Disco (Not Disco) compilation

Are there any better comps of similar material?

there are the 2 loft compilations, and the Paradise Garage compilation. not sure if thats what you're looking for. i thought this

(briefly breaking my own self-imposed exile...)

dr. c:

yes yes YES YES YES. DEAR GOD YES.

in otherwords, you should buy it. :)

as for tracks 7 and 10, hie thee hence to freaky trigger and read my arthur russell piece. see, peasy.

And Track 3 which is the best thing Arthur Russell ever did.

Yes. It's fantastic. Even the Steve Miller Band track, and even track 9, which is a Police cover. And I also think there's a desperate need for a definitive Arthur Russell retrospective (I've even made a few tentative attempts to figure out if I could put it out myself).

There's _some_ compilation that has the version of Loose Joints' "Is It All Over My Face" with the way-out-of-tune male vocal--anybody know what it is? I need it.

I recently read that Soul Jazz (or some SJ affiliate) has an LP of post-punk dance influenced stuff coming out, called "In The Beginning There Was Rhythm". I have no idea of the track listing or of the precise terms of reference of the compilation, but the title's a good start and Soul Jazz's record on comps is pretty enviable.

an email tom recieved in response to the piece, forwarded to me...

:Hi : :just found your article about arthur by accident--I played with him for many :years (he produced two albums of mine that were never released) and it is :pleasing to find that people are still slowly discovering his gentle genius : :another friend who worked with him, Steve D'Acquisto (who co-produced :Arthur's "Love dancing--is is all over my face?") sadly also passed away :recently while assembling more tracks for nuphonic some of which should see :the light of day soon : :in addition his boyfriend Tom who controls the estate and the vast archives :of recordings has recovered everything from the clutches of Point (who never :had any idea what to do with his music) and again that stuff will filter into :the music stream also eventually--including a nuphonic release of the cd :Arthur self-produced for Rough Trade and remixes from the abandoned Point :remix project (including remixes by Laurie Anderson and Steve D/me) : :anyway just wanted to acknowledge from across the miles (florida today) : :Yours :Steven Hall

of course nuphonic has been promising these reissues for several years now, and as of today their site still has no info, so take that for what it's worth...

Thanks folks - I will definitely get this!

The male-sung version of "Is It All Over My Face?" is on the 1st volume of The Loft, which is very very good (I jotted down some thoughts on it here ) and comes recommended to anyone looking for this sort of 'disco not disco' stuff.

There's a great new comp called Anti NY. Not exactly disco per se, but full of weird experimental dance shit from the same time period. 7 "lost" tracks plus remixes, put together by some guy who ran the Mudd Club--including stuff by Jean-Michel Basquiat (excellent dubby electro thing), Rammelzee (not "Beat Bop," some electroish proto hip-hop track), Jim Jarmusch (yes!), Vivienne Goldman. The originals are much better than the remixes. A real little window onto another, very interesting, time.

A long-lost film starring Basquiat also surfaced recently, called "Downtown 81." The script is shit, but it's kind of wild watching Basquiat wandering around the LES (looks like a desolate wasteland in comparison with today) and there is a lot of great musical footage--James White and the Blacks, Kid Creole, Arto Lindsay/DNA, people like that. Lots of characters from the period--Debbie Harry, Fab Five Freddie, etc. Not a very "good" movie, but fascinating.

I have it. Like most of it. A caveat though - this was about the point when the art-school parasites got ahold of the funk, it's the missing link between the Paradise Garage and the abortions of B*ll L*sw*ll. It's 'decadent' in that sense, the sound of a movement starting to turn into shit.

I guess it depends what you think the "movement" actually turned into. I'm really not sure myself. You could argue that house came out of it in some indirect way, or that it had some influence on electro and hip-hop ("Cavern" providing the bassline for "White Lines," for example), I guess. Those seem like pretty positive developments. I've always thought of it as something that popped up and then disappeared, a little pocket in time when there was a lot of flux between uptown/downtown, white/black, art/rhythm, rock/dance in New York.

i'm with ben. (but then, given my obvious predilections, i would be.) this phase of the nyc-state-of-mind is one of my most- favoritist periods in music of any genre (or barebacked couplings of genres.) (i suppose the other would be the 60s minimalist avant garde, without - as i think mark s might have once said, all the phoney numbers mysticism, pleez.) considering laswell's on the damn record, it's fairly obvious to say that the black-noise-rock he mined before being seduced by the siren song of EVERY DAMN MUSIC FROM EVERY DAMN CULTURE ON PLANET EARTH (and you people call me a ho) is part of the mix here. but that aspect - as well as "fusion" - was pretty rapidly written out of the equation with the coming of electro, hiphop, house then acid, etc. (although a case could be made that electro/hiphop were the "new black rock/psychedelia," but such things are invariably tricky.) much of the music here is actually quite hard, funny, and sensual, things i don't normally associate with laswell and his ilk. (granted some of it is also overblown, which i do associate with laswell, but typically in a humorous way, which, again, i don't.)

Yeah... also, formulations like "art school parasites got ahold of the funk" bother me. All that mind-body dualism, y'know. What was cool about the disco (not disco) stuff was the fact that it erased that boundary. Although you could probably argue that there was a point where the art and the funk got separated (to the detriment of both).

Which is something that happens over and over again in music. Existing genres fuse, something more than the sum of the parts emerges and manages to exist in a multi-dimensional way for a brief period, and then it starts hardening again into a new set of genres that stop talking to each other.

This thing needs an edit function.

again, agreed.

and isn't so much of the (british) post-punk we all seem to revere on ilm a case of "art skool parasites stealing the funk"? and isn't so much of the disco (not disco) stuff, the american version of post- punk?

That's exactly it though. Post-punk, whatever your estimation of it, led inexorably to Level 42 just like D(ND) type stuff led to Material. Except Level 42 was popular.

anyone else think god is my co pilot were what dna wanted to be? dna were awful

The Soul Jazz compilation seems to be delayed - the track listing is: 1. A Certain Ratio - Shack Up 2. 23 Skidoo - Coup 3. Gang Of Four - To Hell With Poverty 4. The Human League - Being Boiled 5. The Slits - In The Beginning, There Was Rhythm 6. This Heat -24 Track Loop 7. Throbbing Gristle -20 Jazz Funk Greats 8. A Certain Ratio - Knife Slits Water 9. Cabaret Voltaire - Sluggin For Jesus 10. The Pop Group - She Is Beyond Good And Evil 11. 23 Skidoo - Vegas El Bandito. I suppose a distant cousin of the more NY style tracks on Disco (Not Disco). Also a similar selection to that found on Andrew Weatherall's "9 O'Clock Drop" compilation. Still it's nice thinking that for once "I was there" having bought a lot of the various tracks being mentioned "the first time around". I also saw A Certain Ratio blowing away Joy Division at JD's last ever gig and also saw 23 Skidoo supported by Curiosity Killed the Cat when they had a Sloaney female singer as well as Ben!

level 42's world machine = grate

isn't laswell on massacre? that's good (despite itself, somewhat)

and the two herbie hancock LPs are fab!