely puppets for the producer to mold in any way they seemed fit. And hedonistic? Man, Rome and Nero ain’t got nothin’ on Studio 54.
Been awhile since I’ve had a little one, so enjoy. You know it goes fast.
Thank you. She’s a real beauty, can’t wait to see her again soon. I’d just like to use this platform to totally refute the rumours that I’ve already made her three mix CDs. Honest.
I’ve found myself quite accidentally (OK, I was trying to be cool) listening to modern versions of disco and, ya know, the original was better. They don’t make like they used to back when we were too young to know how much of a challenge 16 minutes would be someday.
I couldn’t agree more Mr Orange.
(Spits over porch rail from rocking chair).
Lovely post, mega-mixed by the laugh-out-loud moment at 2:02. Made me think also of the delightful ‘Little Creatures’. Wonder if David Byrne had just become and Uncle? Congrats, btw.
Will engage with the analogue/cold/Kraftwerk/Moroder tangle another time, other than to say that I like the sweet synths of J-M too. We’re men. We can own up.
As a proud owner of Kiss’ Dynasty and Unmasked albums, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy some disco. I also think the Bee Gees were fabulous. I’m not deep into disco really, but I do like the Bee Gees.
I love the Disco Stu looking Lego minifig too. That’s great.
You know when I was a kid, I had like…four figures. All four were spacemen. I’d lost hands and bits, I could only make two complete figs. Now you can buy them in sets, as neat little singles, all unique…the options are limitless now.
So I just want to say to the children of today: You lucky, lucky bastards.
LeBrain
Ha! I will pass on your message to the children of today, possibly not all of them, but I’ll give it my best shot!
I love the Lego minifigs (you may have noticed!), my blog came about because of the Lego DJ figure. One day I’ll leave it to the nation.
So we all it all to that little yellow fella? Thanks, yellow fella.
Sure beats the days when all my characters had to be spacemen, and one of them handless.
I’m still struggling to think of a track which a handless spaceman could apply to.
The Empire Strikes Back soundtrack.