What is
Pink Lady? In Japan they are remembered for a string of pop hits in the 70s, but Americans might remember them either from their disco single "
Kiss In The Dark" or from an attempt to sell them to the US market in 1980 via a short-lived NBC variety show
Pink Lady & Jeff (
TVParty summary) with comedian
Jeff Altman. (
Opening). The show featured their Japanese hits,
UFO,
MONSTER (a bi
t more rock and roll), and
SOS along with US hits like
Boogie Wonderland,
McArthur Park and the
occasional guest star. (with
encore)
Also, Roy Orbison.
Sadly, the show failed to break out and the two returned to Japan for a series of farewell concerts and retrospectives. Much, much more available at this
charmingly retro, utterly exhaustive fan site devoted to them. Or just
read the recaps. [more inside]
posted by The Whelk
on Dec 11, 2011 -
33 comments
Pompeya is a band that is hard to describe, especially if you go by their videos and sound. For example, if you started with
Power (Simple Symmetry & Lipelis Remix), you might think it's an act from the the late eighties, complete with break dancing and dated fashions. If you first came across
the Barbarella Chisinau Teaser, you might imagine that they're something from the early 1990s, or a new band goofing with vintage video. And then they drop
Power II, which could be some kids playing neo-disco akin to the US band
VHS or Beta (
wiki). But wait! Check out
Cheenese (NSFW moment of nudity 2:58 to 3:05), and you think they might be professional musicians with a sharp-looking video. In fact, Pompeya is a mix of various things:
they're four young Russian guys who play indie-disco. [more details after the break]
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jul 17, 2011 -
22 comments
Two minutes of worlds colliding: Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers'
Roadrunner and
Egyptian Reggae, as interpreted by house dance troupe Legs & Co. on Top of the Pops.
posted by item
on Oct 13, 2010 -
31 comments
The
original
version of "My Way" ("Comme d'Habitude", Frank Sinatra's version was a cover) was written by
Claude Francois, AKA
"CloClo". Somewhere between a French Wayne Newton and Elvis, he died when he was taking a bath, saw a lightbulb had gone out, and tried to replace it while standing in water, completing the circuit. Some of his hit songs include:
Belinda,
Belles Belles Belles (cover of
"Girls Girls Girls"),
Si J'avais un
Marteau (if I had a Hammer),
Sale
Bonhomme (French country, cover of Johnny Cash's "Dirty Dan"),
Le Disco est Francais
His scantily clad female backup dancers, called the
"Claudettes" or
Clodettes, were the inspiration for the Solid Gold dancers and had
their own short-lived solo spinoff career where they tried to cash in on the
kung-fu + disco
craze.
posted by destro
on Aug 1, 2010 -
27 comments
Patrick Adams: The king of
underground disco. With over 30 gold records to his name and 30 plus years in the music business, Patrick Adams has worked with everyone from Gladys Knight and Salt 'n Pepa, to Eric B. and Rakim and Rick James. But his early, harder to find, pioneering (and moogtastic) sounds from the mid-seventies, with his group
Cloud One, and tracks produced for The Universal Robot Band, Queen Constance, Musique and Phreek is where the magic lies. If the sounds of
Atmosphere Strut or
Disco Juice don't make you want to shake your groove thing, you may not have a soul :(
[more inside]
posted by puny human
on May 18, 2010 -
12 comments
Showing Off is a series of videos, audio clips and articles in which noted music journalist and Frankie Goes to Hollywood mastermind Paul Morley explores various facets of music. Each month has a theme,
[warning: most links have autoplaying video] Michael Jackson,
Kraftwerk,
classical music,
disco,
The Beatles,
folk music,
The X Factor,
the Noughties,
the next big thing,
UK hip hop,
jazz, and
dance. Here is some of what's on offer:
MeFi faves Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip on hip hop,
These New Puritans' Jack Barnett, Johnny Marr on folk (parts
1,
2), but isn't all just interviews, there are also a lot of performances, e.g.
Michael Nyman and David McAlmont,
Badly Drawn Boy,
Susanna Wallumrød covers Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak, and
Cornershop cover Norwegian Wood.
posted by Kattullus
on Apr 26, 2010 -
8 comments
Boney M were a successful German disco group of the late 70s, known for wild onstage costumes, frontman Bobby Farrell's bass voice and signature dancing style, and their hits, which included
Baby Do You Wanna Bump,
Daddy Cool,
Ma Baker, and
Belfast.
However, it was an open secret that Boney M was masterminded by producer
Frank Farian. Farian wrote Boney M's songs and performed all of the male vocals (and many of the background female vocals) in the studio. Farrell and the rest of the band merely mimed Farian's heavily manipulated vocals when appearing on television. Hmm, a German dance band lipsynching someone else's vocals...sound familiar?
[more inside]
posted by Ian A.T.
on Jan 15, 2010 -
54 comments
In the waning days of the Disco era,
Larry Levan crafted a new style of dance music, which, like House music in Chicago, came to be named after the nightclub where it was most played, the
Paradise Garage. Garage music may have started with disco, but over the decades, it's evolved in some surprising ways:
[more inside]
posted by empath
on Oct 27, 2009 -
62 comments
Funkytown: The Montreal Disco Era. Studio 54?
Qu’est-ce que c’est? By the late 1970s, “Montreal had platinum-status admission to the VIP lounge of coolest-of-the-cool disco cities.” An oral history of the city where no one bats an eye at going out to dance at 1:30 AM in –20°C weather. (Contains links to MP3 of CBC Radio documentary.)
[more inside]
posted by joeclark
on Oct 21, 2009 -
14 comments
Mixed With Love: The Musical World Of Walter Gibbons: "This tale begins with a skinny white DJ mixing between the breaks of obscure Motown records with the ambidextrous intensity of an octopus on speed. It closes with the same man, sick with Aids and all but blind, fumbling for gospel records as he spins up eternal hope in a fading dusk. In between, Walter Gibbons transformed the art of DJing and marked out the future co-ordinates of remixology."
[more inside]
posted by Len
on Feb 7, 2008 -
6 comments
Amanda Lear is one of the greatest enigmatic personalities to emerge from the 70's. Known in equal measures for her disco hits (such as
Enigma,
Queen of Chinatown, and
Follow Me WARNING, youtube link) and her affairs with David Bowie, Brian Ferry of Roxy Music (and thus appearing on their
For Your Pleasure album cover) and Salvador Dali. Her past was
hazy at best. The most debated aspect of her past (so prevalent as to be mentioned even in
reviews of her paintings is what sex she was born (One popular telling of the rumor even claimed it was
Dali who paid for her surgery to become a woman). Her more recent, very private life took a tragic turn in 2000 when her home in France burned down killing her husband, the equally interesting
Alain-Philippe Malagnac d'Argens de Villele. [MI]
posted by piratebowling
on Mar 13, 2006 -
17 comments
Learn Disco! They say it drives the chicks wild... maybe you'll finally get a date!
(The end of the video is the grooviest part. Courtesy NewToday.)
posted by miss lynnster
on Jan 17, 2005 -
40 comments
25 years ago a Chicago radio disc jockey had an idea for a promotional event.
Steve Dahl invited his listeners to bring a disco record to a double-header White Sox game. Between games he was going to blow them up. What happened was a
full scale riot that caused the White Sox to forfeit and disco to die.
posted by Bonzai
on Jul 14, 2004 -
117 comments
Bar Mitzvah Disco • When We Were Shtetl Fabulous
"If you are Jewish, there would have been a golden year when it seemed like you attended a bar mitzvah disco almost weekly. Each one was like a pee-wee Studio 54, a potent cocktail of ritual, acne, insecurity, and hormones run amok."
Help the
folks at Bar Mitzvah Disco gather
photos, stories and details from Bar/Bat Mitzvahs from the 70s and 80s to publish in their forthcoming book on the subject.
posted by dhoyt
on Jul 31, 2003 -
23 comments
Sesame Seventies is an informational website about the three disco-related Muppets/Sesame Street records released in the 1970s. It makes for a good argument in favor of file-sharing, it reveals some of the stranger children's music of the past twenty or so years, and it's cute. (warning, some flash)
posted by pxe2000
on Jun 24, 2003 -
19 comments
