is it me or does disco get more insightful the older you get?
 

Listening to Amanda Lear's Sweet Revenge album for the umpteenth time and, in my less than humble opinion, if rock has produced anything as wonderful since, well, god knows when, I call you a liar.

The ecstasy of disco cannot be denied. Unless I'm listening to Burzum, where for obvious reasons, it is. I certainly don't feel the need to justify liking disco the older I get, and what I do like of it is not for ironic reasons. Some of it is good, ja?

I hate the way that it's been marginalised as a gay genre; some of the greatest music out there.

i don't think i can trust someone who isn't down with "you should be dancing" by the bee-gees

that's the boost

No need to get ironic at all. Giorgio Moroder is quite simply a genius producer. One of the things I hate most about the American indie scene is the way in which it seems to exist entirely without reference to this scene - and on the rare occasion that it does it seems content to deal with it in that ironic sense that Melly quite rightly dismisses.

The most horrid thing is that gays themselves know nothing of their own aural history either, anymore. Don't make me scan pages of this week's BOYZ magazine.

To think that people wasted pages, PAGES, about someone like Jimi Hendrix when I've still yet to have found a single mention of Donna Summers' Once Upon a Time album.

There have been pages like that. When Glice was unemployed and still living with his parents, sonicl didn't find a new voice from the old board, Toilet & Bowels lived at his old house, there were mentions of Gloria Gaynor and the like sometimes.

Perhaps a disco 'primer' should be in order here - haven't heard the D Summer album, but am curious now.

Saturday Night Fever was one of the best films ever made.

I have an ever growing collection of disco singles.

It makes me smile when people associate disco with gays, these days. Gays don't listen to disco anymore than straights anymore. It's a total thing of the past. Gays listen to shit music, just like most other people. And they dress just as bad. Hearing of a gay man with decent or at least stimulating taste is as rare as a safe bus journey home.

Although disco, as we know is primarily a singles thang, some very good albums did emerge.

So, by way of the first steps towards a primer:

Chic, C'est Chic http://youtube.com/watch?v=DxmDn2IzzhE

Donna Summer, Once Upon a Time

Candi Staton, Suspicious Minds

Norma Jean, Norma Jean

Michael Jackson, Off the Wall http://youtube.com/watch?v=mq0PFb34Cjk

Shalamar, Friends. http://youtube.com/watch?v=pVAm_obRPQ8

..

But don't get hung up on albums, a few good compilations will do. Neither Odyssey or Sister Sledge ever made a genuinely great album but as a single, both Inside Out http://youtube.com/watch?v=bCkFebsGXxg and Greatest Dancer http://youtube.com/watch?v=7LUie81E82k are virtually peerless.

And if any further evidence that Disco was genuinely fantastic is required, let's not forget:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_XOY7lsBVpo

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-opY4qcidFk

http://youtube.com/watch?v=E5AVy6aSl4Y

http://youtube.com/watch?v=yio9zi_GPPs

And here's perhaps the very greatest single to have come out of the whole of the 70s:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=iF-JOw6syD0

And Nile Rodgers was a greater guitarist than Jimi Hendrix, by the way.

You forgot Madonna's Hung Up, dude.

Nice interview with Nile Rodgers:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=DxmDn2IzzhE

Confessions on a Dance Floor is definitely one of the great post-disco albums.

Prefer this track over Hung Up, though:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KIwnKtL6leQ

If you use the post-disco term, we'll have to stop being internet friends altogether. It was a gay joke. I only like that song on the album and the rest is rubbish.

That's genuinely a great album. Not being clever or ironic at ALL. I don't know why I said post-disco - although it's definitely not pure disco (more like a hybrid of disco and house)

Although this guy remains the kings of the now as far as I'm concerned:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=iQst-s5_m...elated&search=

Anyway, for once the music is too good to get 'hung up' ~~cough~~ on terms/labels.