Hi-NRG & Disco Classics

[Mixotech]

And other iTunes stuff that may be worth investigating...

Hi-NRG & Disco Classics
45 tracks - some extended, but mostly edits - for £7.99. Hazell Dean, Carol Jiani, A mixed bag but good value considering the number of tracks (despite the large number of edits).

Definitive N-R-G - Volume One
22 tracks for £15.99. Again, some are extended, some are edits. Includes full versions of Vikki Benson's Easy Love, Angie Gold's Eat You Up, Miriam Lee's Men In My Life, Marsha Raven's Catch Me. Also great value.

Ultimate HI-NRG
10 extended versions for £7.90. Evelyn Thomas, Seventh Heaven, Miquel Brown.

Masters of Hi-NRG
Nine extended versions for £7.11. Miquel Brown, Earlene Bentley, Evelyn Thomas.

Pamala Stanley - Looking Back The Disco Years 1979-1989
15 tracks including the 12" versions of Coming Out Of Hiding and I Don't Want To Talk About It, and a shorter version of If Looks Could Kill, plus two duets with Paul Parker. Costs £7.99.

Megatone Records - 12 Inch Collection vol 1, 2, 3 (just do a search for Megatone)

Shy Rose - You Are My Desire
17-track album (more tracks than on the original CD pressing, as instrumentals are also included). I Cry For You and You Are My Desire are both there.

And these are just a few of the things lurking on iTunes these days...

[TQG]

BBC Three had a very good documentary "The Joy of Disco" a few weeks ago.

Loved Jeanie Tracey's final word as they talked about disco becoming "dance": "Disco didn't die... I'm still working!"

[Geneviève-Eugénie]

disco becoming "dance": "Disco didn't die... I'm still working!"

Most of the 70's dancemusic is usually referred to as disco or funk. But how about the 80's dancemusic?
Not everything was hi-nrg or italo-disco.
For example: Nicole - Don't You Want My Love...if it isn't disco then what is it?
I've always thought that the term "dance" wasn't used until the 90's...

[TQG]

disco becoming "dance": "Disco didn't die... I'm still working!"

Most of the 70's dancemusic is usually referred to as disco or funk. But how about the 80's dancemusic?
Not everything was hi-nrg or italo-disco.
For example: Nicole - Don't You Want My Love...if it isn't disco then what is it?
I've always thought that the term "dance" wasn't used until the 90's...

You are, of course, right. "Dance" was a term really used first in the 90s.

I think Jeanie was just making the point that disco/dance evolved.

What might be more accurate is to state that in the late 1970s, after it's underground roots disco became quite mainstream. Then in the 1980s, certainly the early 80s, most mainstream "pop" was less dance oriented. After a period where "house" was again quite underground it re-emerged to the mainstream in the mid to late 1990s as "dance".

Another interesting bit of the "Joy of Disco" documentary was a discussion of "Y.M.C.A." being quietly subversive. There you are at a family wedding, watching Great-Granny singing along with and doing the the cheesy arm-movements..... maybe not knowing that it's a song about the homos in San Fransisco picking up men for sex at the gym!!! Now when you look at it that way......

Anyway - nice to have a few disco classics around. Always like to slip a golden oldie into a DJ set where possible!!!

[Mixotech]

The BBC3 set of programmes on disco - The Joy of Disco, Disco at the BBC and Queens of Disco - were great, they had some very good guest speakers (apart from Linda Robson, from the comedy Birds of a Feather, whose appearance was inexplicable). I recorded the programmes on Sky and have watched them a couple of times.

[Mixotech]

disco becoming "dance": "Disco didn't die... I'm still working!"

Most of the 70's dancemusic is usually referred to as disco or funk. But how about the 80's dancemusic?
Not everything was hi-nrg or italo-disco.
For example: Nicole - Don't You Want My Love...if it isn't disco then what is it?
I've always thought that the term "dance" wasn't used until the 90's...

Nicole was part of the wave of heavy-beat US funk/dance that came along in the 80s, like Jody Watley, Janet Jackson, Donna Allen etc. There was always a lot of gay interest in this music, even if it was of lower bpm than standard Hi-NRG. Donna Allen's 'Serious' even ended up charting in the Hi-NRG charts in Record Mirror.

I remember on the club scene in Birmingham that there was not much interest in the rattling Hi-NRG sound from Megatone and other labels. But the dancefloors would be packed when such dance-funk tracks as The Jets 'Crush on You' and Pebbles 'Girlfriend' were being played.

[TQG]

Linda Robson, from the comedy Birds of a Feather, whose appearance was inexplicable.

I didn't catch her in it.

Thank goodness. What the hell has she got to do with disco.

She's also a TERRIBLE actress!!!!

[Mixotech]

Linda Robson, from the comedy Birds of a Feather, whose appearance was inexplicable.

I didn't catch her in it.

Thank goodness. What the hell has she got to do with disco.

She's also a TERRIBLE actress!!!!

No idea what she was doing there. I guess they wanted a recognisable British household name there.

Also, Graham Norton was a bad choice for narrating the Queens of Disco programme. He can't do serious presenting at all, he always has to be silly and flippant.