Singles Night: Chic - "Le Freak" b/w "Savior Faire" (1978)

Hello Friends, 

Tonight on Vinyl in the Valley we're going to be catching up on a pile of 45's we've dug up recently. Enjoy!

First up is Chic's disco-era Classic, "Le Freak" b/w the funky instrumental "Savoir Faire"

Chic was a disco-funk band formed in 1976 by guitarist Nile Rodgers & bassist Bernard Edwards.  "Le Freak" is, of course, the 1978 monster disco hit.  The song is pretty much an ode to the long and obnoxious lines outside of NYC's famed Studio 54.  "Come on down to the 54".

The B-side is the rather smooth sounding instrumental "Savoir Faire" featuring some six-finger shredding by Rodgers (falling somewhere between the preciseness of Frank Zappa and the soulfulness of Purple Rain-era Prince.)

Rumor has it that "Le Freak" was Atlantic Records' top-selling record of all time!

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

Sarah Brightman & Hot Gossip - "I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper" (1978)

Hello Friends,

We're listening to some awesome 70's space disco tonight!

And, yes friends (in case you were wondering), this Sarah Brightman is the same Sarah Brightman that's a famous opera singer.  She was 18 when she recorded this space disco classic!

Enjoy!

Saturday Night Fever

Saturday Night Fever: The Original Movie Sound Track - 1977 - RSO Records

Hello Friends,

Its a muggy Summer's night here on Vinyl in the Valley and we're working up a healthy sweat listening to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack double album.

One of the most successful soundtrack album's of all time, the album captures the disco phenomenon at its apex.  Most of the tracks were either written or performed by The Bee Gees and features some of their biggest all time hits: "Stayin' Alive", "How Deep Is Your Love", "Night Fever", "More Than A Woman" (with a Bee Gees and a Tavares version), "Jive Talkin", "You Should Be Dancing" & "If I Can't Have You" (performed here by Yvonne Elliman.)

Other songs that round out the collection include Walter Murphy's classical-disco mash-up, "A Fifth of Beethoven"; David Shire's disco instrumentals (disco-mentals?) "Manhattan Skyline", "Night On Disco Mountain" (another classical mashup) and "Salsation"; Ralph MacDonald's frenzied "Calypso Breakdown" (which to us sounds like The People's Court theme music from the 80's); Kool & The Gang's "Open Sesame"; KC & The Sunshine Band's "Boogie Shoes"; Philly-soul legends MFSB's "K-Jee"; and everything culminating with a 10+ minute disco classic, "Disco Inferno" by The Trammps.

A great sweaty and somewhat sleazy record for a great sweaty and somewhat sleazy evening!

RATING: 4.5 ways of killing yourself without killing yourself out of 5

Having a Heatwave

Heatwave - "Central Heating" (1978) - GTO Records

Hello Friends,

Heatwave is a 70's-era disco-funk band that featured a real Benetton ad of a line-up that looked more like a Model UN meeting rather than an on-the-rise boogie band.  Their "classic" lineup featured members from Dayton, Ohio, a U.S. Serviceman stationed in Germany, guys from England, Switzerland, Jamaica, Briton & Czechoslovakia.  

Central Heating would be the band's second album and probably captures them at their creative peak.  (In 1979, founder and lead-singer Johnnie Wilder would be paralyzed in a car accident which would severely limit his ability to perform with the group he founded!)

Overall the sound of the record is pretty middle-of-the-road disco.  What's most interesting about the record is probably the fact that there seems to be one or two guys in the band who were more into early Genesis than they were, say, Donna Summer.  So you do get some weird, tricked out guitar/keyboard flourishes throughout.  (For instance, the fills on the opening track, "Put the Word Out" or the opening arrangement on the title track.)


Side Two's opener, "The Groove Line" was a big hit and probably the album's standout.


The aforementioned title track, unfortunately, sounds like it could be a poorly-produced television ad for a local HVAC company.

"Mind Blowing Decisions", "The Star of the Story" & "Leaving for a Dream" are buttery-smooth ballads with some fine vocal harmonizing making them sound closer to something by The Carpenters, Earth, Wind & Fire or even Steely-Dan-On-Downers!  In fact, at times we think this album is closer in sound to a particularly-funky Steely Dan or Bee Gees record rather than some of the grittier stuff being done at the time by The Ohio Players, The Village People or anything by Giorgio Moroder.

FUN FACT: Hey kids, did you know that Heatwave's keyboard-player and main songwriter, Rod Temperton would go on to write some HUGE hits for Michael Jackson like "Off The Wall", "Rock With You" and "Thriller"?

RATING: 3.5 better get your central heating don't get left out in the cold, no use trying to save it for later, got to turn on that old radiator* out of 5 

* these are actual lyrics

Heatwave - "Groove Line" (1978)

Hello Friends,

"Groove Line" is from Heatwave's second LP, Central Heating.  It reached as high as #7 on the U.S. Billboard charts however its probably best-remembered as Nick Andopolis's big dance number in the final episode of Freaks & Geeks.

Boogie-oogie-oogie-oogie.

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

Ganymed - "It Takes Me Higher" (1978)

Hey is this Gwar?

Or some Tim and Eric sketch?

Nope.  Its Ganymed.  A late 70's space-disco band from Austria!

I can pretty much die in peace now friends!

Just A Gigolo

American Gigolo Soundtrack - 1980 - Polygram Records

Hello Friends,

Need a quick pick me up?

We do!  So tonight we're doing cocaine listening to Giorgio Moroder's excellent soundtrack to the 1980 film, American Gigolo.  

Written & directed by the great Paul Shrader (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Affliction) and starring Richard Gere & Lauren Hutton, American Gigolo helped usher in the sleazy, superficial, pre-AIDS 1980s.  The soundtrack is practically a character in the film itself; its impossible to separate the two even 30+ years later.  To this day, we can't even think of Richard Gere without imagining him walking him into a gay nightclub with Cheryl Barnes's "Love & Passion" blasting!

The soundtrack album gets the party started with an 8 minute long epic version of Blondie's "Call Me" aka "The Theme From American Gigolo".  A # 1 song in both the U.S. & U.K. for several weeks, its sexy and driving and manic and it really sets the stage for the movie as well as whats to come on the rest of the record!

FUN FACT: Originally, Moroder wanted to recruit none other than Stevie Nicks to collaborate with on this soundtrack. She was unable to commit to him due to conflicts with her record label.    

"Call Me" is followed by the aforementioned, driving disco-beat of "Love & Passion" and the side ends with the sleazy-sounding, noirish instrumental, "Night Drive".

Side Two is entirely instrumental and kicks off with "Hello Mr. W.A.M.", the song heard over the film's finale.  Its also Moroder's take on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Clarinet Concerto K. 622. Its equal parts Clockwork Orange, prog rock & Studio 54.



"The Apartment", another dark instrumental, sounds like Aphex Twin remixing Dark Side of the Moon.

"Palm Springs Drive" is an instrumental take on "Call Me" and its impossible to drive around downtown Los Angeles at night, looking for johns, without having this song pulsate in your brain!

Next there's a reprise of Side One's "Night Drive" only slower and more lumbering with lots of synthy-low notes and some church bells thrown in for good measure!

Closing things is the melodic ballad, "The Seduction (Love Theme)" which comes dangerously close to sounding like elevator music-schmaltz.  But, in the context of this record, its a subtle and fitting conclusion.

RATING: 4.5 Roll Me in Designer Sheets I'll Never Get Enough 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