Today I’ll be wittering about a fabulous musical sub-genre which often gets overlooked. That is, the sub-genre of
Artists From The 60’s And 70’s Attempting To Go Disco During The Late 70’s
It scarcely needs saying that the Bee Gees were the first band on the band... wagon, with their dose of Saturday Night Fever. After that, suddenly everyone was using synthesizers and syncopated bass lines.
Highlights and lowlights include:
Sparks – The Number One Song In Heaven. Pure blissful genius as Sparks invent the format of excitable camp singer/unnervingly motionless keyboard player.
Queen – Fun It. A proto-Another One Bites The Dust. Freddie and the perms would later, hilariously, record an entire album in the disco idiom, Hot Space.
The Beach Boys – Here Comes The Night. A ghastly re-working of a harmless little number from Wild Honey. So wrong. And it lasts longer than some wars.
Wings – Goodnight Tonight. Having conquered the fiefdom of disco, Macca Thumbsaloft would later reign supreme in the principality of synth with Coming Up off his compellingly bonkers McCartney II.
The Kinks – (Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman – Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it the beginning of the Scissor Sisters’ cover of Comfortably Numb? No, it’s Ray Davies’ begrudging attempt at disco. Quite cool, though, in an Ian Dury way.
Elton John – Victim Of Love – Not one for the Greatest Hits, Reg.
The Rolling Stones – Miss You. Hateful. The only thing more dreadful is the Jamiroquai/Ronnie Wood rendition, as performed on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny. My personal Room 101.
The Who – Who Are You. Opinion is divided as to the point where The Who went shit. Personally I think it was at the point they decided to get together.
Rod Stewart – Do You Think I’m Sexy? Answer: Do you think I’m blind?