I consider myself a hopeless sucker for vocal pop. But even I have my limits. This was produced by the once-great master of sunshine pop, Curt Boettcher. For more on him, listen to Andrew Hickey’s excellent episode on “My World Fell Down” by Sagittarius.
Disco was an odd phenomenon. For a year or two people couldn’t get enough, then a massive “disco sucks” reaction set in. I struggle to think of another popular genre that lost so many of its fans so quickly and vehemently. I also struggle to think of a genre where so many artists from other genres so spectacularly made asses of themselves trying to cash in.
There’s also an extended club mix of “Here Comes the Night” posted on YouTube, if you really must.
Fun fact (just learned from Hickey): that’s Glen Campbell singing the lead on the verses of “My World Fell Down.”
God, that just feels like resting your head in Mike Love’s armpit.
Haha. Pretty much.
As a KISS Army wannabe, I was pretty barf on disco from the outset, and you would never catch me listening to the Bee Gees. I confess that I kinda liked that Yvonne Ellman song though.
Dennis Wilson was opposed to this recording, and Brian did not participate. Al Jardine later expressed his distaste for the disco remake of the song:
“I hated that track. It was one of the worst experiences of my life recording anywhere, but Bruce has this idea to do the perfect disco record, which of course none of our fans wanted us to do. I like the original song, but this pandering to disco did not work.”
As a fan of early 70’s glam, the British Invasion, what would later be called power pop, and early punk, I was a prime candidate to hate disco. But I never hated it per se, because there were several disco songs I thought were good. It did get annoying as a trend, with everyone all of a sudden wearing silly clothes, getting perms, and dancing. And the overemphasized bass drums and whirling strings got old fast. It was also irritating and seemed a little pathetic when acts like the Stones or McCartney dabbled in it (granted, Sir Paul had been taken over by a pod person well before then). At least poor Beethoven wasn’t around to stop this. But hating a genre carte blanche has always seemed a little silly to me. The exception is bro’ country, which seems silly NOT to hate.
I do remember being annoyed when David Bowie morphed from glam to dance/funk. All of a sudden he was making music your girlfriend liked–high treason in the minds of adolescent males at the time, because we believed that girls’ sole musical criterion was, “can I dance to it?” His white-boy funk phase did grow on me eventually, though. But that started a year or two before disco hit in a big way.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone back to Black & Blue and tried to like it, but I just can’t. It’s got a couple good tracks, but it’s mostly cringe to me. Hot Stuff has Harvey Mandell from Canned Heat playing the lead parts on the record. I guess that was before Woody was actually in the band.
Yeah, Black & Blue helped justify punk. If the Stones wouldn’t rock out…
To their credit, they heard the criticism and bounced back in a big way with Some Girls.
I made it one minute and 52 seconds. Thanks for nothing.