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

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