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.

Freak Yourself Once Again

Side 1 of a Cabaret Voltaire cassette compilation, recorded 5th June 2003. 

I posted two sides of separate Cabaret Voltaire mixtapes in fairly quick succession (for me) in early 2022 and haven't revisited either of them since so here's my first attempt to make amends. 

 

Bad Self (Part 1) was originally the B-side of 1984 single James Brown and was one of the tracks from their years on the Virgin label that Cabaret Voltaire revisited and reworked for the 1992 album Technology. Despite the title, I don't think there ever was a Part 2.

 

Big Funk was one of four songs released on the Drinking Gasoline double 12" single in 1985 and one of two which were tacked on as bonus tracks for the CD edition of The Covenant, The Sword And The Arm Of The Lord. 

 

Here To Go was the second single from their eighth studio album, Code, released in 1987. Cabaret Voltaire had moved from Virgin to Parlophone and were shifting towards a more commercial - if not entirely radio-friendly - sound. Adrian Sherwood produced the album and a remix of Here To Go; the one featured here is by another remix/production/DJ legend, François Kevorkian.

 

Hypnotised saw Stephen Mallinder and Richard H. Kirk saw step fully into club culture, drafting in Fon Force to remix and Ten City to provide backing vocals. It provided Cabaret Voltaire with their biggest UK single to date - #66 in November 1989 - and although the subsequent two singles did slightly better - parent album Groovy, Laidback And Nasty didn't trouble the Top 100. Many saw this album as the Cabs going from innovating and inspiring to jumping on the bandwagon. Taken as itself, I think it's a good album and Hypnotised is a cracking single, in all it's various versions.

 

Tough then to place the song next to Sensoria, which is one of the examples of Mallinder and Kirk leading the way. The 12" mashes up the single with Do Right, another track from the Micro-Phonies album, and it really is about as good as Eighties club music could get. Always a popular choice when played at some of the alternative clubs I went to in the late Eighties and early Nineties and still holds up today.

 

The original cassette features the second of two remixes that John Robie made for 1983 single Yashar. I decided to tweak today's selection as featuring it would have meant the third appearance of that particular mix on this blog (albeit one accidentally as I should have included mix #1). In the early 2000s, Richard H. Kirk revisited and reworked several Cabaret Voltaire classics for 12" singles and promotion for various back catalogue compilations. Just Fascination and Nag Nag Nag got the remix treatment, as did Yashar. The latter came out as a 12" single on 9th June 2003, as few days after I'd recorded this very cassette. Along with remixes from The All Seeing I and Alter Ego, RHK delivered his own update, which I've included here.

 

The selection closes with one of my favourite tracks from 1983 album The Crackdown, which was pretty much my first exposure to Cabaret Voltaire, via my brother's copy on cassette. In a blip on their usual UK chart trajectory, the album crashed in at #31 in August 1983, managing a total of five weeks in the Top 100. 

 

Seven songs, spanning 1983 to 2003, revisited two decades on. Damn, that makes me feel old! 

1) Bad Self (Part 1) (Western Re-Work 1992 By Cabaret Voltaire) (1992)

2) Big Funk (Single Version By Cabaret Voltaire) (1985) 

3) Here To Go (Extended Mix By François Kevorkian) (1987)

4) Hypnotised (The Fon Force Mix By Mark Brydon & Robert Gordon) (ft. Ten City) (1990)

5) Sensoria (12" Remix By Cabaret Voltaire & John 'Tokes' Potoker) (1984)

6) Yashar (Man From Basra Rmx By Richard H. Kirk) (2003)

7) Animation (Album Version By Cabaret Voltaire & Flood) (1983)

1983: The Crackdown: 7

1984: Sensoria EP: 5

1985: Drinking Gasoline EP: 2

1987: Here To Go EP: 3

1989: Hypnotised EP: 4

1992: Technology: Western Re-Works 1992: 1

2003: Yashar EP: 6

Side One (46:04) (KF) (Mega)

Side Two here

You can also find Side One of a previous Cabaret Voltaire mixtape here

Like The Sweet Sound Of Hip Music

Well, after that week, the only thing for it is two hours of disco.

15 songs intended to put a smile on your face, a spring in your step and a groove in your hips, creaks permitting...

Happy Friday, everyone!

1) And The Beat Goes On (Album Version): The Whispers (1979)

2) Check Out The Groove (Album Version By Rodney Brown, Willie Lester & François Kevorkian): Bobby Thurston (1980)

3) Hopscotch (Remix By Larry Levan): Gwen Guthrie ft. Sly & Robbie (1983)

4) Get Down (Special Mix By Rick Gianatos): Gene Chandler (1978)

5) Make Me Believe In You (A Tom Moulton Mix) (Cover of Curtis Mayfield): Patti Jo (1976)

6) Rivers Of Babylon (12" Disco Version By Frank Farian) (Cover of The Melodians): Boney M. (1978)

7) Make Love To Me (12" Version): Helen Reddy (1979)

8) Vertigo / Relight My Fire (Full Length Version By John Luongo & Michael Barbiero) (Re-Edited In 2005 By Ben Liebrand): Dan Hartman ft. Loleatta Holloway (1979)

9) You've Got The Power (A Tom Moulton Mix): Camouflage (1976)

10) Don't Stop The Music (Album Version): Yarbrough & Peoples (1980)

11) Got To Be Real (Special Disco Version): Cheryl Lynn (1978)

12) Galaxy (Album Version): War (1977)

13) Party, Party (Long Version By Frank Farian): Eruption (1978)

14) Right On Target (12" Version By Patrick Cowley): Paul Parker (1982)

15) Je T'Aime... Moi Non Plus (Full Length Version By Giorgio Moroder & Pete Bellotte) (Cover of Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin): Donna Summer (1977)

Like The Sweet Sound Of Hip Music (1:59:44)