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At The Edge of The Disco Downfall

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In the 43-week span between September 1978 and June 1979, disco songs topped Billboard’s Hot 100 for 27 weeks.

And that number is likely low.

If you were tempted to count:

…Exile’s midtempo thumper: Kiss You All Over,

…The Doobie Brothers’ bouncy pop-rock of What a Fool Believes,

..Or the disco-adjacent ballads Reunited by Peaches and Herb.

…Or Too Much Heaven by the Bee Gees, or even the Gibb brothers midtempo strutter Love You Inside-Out – none of which I included:

That weekly total would rise to 39.

(In case you’re wondering what led those remaining four weeks? That would be one-week stays each for Nick Gilder’s Hot Child in the City and Anne Murray’s You Needed Me and two weeks at the top for the Streisand/Diamond duet You Don’t Bring Me Flowers.)

Any music style as dominant as Disco that was so strong, for so long, would be certain to head for a fall.

By July, the infamous Disco Demolition Night at Chicago’s Comiskey Park gave public voice to simmering disenchantment with the leading genre on pop radio. Within few months, disco went from having its own American Top 40 countdown special to having its obituary discussed throughout the media.

Could anyone listening now to the dance-pop compilations of the time get the sense that they knew the end was coming?

I don’t think so.

As late as June in 1979, the bigwigs behind Studio 54 collaborated with Casablanca Records to put out the double-LP set, A Night at Studio 54, a compilation that went gold.

It, and two other sets of the time, K-tel’s Hot Nights & City Lights, and Ronco’s Disco Super Hits give insight into both the genre’s limitations and its brilliance.

By 1979, the stylistic dominance of disco meant that compilation albums needed to mimic the effect of club DJs.

They kept the beat going nonstop, segueing from hit to hit until they inserted a needed “breather,” in the form of a popular ballad or midtempo number.

Fortunately, K-tel and Ronco stepped up their game, providing albums of segued dance music.

Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell of Studio 54 had an inside track, using club DJs Marc Paul Simon and Roy Thode to do the sequencing of their set.

The results are three compilations that do a pretty solid job of keeping your toes tapping. (Even if, as in my case, they’re tapping as I’m typing.)

With so much in common, what distinguishes them?

First up: K-tel’s Hot Nights & City Lights:

This one has Bionic Boogie’s track Chains, a song that features the immediately recognizable backing vocals of Luther Vandross. It also features two of the Summer of ‘79’s biggest hits, Sister Sledge’s We Are Family and Anita Ward’s Ring My Bell.

Its side two has the best segue of any of the three: T-Connection’s At Midnight moves into the Instant Funk hit, and then into Evelyn “Champagne” King’s I Don’t Know If It’s Right.

Musically, the three fit well, and lyrically, there’s an intriguing story they tell of a guy who’s ready and a woman who’s not. The resolution? The Jacksons’ Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground), a song whose energy shows where dance pop will head long after disco is declared “dead.”

Next: Ronco’s “Disco Super Hits:”

This collection boasts 16 hits, compared with K-tel’s 14, and leads off strong with McFadden & Whitehead’s Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now. More of this collection hit AT40 (81%) as compared with either the K-tel (71%) or Studio 54 (65%), so the instant recognizability factor helps.

And as for the tracks that didn’t, one is the memorably goofy No. 41-peaking Keep on Dancin’ by Gary’s Gang. Its biggest drawback is an odd decision: With two G.Q. tracks included, the choice to slow the energy on side 1 by placing the soul ballad I Do Love You rather than the high-energy Disco Nights after Got to Be Real is a head-scratcher. It would have been better to flip the tracks and put I Do Love You as the penultimate song on side two, preceding I Will Survive.

And lastly:

A Night at Studio 54:

It does a good job of playing out its conceit.

With tracks like Cher’s Take Me Home, Karen Young’s Hot Shot and Musique’s vulgar In the Bush, it’s easier for listeners and dancers to get a feel for the hedonistic pleasures of the New York City hotspot. And, given its origin story as Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards’ rejoinder to Studio 54’s questionable bouncer policy, it’s ironic that Le Freak leads off the 2-LP set.

But for all the hoohah in the liner notes for being “specially engineered and sequenced…”

… the “Studio 54” sore spots stand out.

Why is I Love the Night Life and its soft open segueing out of Take Me Home? Why include the Muppet-on-helium sound of Patrick Juvet’s I Love America when stronger 1979 tracks were available (if the producers needed a “Foreign Patrick,” Mr. Hernandez’s Born to Be Alive was right there waiting). And why take the best 1-2 sequence – Dan Hartman’s Instant Replay and Peaches and Herb’s Shake Your Groove Thing – and save it for the end of side four?

Still, the sequencers did do something right:

A seamless yet effective effort in finding the right moments to shift into the Village People’s Y.M.C.A. and Donna Summer’s Last Dance.

This gave both of these evergreens a fresh sound.

With so many tracks to note, instead of the usual “Top-shelf”/”Decent”/”Yuck” summary, let’s imagine what could have been (and what our friend Bix could do easily) if given 16 tracks, the average of these three sets:

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Chuck Small

Journalist-turned-high school counselor. Happily ensconced in Raleigh, N.C., with hubby of 31 years (10 legal).

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Virgindog
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February 14, 2023 10:08 am

Good list, though personally I’d miss Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.” I might even want to replace her “Last Dance” for it, but it’s a banger, too.

mt58
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February 14, 2023 10:39 am
Reply to  Virgindog

I realized just now that for years and years, whenever “I Feel Love” comes up on the radio, I think to myself, “Oh, nice. It’s that cool Giorgio Moroder record.”

Anybody else have a song that when it plays, you instantly think of it “belonging” to the producer, or perhaps, even an artist that has a standout solo on the record?

LinkCrawford
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February 14, 2023 11:02 am
Reply to  mt58

I have this feeling about most Jeff “Mutt” Lange rock songs…like the ones by AD/DC, Def Leppard, Loverboy, etc.

Phylum of Alexandria
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February 14, 2023 12:06 pm
Reply to  mt58

I think most people think that of anything that Brian Eno ever had a role in. For instance, the drum sounds on Bowie’s Low album, or the guitar sound on the track “Heroes.” Neither were made by Eno, in fact. The guitar distortion came from Tony Visconti, who was the producer of both albums. And Eno certainly didn’t write the songs!

Phil Spector also has that reputation, but perhaps because he could be so tyrannical.

JJ Live At Leeds
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February 14, 2023 1:40 pm
Reply to  mt58

As big a character as Meat Loaf was his records come with an asterisk in my mind of a Jim Steinman production.

Same with Rick Rubin for Johnny Cash’s late period American Recordings.

Ozmoe
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February 14, 2023 2:10 pm
Reply to  mt58

Whenever I hear dramatic shifts in tempo and dynamics in a song that nonetheless somehow flow together beautifully, I know that I’m hearing the work of Trevor Horn (Owner of a Lonely Heart, ABC’s The Look of Love, Kiss from a Rose and so on).

cappiethedog
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February 14, 2023 2:25 pm
Reply to  mt58

When you compare Bleach with Nevermind, it’s hard not to think that Butch Vig was the MVP of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.

LinkCrawford
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February 14, 2023 11:08 am

I have a very up-close and personal relationship with K-Tel’s Hot Nights and City Lights album, which I owned and played frequently as a 9-year old. Somebody else would talk about that record over at Stereogum when we were in virtual 1979…was it you, Chuck? I feel like it was vails or thegue. Anyways, that record is full of greatness for me. I have always loved “At Midnight” because of it (and still prefer the single edit). I’m not sure that I’ve ever heard the Claudja Berry or Arpeggio songs anywhere else besides this album.

I think I remember seeing weird 2-LP versions of the album with additional songs, which seemed very bizarre to me. I had the version that you featured. And I would definitely listen to your compilation (though I would sorely miss “Knock on Wood”).

Pauly Steyreen
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February 14, 2023 3:00 pm

That 16-track Best of the Best you created, Chuck, is a disco barnburner! I think I could dance through that whole album (then promptly pass out dead right afterwards).

dutchg8r
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February 14, 2023 5:09 pm

DJ Chuck on the turntables, helping us get our Groove Thang going…. excellent final playlist there!

So The History Channel’s teamed up with Peyton Manning now because he can’t get on enough different cable channels in his retirement. Last week it was the Top 10 Greatest Stadiums of all time, as voted on by ‘experts in the field.’ Comisky actually made the list, in large part due to forever being associated with Disco Demolition Night. I can’t imagine Cubs fans were able to stomach that, and Wrigley didn’t make the Top 10. It was very odd!

Aaron3000
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February 15, 2023 10:58 pm

I remember the Ronco LP fondly from my childhood… I think I mentioned in a comment to an earlier write-up how every time I hear France Joli’s “Come To Me” my brain automatically wants to segue it directly into Giorgio Moroder’s “Chase”.

cappiethedog
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February 16, 2023 6:17 pm
Reply to  Aaron3000

Before Bix’s column, I would have no idea what you were talking about. Giorgio Moroder, pre-TNOCS, was Metropolis and Sparks. The main character in Jennifer Egan’s latest book is named Bix. Egan is a music person. She would know about Stereogum. I’m fifty pages in. If there is any reference to disco, I’ll let you know. The point I’m making is that I know who France Joli is.

Aaron3000
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February 16, 2023 8:16 pm
Reply to  cappiethedog

Hmmm, now I’m interested to see if any other Stereogum commenters will be name checked (or was the character name Bix just a happy coincidence). Keep us posted, cappiethedog!

DanceFever
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February 19, 2023 10:36 pm

Chuck. Great job on this. I’m sorry I missed it but it’s been a very busy week at school as the basketball teams ( boys and girls) were competing in the playoffs. Boys lost in the first round, girls are on to the quarterfinals.
I have all three albums (a wonder as I’ve moved several times) and no, I didn’t see the end coming.
As I’ve talked about on the Mothership, my cousin and I started the first all sports bar in our fair city in June of ’79 with the intent of showing sports on five nights and dancing to music on Friday and Saturday.
The bottom fell out of Disco that summer but interestingly our dance music weekends pulled in a big crowd ( we just didn’t call it Disco) just live music to dance to.
I’ve talked about the fact Michael Jackson actually used Disco to get himself
into the limelight after he went solo (with an assist from Quincy Jones).

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