Disco Not Disco: Post Punk, Electro & Leftfield Disco Classics, 1974-1986 by Various Artists
LABEL: Strut
If the reissue market has taught us one thing these past ten years, it is the maxim: Disco is cool. Seldom does a month go by without newly discovered dance “classics” appearing again on shelves. Even Whit Stillman’s brilliant 1998 film, The Last Days of Disco, finally appeared on DVD this year, celebrating an era “whose erstwhile existence,” according to David Schickler, “from almost the moment it ended, has seemed to embarrass most Americans more than Watergate.” But we are now getting a fuller picture of the disco decade, with critical reappraisals and academic studies to support the burgeoning interest of listeners. My generation, those born after the demise of disco as a cultural phenomenon, are the first to be able to enjoy the music with critical detachment. Yet I still find myself inevitably seduced by the genre, transported into a fantasy world that college house parties have never quite lived up to. Disco is glitz, glamour, style, none of which go particularly well with neighborly noise complaints and keg beer. Listening to disco in the wrong setting can strike us like the horror of an Edmund Burke at the French Revolution: one feels that we are leaving the world of chivalry for a world of hunger.
“Wasn’t punk somewhat defined by its staunch rejection of disco, of the conspicuous consumption and decadence of the 1970s mainstream? And yet this proliferation of ”˜dance punk,’ ”˜mutant disco,’ “new wave’ occupies the wilderness between the cultural binary.”
Luckily there is compromise on the level of style in the now much-maligned term “dance punk”, frequently interchangeable with “post-punk” and “new wave”. It isn’t a new phenomenon. The artist Dan Graham was early to realize the potential in a band like Devo to synthesize the raw energy of punk with the unifying beat of disco: a band that could simultaneously unite and divide its audience. We could have fun with the Brechtian implications of such a program, but suffice it to say that the concept of “dance punk” raises contradictory emotions. Wasn’t punk somewhat defined by its staunch rejection of disco, of the conspicuous consumption and decadence of the 1970s mainstream? And yet this proliferation of “dance punk”, “mutant disco”, “new wave” occupies the wilderness between the cultural binary. We realize both punk and disco to be incredibly vibrant musics, each emancipatory in their own right; the main schism being the very different spaces of performance each movement chose to elaborate itself within. The popular imagination has a tendency to think of the dancer in terms of visible ecstasy, and the punk as some kind of infernal cellar-dweller plotting in secrecy. One forgets that punks also dance, and club culture goes hand in hand with corruption. The renewed fascination with disco has gone a long way to dispelling a mythology of Saturday Night Fever in favor of a fuller, fleshier image of dance culture—a living image constantly overflowing its frame, more influential and pervasive than once believed. And not so easy to sublimate as simply one decade’s aberration.
Strut’s Disco Not Disco series is an admirable contribution to the reissue cavalcade, and the label weighed in with its third installment in 2008. Named after the seminal group Was (Not Was), Disco Not Disco casts a wide net in its search for “leftfield disco classics.” Previous releases included vintage material by Loose Joints, Liquid Liquid, Yello, Can, Material, Alexander Robotnick, as well as oddities by the likes of free jazz trumpeter Don Cherry, lite rocker Steve Miller, and chanteuse Yoko Ono (whose latter-day career has gone on to justify such offbeat excursions as 1981’s “Walking on Thin Ice”). Each disc can feel like something of a hit-or-miss affair; to date, none of the collections have reached the heights scaled by Ze Records’ Mutant Disco set (1981/2003). On the other hand, this third Disco Not Disco doesn’t have the label-based or geographic restrictions involved in a more homogeneous collection. No longer limiting themselves to New York City, mecca of disco, the good folks at Strut are able to draw the listener’s attention to foreign pioneers like the UK’s Quando Quango, Germany’s Liaisons Dangereueses, and the Belgian Kazino.
“But the compilation is not without surprises; the real draw is having some of the genre’s most beloved anthems sandwiching true obscurities.”
Much of this material has been reissued before—Delta 5, Shriekback, and James Chance are no longer such well-kept secrets, and Disco Not Disco seems drawn to the darker, moodier, harder sounds of such groups whose influence on the past decade’s indie rock is so palpable. But the compilation is not without surprises; the real draw is having some of the genre’s most beloved anthems sandwiching true obscurities. Interestingly, many initial headscratchers turn out to be the side projects of musicians quite successful under other monikers. Maximum Joy, for instance, emerged from the ashes of The Pop Group, whose 1979 album Y has gained considerable cult following over the years; Dinosaur L is a dance combo masterminded by avant-garde cellist/downtown icon Arthur Russell; and Isotope grew out of the prog leanings of a former Dusty Springfield guitarist, Gary Boyle. Unfortunately, excitement is too frequently tempered by tedium, and one feels the Strut compilers could have chosen far more wisely from the available material. While never a brilliant group, Maximum Joy certainly have better songs than the lengthy and tepid “Silent Street/Silent Dub”—the staggered keyboard riffs, reverb-soaked trumpet and falsetto vocals remind the seasoned listener that this is a band who excelled at hard, buoyant rhythms (“Stretch”), not atmosphere. Dinosaur L’s “In the Cornbelt” is a sad affair; shockingly, this remix by house legend Larry Levan has completely diluted the once taut, razor-sharp compositions of the band’s 24-24 Music LP (1981). “Crunch Cake” by Isotope is the kind of wankadelic jazz-fusion enjoyed by connoisseurs of Magma and Billy Cobham, all electric keyboard and guitar vamps gleaned from the superficial aspects of Miles’ late sound.
Still, Disco Not Disco boasts some impressive finds, such as Vivien Goldman’s “Launderette”, a bitterly humorous take on a lover’s negative qualities—untidiness, for one—as the socks spin so hypnotically around in the coin-operated dryer; Konk’s “Your Life”, whose chanted theme and Afro-Cuban percussion recall the kind of ethnic genre-bending which made Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa” so luminous; and the odd Detroit minimalism of A Number of Names’ “Sharevari” single, the nonsensical title repeated endlessly in a manner cold, deadpan and uncompromising. While a relatively weak collection in terms of both the quality and rarity of its selections, it is nice to have many of these classic singles in one place while also leaving enough room to disrupt New York’s cultural hegemony. An uninitiated listener could certainly do worse.
REVIEWED BY SETH WATTER
SETH'S FAVORITE TRACKS: “Contort Yourself” • “Launderette” • “Sharevari”
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