Love To Love You Baby

Donna Summer - "Love To Love You Baby" (1975) - Oasis Records

Hello Friends,

Sultry sounds from the turntable tonight!

Love to Love You Baby is not only Donna Summer's first release in the U.S. (her actual first release, Lady of the Night, would only be released in the Netherlands) but it also remains a seminal release in the Disco movement of the 1970's.

The title song takes up all of Side One and boy-oh-boy is it a doozy!  A sexy, sultry and sweaty disco opus featuring Giorgio Moroder & Pete Bellotte's sparingly calculated production values with plenty of wah-wah guitar, boogieing bass lines, futuristic-sounding synthesizers and Summer's breathy and sensual vocals with orgasmic moans and ecstatic groans aplenty!

Whereas Side One is an epic of the early disco era, Side Two is a bit of a mixed bag containing more soulful ballads and less speed- and sex-fueled dance tunes.

Immediately, the party comes crashing to halt with the heartbreaking ballad "Full of Emptiness".  A great and incredibly sad song sung with unmistakable sincerity by Summer. It does come off as a bit of a buzzkill, however.

"Need-a-Man Blues" gets things (temporarily) back on track with Moroder's signature electro-funk instrumentation doing what it does best lying just below the surface!

"Whispering Waves" is another pretty ballad but ITS KILLING US.  Its sounds like a 1970's Massengill commercial!  What the hell happened to the spazzy, swirling up-tempo sleaziness of the album's first side??  My boner is slowly turning into tears!  (Although, for whatever its worth, there is some pretty nice guitar work going on here.)

Thank god that "Pandora's Box" gets us back to at least a mid-tempo shuffle!!  It actually starts out reminding us of Rundgren's "Hello Its Me", but ends up being more of a straightforward R&B song.

The side ends with a country-twinged reprise of "Full of Emptiness" (which would have been an amazing "come down" to the album if everything leading up to it was as high energy as the title track!)

As a whole, this album doesn't really work which is to be expected, historically speaking. Donna Summer was new to the scene as was the genre that she would eventually dominate!  Just the fact that a disco/dance track would take up all of a side is pretty amazing (in 1975 the only bands doing this would be prog rock/art rock bands like Yes, Genesis or Pink Floyd!)  This album captures her and Moroder in their relative infancy with Love To Love You Baby setting the table for the next half decade or so of greatness!

RATING: 4 do it to me again and again you put me in such an awful spin out of 5

Cruisin' (for a bruisin')

Village People - Cruisin' (1978) - Casablanca Records

Hello Friends,

The weather is finally getting nicer and the tiki bar is bouncin'.

Cruisin' is the third release by late 70's disco-sensation Village People.

Another kitschy & supremely upbeat record featuring the songs "YMCA", "The Women/I'm a Cruiser Medley", "Hot Cop", "My Roomate" & "Ups and Downs" (a fisting fist-pumping drug anthem complete with Star Wars laser sounds!)

And make no mistake about it friends, the title of record does not refer to driving around with your friends on a Friday drinking milkshakes and crackin' wise.

We still can't believe that even after their Macho Man release earlier in the year, that some fans still didn't realize the incredibly in-your-face gay subtext behind it all.

If the hit song "YMCA" wasn't enough (with thought-provoking lyrics like: "They have everything for you men to enjoy / You can hang out with all the boys / Its fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A." it surely isn't a song about a pick-up basketball game); what about the song, "Hot Cop"?  Featuring a manic, driving beat and such Shakespearean locutions as:

Cuz he's a hot cop
Hottest cop that you'll ever see
I bet you never meet a cop
As funky as me...
Party, boogie, boogie,
Boogie, boogie, get on down...

Yowsa!  I wanna wear leather chaps just hearing this!

"Its not personal, Sonny.  It's strictly business."

And speaking of leather chaps, if there was still any doubt about the subtext here, minds were surely blown just two years later when Al Pacino (aka The Godfather part 2) starred in the William Friedkin movie Cruising about a New York City cop who goes undercover and cruises for gay sex in the steamiest, stickiest and sleaziest of gay nightclubs.




RATING: 4 yellow hankies in left rear pockets out of 5

Turkish Delight

Midnight Express Soundtrack (1978) - Casablanca Records

Hello Friends,

On the turntable tonight, we've got Giorgio Moroder's soundtrack album to Alan Parker's 1978 movie about a hash-smuggling American who gets caught and jailed in a Turkish prison.

Spoiler alert: Its no picnic!

Based on the (mostly) true account of Billy Hayes, the film's script was written by none other than Sir Oliver Stone.  

Very synthy & dreamlike, Moroder's soundtrack is at times haunting and powerful.  There's a couple of vocal tracks that end up sounding kind of dated and cheesey, but the 8-minute opening track alone ("Chase") is worth the price of admission.

Its so good, in fact, that it won the Academy Award for best original score for that year!

Nice job, Giorgio!  You have yet to let us down!

And remember kids, just say No!

o-o-oh billy!

RATING: 4 dreams that keep my soul alive out of 5

Texas In My Rear View Mirror

Mac Davis - "Texas in My Rear View Mirror" (1980) - Casablanca Records

Hello Friends,

For a short period of time in the 1970's Casablanca Records dominated the music universe. 

Due in no small part to the arena-sized success of KISS, as well as being directly involved in the ground floor of the burgeoning disco movement as early supporters of Giorgio Moroder & Donna Summer, Casablanca Records, for a time, looked unstoppable.  But massive egos and cocaine habits usually force all good things to end a little sooner than they should and Casablanca was no exception.  (For a great read with all the nasty details check out the book, "And Party Everyday: The Inside Story of Casablanca Records"  by longtime Casablanca employee, Larry Harris!)

Anyway, by 1980, Casablanca was really branching out and delving into newer, and hopefully trendsetting, arenas.  They flirted with some pop-oriented country music acts that were far removed from the more successful Outlaw Country movement going on elsewhere.  They signed bands and performers like Pure Prairie League, Tony Joe White and singer-songwriter Mac Davis.

Born in Lubbock, Texas, Mac Davis made quite a splash in the late 60's by writing some hits for Elvis (including "In the Ghetto" & "A Little Less Conversation") as well as having his own Solid Gold hit in 1972's "Baby Don't Get Hooked On Me" (here).

Known for his not-so-subtle innuendos and often overtly sexual song lyrics (see: "Baby Spread Your Love On Me"... ewww), on paper his move to Casablanca Records in the late 70's seemed like a match made in heaven! 

His 1980 release Texas In My Rear View Mirror is part country, part pop, part blue-eyed soul and part soft rock.  A forgotten gem which lacks any truly big hits and whose songs are a little all over the place, but it still makes a great soundtrack for late summer listening when the days are still warm, but the nights start to get cool and crisp!

Things get started with "Hooked on Music", a Johnny Cash-style shuffle which has Davis tipping his cap to his friend and mentor Elvis Presley as well as Lubbock Texas's original favorite son, Buddy Holly.

"Remember When (Beverly's Song)" is as sugary sweet Solid Gold pop gem that borders very close to the tried-and-true Yacht Rock formula.

"Me 'n Fat Boy" sounds like it could have been written by Paul Simon.

"Hot Texas Night" is a sultry country rock ballad reminiscent of Rhinestone Cowboy-era Glen Campbell.  

Side One concludes with the great & sappy "Sad Songs".  Featuring some great pedal steel guitar work, its probably the purest country song on the record it featuring great, sappy lyrics like:

"Sad songs are like dumb old dogs 
Who can melt you by just lookin' up in your eyes,
Like they're tryin' to tell you 
There'll always be someone who cares
If you like or if you die..."



From start to finish, Side One is really good.  Again, its a little all over the place so you get a little bit of country, pop, soft rock, folk, et cetera.  Side Two continues with that theme although the songs aren't quite as good!

"Texas In My Rear View Mirror" IS good however.  Really good. An autobiographical, bouncy country-pop tune about leaving the town that you grew up in order to head west in search fame & fortune and finding out that fame & fortune are cruel mistresses. All told without any semblance of bitterness or cynicism.

The soft rock schmaltz is back with "Hello, Hollywood", think of the band America, but lighter... and with more saxophone.

"Rodeo Clown" seems to be Davis's response to the more cynical Outlaw country artists of the time basically stating that he'd rather be a rodeo clown and make his fans laugh rather than make them introspective and depressed.  Not a great song by any stretch. 

More 70's soft rock with "Secrets" which sounds like REALLY watered-down Hall & Oates.
  
The record's last song, the gospel-inspired "In the Eyes of My People" isn't all that bad, but again its really over-produced and oozes schmaltz!   Some songs on this record have aged better than others and this isn't one of 'em!

Still, overall, not a bad record if you don't mind some cheese served with your whiskey sour!


RATING: 3.5 hot texas nights waiting for the rains out of 5 

Macho, Macho Man

Village People - "Macho Man" (1978) - Casablanca Records

Hello Friends,

If listening to The Village People doesn't put you in a good mood, you're incapable of being in a good mood!

Clocking in at under 28 minutes, Macho Man is the Village People's second album and like all their classic records was produced by French disco wunderkind, Jacques Morali.

Side One contains the title track blending seamlessly into the epic (gay) anthem, "I Am What I Am". 

To be honest, it sounds amazing.  

If Tiki T. and I were adults in 1978 we probably would have hated The Village People and pretty much all of disco with every fiber of our beings.  But listening to this manufactured, overproduced, hyper-sexualized dance music over 30 years later is a real sonic treat!  

Side Two continues the party with "Key West", a disco medley of "Just A Gigolo"/"I Ain't Got Nobody" & "Sodom & Gomorrah".

From those song titles, to the cover art and the lyrics throughout, this might be the most overtly and outwardly gay record in our record collection!  Our main question is, how the hell did anyone not immediately realize that The Village People were a collective of (mostly) gay guys catering specifically to a predominantly gay audience?  

Even Disneyland Records released a parody called "Macho Duck" just a year later!  We're going to assume that the Donald Duck had no idea of exactly what he was parodying at the time!  

Man, can you imagine a gay Donald Duck?

RATING: 4 every man wants to be a macho man to have the kind of body always in demand out of 5