One afternoon twenty years ago at work I had the Friday soul show on the radio and this song came on and blew me little mind. I always thought this was an 80s tune penned by The Fall and a fine one at that but no I was hearing an even better version from the 60s. This was a Holland/Dozier/Holland composition released on the Motown subsidiary V.I.P. Records in 1967. Weirdly it's performed by Canadian Motown hit Songwriter R Dean Taylor. It was not a hit though. However Ghost In My House was re-released in 1974 in the UK due to Northern Soul DJs giving it a thrashing at their amphetamine fuelled all night discos (Is that what they were? I'm no expert on this particularly English scene). It became a smash hit peaking at No 3 on the charts. Fans of freakbeat, 60s pop and soul rejoice, this is peak tuneage!
Insistence is brilliantly baked into the rhythm, melody and incredible vocal arrangement here.... that outrageous riff-age, underlying terror and those contagious hand claps are something else too... the sonic alchemy of synergy on display on this production is so damn infectious...REWIND!
I mean what can you say?! This richly melodic funky tripped out jam is just the best! It gets better and better as time goes on forever. All the elements of this meticulous arrangement combine to create pop perfection. It's beautifully balanced to be effective on both the radio and the dance-floor.
I never knew until one minute ago that Frankie Valli's glorious 1972 non-hit The Night was covered by both Soft Cell and Pulp amongst others. Me and Emma and Cooper (the dog) just had a boogie to this, you can't not!
*In 1975 The Night was re-released in the UK and became a top 10 record.
Tuuuuune! Is this Kid Frost dancefloor killah the best electro jam ever? Many agree, there's a lotta love out there for TERMINATOR! What's the point of words! Crank this sucker up to 11 and the truth will reveal itself to you!
Best trivia about this tune is that it's produced by David Storrs! Yes all you new age heads heard that right. Champion Valley Of The Sun New Age recording artist, composer and producer extraordinaire made this music right here. That might explain the incredibly adept use of atmosphere on this trak.
SPACE DISCO GOES TO THE DISCO FOR THE CLOSING TIME TUNE
Sylvia's Sweet Stuff (1974) must have been a final tune at closing time of many a disco back in the day. The last chance to pair off and as we like to say in Australia "Pull a root!" If I was a DJ in a club today I reckon this would still be my closing tune.
The production on this (pun intended) is sweet stuff. It's sonically delectable. As seductive as its lyrics. That bass with those drums along with the keys and strings are right on the money, making the magic music! Then Sylvia Robinson's sultry vocals are the soul candy on the top of the cake.
"I’m not trying to be fresh Please understand where I’m coming from But I like what I see And hope you like me Mother Nature will do the rest"
She's not trying to be fresh. She just can't help being a human woman being with all the natural desires, impulses and mating rituals that that entails.
"I’ve got a crib with a water bed And a bottle of wine on ice So what do you say we go over to my pad Bet you it could be really nice"
She probably didn't need to do the hard sell as she was well foxy but hey a water bed and wine on ice sounds fucking awesome so yes please. Although anyone who's ever had a go of waterbed knows that they are much better in theory.
Sylvia co-wrote and co-produced this with Al Goodman & Harry Ray from The Moments. Harry also plays the choice electric piano. That rhythm section is damn fine and correct me if I'm wrong but it's Frank Prescod on that extraordinary bass while Clarence Oliver is the astounding drummer. The luxuriant strings make me wanna stay inside this aural world and keep rewinding. I'm guessing the string arrangements are courtesy of Robinson and Sammy Lowe. The Sweet Stuff 7" was issued in 1974 on Sylvia's very own record label Vibration. Confusingly this tune was not included on her 1975 LP that was also called Sweet Stuff. However it turned up on her 1976 LP Sylvia.
Sylvia Robinson's Vibration, Stang & All Platinum record labels would close later in the decade to make way for the paradigm shift defining Sugar Hill Records which she owned and operated with her husband Joe. Sylvia produced two just slightly legendary early hip-hop tunes you might know Rapper's Delight & The Message.
I heard this yesterday and thought I'd had it on a compilation (?) unless it used to just get played at discos when I was a kid. I couldn't name it though until I figured out what the vocodered vocals were chanting. So I've been trawling the interweb tonight and violà here 'tis. Now I wanna spray paint a train! Haha... it's not bloody Mantronix (who I also love) it's MAN PARISH. GET DOWN & BOOGIE. PUT ON SOME ROLLER SKATES! ALL ABOARD FOR FUN TIMES!!!
Shout out to the beautiful people who used to make your life better, and still do, by bringing fun, joy and dancing into your life!!! These are gifts of LOVE and need to be cherished. Even adults need to play for the nourishment of their souls.
EVERYBODY GET DOWN & PARTAY!!!
*Don't let the un-fun political thought police beat you down with their hateful trickery and deceit designed to schizophrenia-ize your mind!
Yo Yo Record shop on instagram introduced me to this slice of choice R&B from 1985 that I had not heard previously. Which is staggering considering the amount of discos I went to in the 80s plus all the compilations of 80s soul-disco-boogie/R&B I have but this maybe didn't even get in the dance chart. Correct me if I'm wrong! No Research Day! Anyway it's ace! The good vibes and grooves all year round 24/7. It's Dj Space Debris with golden hits and non memories to make new ones too....
SPACE DEBRIS GOES TO THE ORIGINS OF THE DISCO BASS
The Jackson 5 - Forever Came Today (1975)
I love how avant-gardists & no wave type rockers seem to think they had a monopoly on bizarre, unorthodox & mutated forms of popular music. This track right here here is more subversive than a thousand records made by artists of those aforementioned sub-genres. This is the real deal where the mat is pulled from beneath pop music's feet. Forever Came Today is an astounding piece of experimentation that is innovative, strange and yet still compelling pop music. This bass-line is something else. It feels like it came from another planet! The song structure is really luxuriant, rapturous and free. The term mutant-disco has always annoyed me as it was a fallacy. Disco & Dub were ahead of that game as they had already deviated from normality all within the confines of their genre. They had already severed, sliced and reconstructed their genres to make the music even more pleasurable than previously imagined. Disco had deformed before any such notions of conforming to deform. This tune still sounds fresh today!
SPACE DEBRIS GOES TO THE SOULFUL SYNTH-FUNK DISCOTEQUE
Get Free! Put Funky Peace in your synth soul. Betty got the FUNK! & the FREE SPIRIT! Whoever the band is here I would like them very much to play at my next BBQ. If only it was still 1980. Free Spirit is so in the damn funkay pocket, It's astounding! Then wait for the synth break. It is synth delicious or is that synth-a-licious?! Thank You Betty Griffin & band & Greg Belson's Divine Disco: American Gospel Disco (1974 - 1984) compilation and the Cultures Of Soul people for releasing it.
This is soo good! So infectious. So DISCO JESUS! It makes me wanna go to church in the 70s! The rhythm is craazy awesome. The break at l.50 is classic then the bass kicks in, noice! I first heard this on the Cultures Of Soul Records comp Greg Belson's Divine Disco: American Gospel Disco (1974 To 1984) that came out in 2016. Get Down or Get on Up ah! On the Jesus juice!
SPACE DEBRIS GOES TO THE DISCO IN TRINIDAD & TOBAGO
Prime pimpin' 1977 synth-disco-funk from from The West Indies. They had the mighty cricket team and music scene! A heyday, a golden era, the good times...
SPACE DEBRIS GOES TO THE 80s ELECTRO-FUNK DISCO & A PRINCE AFTER-SHOW SHOW
WHITE HORSE - LAID BACK (1983)
This classic early 80 electro jam only came to my attention in the late 90s during a couple of successive New Years Eve Parties at The Empress Of India Hotel in North Fitzroy where this got mixed in over some other tune that was a bit more hefty or sampled or something. I still love it though. A year or two later I found a cd single but I can't remember if it was a cover or maybe a 90s tech remix anyway...thanks to the terrific FX series POSE (2018) I rediscovered White Horse when it featured in a scene where Damon and Blanca meet for the first time on the streets of NYC. I had a rush and had to track it down.
EROTIC CITY - PRINCE & THE REVOLUTION (1984)
The interwebs just told me that Prince loved that above tune so much that it inspired Erotic City but I recall a different story. He apparently told George Clinton that after going to a Parliament/Funkadelic gig he went home and wrote Erotic City. Anyway it's a much storied song for a B-side. In the 80s you bought the 7" & 12" even though you already had the LP because of the B-sides and extended mixes which were sometimes called a dub mixes. I had Lets Go Crazy (1984) on 7" single which had the shorter version of Erotic City, one of his best ever non LP cuts. This extended version is new to my ears and ooh I like. Sheila E does a guest verse. We also get crazy town Prince vocals pitched down, normal & up. Some chipmunk shit going on here! Party time!
Then I discovered this which was previously unreleased until last year. You may have heard it before because he gave the tune to Taja Sevelle in 1987. It was her debut single which came out on Prince's own imprint Paisley Park. Hearing this just made made my brain say "What are you doing? You could be spending you're remaining days on Earth tracking down every single scrap of audio detritus Prince ever recorded and you would be a much happier man for doing so!" Wouldn't U Luv 2 Luv Me is a fantastically narcissistic title. Also Prince doesn't get the kudos he deserves for inventing text spelling/language 20 years before we all had a mobile phone. This tune is bare bones demo-style Prince and sometimes that is best Prince. So last year some enterprising people put together a compilation of demos Prince recorded between 1981 & 85 called Originals. It features a bunch of tunes he gave to his protégées to record. How the fuck did I miss this release? It's got him doing Manic Monday, Sex Shooter, Make Up, The (Fucking) Glamorous Life, Love Thy Will Be Done & Nothing Compares 2 U amongst others. It's 2AM though....
Then there's this! Fuck me. Why didn't he release this as a single? I assume this is from 82/83 era. Was this ever released on anything official during the 80s? The frenetic pace is almost jungle-y. I can't tell if this has been fucked with 10 or 15 years later or if this is just as it was in the early 80s. His off-cuts are better than other artists prime-cuts. This is pure peak Prince and it's astonishing stuff. One of his best tunes ever.
1976
That's it front load your tune with the chorus and we're in immediately. After hearing this today I can't get it out of my head. I also think it's been ripped off in the last 20 years but I can't quite put my finger on who by, it's driving me insane. Great tune this.
*Added Entry 10/12/20: Metronomy's The Look (2011) is the song that borrows heavily from Keep It Comin' Love (1976).
Keep It Comin' Love works better with this awesome transition/connected track I'm Your Boogie Man like how you gotta have Donna Summer connected with Now I Need You/Workin' The Midnight Shift, INXS' remarkable Burn For You dropping right into Face The Change and not forgetting the one transcendent moment on The Pixies Trompe Le Monde LP when Palace Of The Brine is all of a sudden Letter From Memphis. These trax shouldn't be separated, there's a reason there's no silence between these tuuuuunes. They're of a piece and sort of a continuation of the previous number. Anyway the moment that little Keep It Comin' Love motif enters into the realm of sound it is a bliss rush, that is damn fine.
Had to do it. Sorry KC. Ooh that transition is sublime! One million of the world's best DJs couldn't emulate that spine tingling moment. Fucking ecstasy.
1977
Gibbons this time does a proper remix as opposed to the cut & paste of 10 Percent. Mmm mm....that fuzz guitar is soo good. Pure magic sonic architecture for the head and the toes. All that space created is fucking sublime.
1976
According to Turn The Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco, Peter Shapiro's excellent 2005 book, this was the first disco mix released commercially on a 12". Walter Gibbons was to go from strength to strength in the remix department. Ten Percent was an auspicious start.
Bloody amazing mental exotica from 1976. Kinda like Martin Denny after a few lines of speed and a tab of acid. This was big at NYC's The Loft apparently. Produced by Mickey Hart who was the drummer in The Grateful Dead but don't let that put you off.
Thanks to the great Soundway Records compilation Doin It In Lagos I got to hear this afro disco boogie gem last year and was totally floored. This needs to be pumped loud through your sound system. That bass is wicked and that melody....sweet. Who is Steve Monite? As someone says in the comments 'You can't put out the boogie!'
