Hello everyone. Let’s give a warm welcome to Debbie and Cyndi. Two unique women who dance to their own drummers…..whose talents encompass a variety of musical fields in two decidedly different decades. These ladies can pop and rock, disco down or jazz it up, sing the blues, or pour their soul into a ballad. Their many talents run the full gamut and they have led the way for a new kind of woman in music, adding their own twist and turns to rock and roll.
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I’ve run out of epitaphs. The battlefield of pop continues to accumulate bodies. During this past week we were reminded of the passing of Karen Carpenter (33 years ago) and the officially recognized Day the Music Died (really? Then what have we been listening to in the intervening 57 years?).
Hello everyone. Let’s give a warm welcome to Debbie and Cyndi. Two unique women who dance to their own drummers and whose talents encompass a variety of musical fields in two decidedly different decades. These ladies can pop and rock, disco down or jazz it up, sing the blues, or pour their soul into a ballad. Their many talents run the full gamut and they have led the way for a new kind of woman in music, adding their own twist and turns to rock and roll. Quirky, outrageous, individualistic, sexy, ballsy, entertaining, exuberant, clever, brilliant, artistic and really, really smart.
All the sins blamed on “disco” (such as it was at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s) — cocaine, amyl nitrate, sexually transmitted disease, The Ritchie Family, Andy Gibb — are nothing compared to the ugliness of “Disco Sucks.” The stigma’s so powerful that even now, nobody would dare call it disco. It was “house” for a while, and these days people call it “EDM,” a clumsy catch-all acronym that stands for “electronic dance music,” although it sounds more like another disco-era sexually transmitted disease. (“I’m sorry, but the only remedy for EDM is a series of painful injections, taking this foul-smelling tincture six times a day and applying this stinky salve to the affected area…”)
I’ve played Daft Punk’s new record, Random Access Memories, a few times now, and I am still trying to figure out what it’s trying to be, or what Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo are trying to achieve or what they’re hoping I should feel about it. That’s not to say it’s difficult to figure out. On the contrary, it couldn’t be easier or more apparent. It’s mostly what we used to call “disco” — the good parts, anyway. Much has been made about the fact that the whole thing was recorded with actual musicians using analogue methods and equipment. Much less care seems to have gone into the composition of the material so carefully recorded by all those seasoned session pros.
Part 12 can be found here
Q: What happens when you take the breakout star of a television sitcom (Welcome Back Kotter) a short story written by British writer Nick Cohn called Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night that ran in New York Magazine, a soundtrack written and performed by 3 brothers and a handful of dance club staples, and put the soundtrack and a single (How Deep Is Your Love) out in November and the movie just before Christmas in 1977?
Part 11 can be found here
In 1975 radio and the record companies were experiencing an almost mystical amount of musical innovation and genre-bending creativity, the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the mid ‘60’s. British Rock, Southern Rock, Pop, Soul, Dance, and Country all had a piece of the action, records were flying off the shelves, and radio was the focal point of teen attention, local music scenes, and pop culture in general. Musically it was a watershed year in many ways, and personally, it was the beginning of a short, but intense period in my musical career that began with a new band that, in Montreal at least, could do no wrong.
Part 10 can be found here
It was 1973. The Wackers had never played very often in Ontario, but the band was winding down and we decided to play some dates there before we threw in the towel. The last date would be in Ottawa, a week long gig in a hotel bar, but the first date in Ontario was in Toronto, at a bar called The Generator. Although we were aware of a new and currently flourishing in Montreal musical diversion, this was our first exposure to its escalating popularity, and the first time we witnessed first hand what it was doing to the rock clubs we were so used to playing…
Bullseye Records of Canada
