Chicago - Street Player

this song is from a time period where Chicago gets absolutely no love…. the dreaded disco years, but…. if you’ve been checking the site long enough you would know that i’m a disco revivalist and i’m fighting hard for you all to realize the errors of your disco hating ways.

there’s a certain underground club in atl that plays this track religiously every wednesday, which introduced me to this song… and i love it.  the song is just funky and danceable with a great horn section.  and dammit i’m a street player too.

Parallel Dance Ensemble - Turtle Pizza Cadillacs (dir. Aleks Sakowski) Watch in HQ

I found this video recently during my bi-weekly stalking of all things owusu & hannibal.  i heard the song before, but the video blew me away.  so… if you clicked this and did not click HQ press stop and click HQ.  the video is beautiful i love the stop motion, all of the colors, the old school claymation.  the thing about it that i love is i’m sure they had no real budget to make this video.  GREAT ART DOES NOT NEED HUGE BUDGETS.  it’s all about creativity.  so enjoy the video.

Escort - All Through the Night

i first posted the escort song ‘love in indigo’ what seems like forever ago when i first started the blog.  unfortunately, i still have not heard any new info about escort dropping a full length album.  i think i’ve been waiting for like 2 or 3 years now.  the video for ‘all through the night’ was my first exposure to this group.  there was basically no chance in hell that i would not love the group with a video like this and a disco-ed out song like this.  there’s something magical about seeing muppets sing the words “if you want to sex me…. i’ll give it up.”  Enjoy.

Hercule’s & the Love Affair - Hercule’s Theme

I first featured the song ‘Time Will’ by Hercules & the Love Affair a while back.  Typically I don’t like to post a song by the same group, but when I ran into this video on the Pitchfork website I said screw my policy.  ‘Hercule’s Theme’ has a completely different feel then ‘Time Will,’ in that it is more attuned to the disco genre.  This was the first song that I heard by the group on Gilles Peterson’s “All Winners” radio show that featured his top albums and songs for 2008.  Overall 2008, did not seem as stellar of a year for music to me then 2007, but this song and album hit me hard.

The video from Pitchfork’s ‘Don’t Look Down’ series is beautifully shot.  The series is simple putting an artist on a rooftop, I guess similar to the Beatles final rooftop show, and letting them perform.  Hercule’s Theme is the last song that they play on the show as the sun sets.  The group really just gets down on the song, every band member does a stellar job in creating this funky disco groove.  Enjoy.

Sylvester - Over and Over

This is hands down one of my favorite songs.  I first heard this while watching a documentary about larry levan, paradise garage, and the underground disco culture of the late 70s.  This song is just straight perfection.

The song was written and first recorded by Ashford & Simpson, but Sylvester turned it into a classic.  Let’s see…

Funky Bass Line… Check

People Wildin’ Out in the Studio… Check

Sylvester singing his ass off… Check

Dope horn section… Check

Disco strings in the back… Check

Guitar solo… Check

This song really could be a template about the type of music that can be created with freedom in the studio.  This is something you hardly see anymore in music today.  Artists don’t really just go in the studio and enjoy themselves.  Everything is about perfection trying to find perfect pitch, perfect timing, auto-tuning out any “mistakes,” everything.  Songs aren’t as natural anymore because technology has allowed producers and engineers so many options.  I would love to hear more songs with this type of freedom and fun.  This is a perfect song to go out and celebrate the end of 2008.  Enjoy

*RIP Sylvester, he passed about 20 years ago from AIDS.

Escort - Love in Indigo (Extended)

“Escort was formed in early 2005 by Dan Balis, Eugene Cho, and Darius Maghen out of a desire to bring detail, depth, and perhaps most of all, the R&B songwriting tradition, back to underground dance music.”

Some may call this disco and attempt to give it that stain of the idiotic and in some ways racist and homophobic “disco sucks” movement.  During the infamous disco demolition night in chicago people saw many black albums burned that had nothing to do with disco such as Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.”  Disco music began simply as danceable r&b music, where certain trends and formulas began sticking more and more causing many of the songs later on to get stale.  This music had a higher tempo that dj’s would play inside of many new clubs.  For the shear love of dance and the undisputable greatness of the original music it took over the world.  For the most part disco is still responsible for the majority of club music that is played around the world from the million different forms of house and techno, and all of there children.  I guess it is ironic that Chicago, the location of disco demolition night, was at the foundation of the House music movement.

Escort is a 16-piece band from Brooklyn that plays some good ass music.  Each single that they dropped has been off the hook.  I’m sorry but you have no soul if you cannot feel the driving intro at the beginning of the song.  Love in Indigo is not what it seems at first, it is actually not about love for another person, but a woman’s search for a pair of shoes that she has fallen in love with.  As a retired sneakerhead I can feel her pain.  I once had a nightmare about a pair of sneakers that I didn’t buy in the store one day.  After that I immediately went to the store to buy the sneakers, but they weren’t there, causing me to have to spend a week searching all over the internet to find them.  Ironically I got them from a sneaker store in Brooklyn and my life was complete… until I saw the next pair of hot ass sneakers.

So… it looks like I talked about everything, but the song.  Oh well enjoy.