Someone Taught Me How To Dance Last Night

It's Friday, it's nearly the end of September, the nights are drawing in, so time to get the glitter ball out and boogie 'til we just can't boogie no more. 

An hour of disco classics and/or obscurities, all guaranteed to provide a hefty bass and beat and some funky guitar licks or soaring string sounds, or both. And some belting vocals, of course.

Today's cover star is the multi-talented Marsha Hunt who, amongst many achievements, released three albums in the 1970s, the last of which was a disco-inspired collection produced by Pete Bellote which she later dismissed as "a musical departure that had nothing to do with my own taste". I've left her off the selection.

 

1) Do You Wanna Go Party (Album Version By Harry Casey & Richard Finch): KC & The Sunshine Band (1979)

2) Lovin' Is Really My Game (Parts 1 & 2) (12" Version By Jerry Peters): Brainstorm (1977) 

3) Love Magic (Special Disco Version By John Davis): John Davis & The Monster Orchestra (1979)

4) Garden Of Love (Album Version By Jean-Marc Cerrone): Don Ray (1978)

5) Thunder In My Heart (Disco Version By Richard Perry): Leo Sayer (1977)

6) Open Sesame (Part 1) (Album Version): Kool & The Gang (1976)

7) Dance Little Lady Dance (Long Version By Biddu Appaiah): Tina Charles (1976)

8) Jealousy (Album Version By Barry Leng): Amii Stewart (1979)

9) Bourgie', Bourgie' (Special Album Version By Nickolas Ashford, Valerie Simpson & Jimmy Simpson) (Cover of Ashford & Simpson): Gladys Knight & The Pips (1980) 

10) How's Your Love Life Baby (Special 12" Version By John Luongo & Michael Barbiero): Jackie Moore (1979)

 

Someone Taught Me How To Dance Last Night (1:01:45) (KF) (Mega)

Disco Demolition Night

On 12th July 1979, upwards of 50,000 people turned up at Comiskey Park baseball stadium, home of the Chicago White Sox. Not to watch a game per se but responding to a rallying call from a local DJ, an invitation to bring along a disco record to throw in a dumpster and watch the vinyl being blown up en masse.

The event didn't go as planned: what was partly intended as a hype for the headline match between the Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers went south as the pre-match event turned into a pitch invasion, rendering the field unusable and causing the White Sox to forfeit the game.

 

The event also spoke greatly about the mindset of those that attended. The records that ended up on the pyre were not limited to disco but encompassed funk, soul, R&B, that is, music created and inspired by women, black people, Latino culture, gay audiences, nightclubs, etc., and seen as a threat to WASP males of a certain age. 

 

The event had an immediate effect on record company investment, sales and association with disco music. Chic were one of the high profile casualties: on this day in 1979, Good Times achieved a peak of #12 in the UK and although they had a Top 20 and a Top 30 placing with their next two singles, that was it for them. 

 

Ironically, the biggest disco single in the UK on Disco Demolition Night was Light My Fire, a cover of The Doors song by Amii Stewart, also reaching a peak position of #5.

 

Thankfully, there wasn't a lasting impact and good music and common sense prevailed. Amii was back in the charts again with a remix of Light My Fire (a double A-Side with Knock On Wood) in 1985, reaching #7 this time around. Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards continued as a production powerhouse, together and separately, and subsequent generations have quite rightly fallen in love with Chic.

The backlash against disco also arguably created some inspired new musical shapes and genres, not least the music of Arthur Russell, particularly as Dinosaur L, and the remixes of François Kevorkian, whose mammoth body of work has continued into this decade. I didn't discover Go Bang! - by Dinosaur L, remixed by Kevorkian - until the early 1990s but it's an absolute cracker. YouTube has offered up a retrospective video created by Aurora Halal for your viewing and listening pleasure.

 

Alex Petridis wrote an interesting reflection on Disco Demolition Night on the infamous event's 40th anniversary in 2019, which you can find here. A sad reminder that sexism, racism and homophobia have not been consigned to the dustbin of history.