OK, so what was the BEST disco record ever made???

[NightTrain]

As the flip side of the "Worst Disco Record" poll I took yesterday, I thought it would be interesting to have the good folks at DU vote for the genre's best representative. As with the other poll, I decided to limit this one to records that did well on the pop charts.


As always, if I neglected to include your favorite, please write it in!

Finally, a note to the "Disco Sucks" crowd: we all know how you feel. Out of the thousands of disco records that came out in the '70s, you refuse to ackowledge that even one of them might have had even a smidgen of musical merit. We're well aware of your opinion. As such, would you please be so kind as to keep the hell out of this discussion? Thank you!

[terrya]

1. "Doctor's Orders" by Carol Douglas

A song that even I, disco dance impaired as I was, would get me on the dance floor.

Terry

[TheMightyFavog]

2. The very last one.

End of Line.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

3. My top choices

Born to be Alive
There But For the Grace of God
Native New Yorker
I am What I Am

[David__77]

12. Gay selections

The Machine song "Grace of God" selection is probably the first song to have the word "gay" in it.

[meti57b]

4. "How Deep is your Love" (Bee Gees)

"I know your eyes in the morning sun
I feel you touch me in the pouring rain
And the moment that you wander far from me
I wanna feel you in my arms again
And you come to me on a summer breeze
Keep me warm in your love, then you softly leave
And it's me you need to show"

[lazarus]

48. damnation

I fell in love for the very first time listening to that song, and just reading the lyrics again gets me all butterfly-in-the-stomach.

What an incredible song.

"More Than a Woman" kicks butt, too.

Actually, the entire Saturday Night Live soundtrack is a masterpiece. I've even heard folks like Alice Cooper say that.

[mouse7]

5. I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor

It's been a little re-over-played of late, but it's still the best song from that music era.

[lolly]

9. I second that

Where is "I will survive?"

Can't have a disco party without that.

(Have you heard Cake's remake? It's good too!)

[Kat45]

34. I agree.

It's the only disco song I can stand.

[DemExpat]

6. Anything by the BeeGees...

:kick:

DemEx

[DemExpat]

17. .....or Earth Wind and Fire...

:bounce:

DemEx

[nini]

33. EWF is my favorite band

I still love them. My nieces and nephews said they're going to bury me (when I die I hope ) with all my EFW CDs.. :-)

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

7. Shakedown Street by the Grateful Dead

Well, it was disco. Listen to it.

[Laughing Mirror]

52. It is.

Sun Ra did disco records too.

SUN RA!!

[AngryYoungMan]

8. No Sugarhill gang?

Where's "Rapper's Delight" (any version)? Best oldschool hiphop ever.

[David__77]

14. Ah, but it was sampled 100% from "Good Times."

I think whenever Rapper's Delight is credited, Good Times by Chic must be mentioned. Even the Sugar Hill Gang record credited Chic for the song.

[ProfessorGAC]

10. I Voted For Vicki Sue, But. . .

. . .if you had an Other, i would have voted for either "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" by Santa Esmerelda, or "I Can't Stand The Rain" by Mia Peeples.
The Professor

[David__77]

11. Risque - Chic (1979)

It has "Good Times" and "Forbidden Lover." It's hard to say "album" with disco though, since many disco acts put put only singles or four-track double singles. Other favorites:

"Spacer" by Sheila and B. Devotion (1980)
"Can't Fake the Feeling" by Geraldine Hunt (1980)
"I Like What You're Doing to Me" by Young & Co. (1980)
"Fire Night Dance" by Peter Jacques Band (1979)
"Music Man" by Revanche (1979)

If you hadn't guessed, I really like disco music! Donna Summer's also OK for more mainstream stuff, with the help of the talented Giorgio Moroder. I also like some of the stuff by Village People producer Jacques Morali, such as "Lady Night" by Patrick Juvet and "Give Me a Break" by the Ritchie Family. And the group Change that included Luther Vandross had great songs with "Glow of Love" and "Lover's Holiday," both of 1980.

The later disco of later 1979 and 1980 is my favorite because it's most Chic-influences, and while maintaining orchestral arrangement of strings and horns, it stripped down some of the cheesier over the top stuff characteristic of the 1976-1977 period. Unfortunately, in the rush away from any organic instrumentation, we're now at a place where the most catchy dance/pop songs are those that are sampled from disco greats. If I were in a different place in life, I would instead have become a dance music producer and tried to resurrect some arrangement and organic influence to the genre.

[ronnykmarshall]

13. The Entire "Bad Girls" album

Probably the best Disco record ever.

[Bertha Venation]

15. Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. eom

[Zinfandel]

16. Disco Duck!

Get fucking real.

[Qutzupalotl]

18. TLC--Back in Love Again

then the instrumental "Machine Gun" by the Commodores.

On edit: make that the other way around.

[MrScorpio]

19. Anything from the House of Rogers and Edwards

Chic
Sister Sledge

[KamaAina]

20. None of the above. "If I Can't Have You" by Yvonne Elliman.

One of many who left Hawai'i to seek her fortune in the wider world. She gets extra style points for skipping right over the mainland and heading for her daddy's house in London.

Did you know she played Mary Magdalene in "Jesus Christ Superstar"?

Word is, now that her kids are grown, she'll try to revive her career, out here anyway.

[qwertyMike]

21. NONE

Ever

[NightTrain]

22. Thank you for respecting my wishes and not participating in this thread.

:eyes:

[dolo amber]

23. Wow...I never thought I'd do this,

but I must criticize your choice on the Donna Summer selections, Night Train...:o

Definitely should have been "I Feel Love"...Giorgio Moroder was doing some amazing stuff with dance beats, even back then. ;)

Second place Thelma Houston's "Don't Leave Me This Way".

[NightTrain]

24. Frankly, I've hated "I Feel Love" since the first time I heard it.

Six minutes of grating, emotionless monotony. :puke:

Good call on Thelma Houston, though! It's times like this when I wish these damned polls had more than ten options to choose from.

[dolo amber]

25. Hey!

Six minutes of grating, emotionless monotony.

You say that like it's a bad thing! :D

(dolo amber...techno fan, lover of grating, emotionless monotony. ;))

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

26. I thought that 6 minutes of grating emotionless monotony

was the whole point of disco?

Or was that cocaine?

I forget for some reasn.

[joeybee12]

44. One of the most influential pieces of music of the last 40 years....

....think about how new music has been influenced by it. Truly a great record.

[NightTrain]

46. Yeah, just not in a good way!

:evilgrin:

[Laughing Mirror]

50. Ditto!!

It cleared the dance floor. Nobody could dance to it. Needless to say, it never became a dance floor anthem, although it did indeed become a disco hit, as did all Donna Summer records. They had that Euro-synth sound, and were commercial, and they were good productions.

But why, I wonder, did I not buy Donna Summer records and listen to them in the 1970s when they came out? Well, because we had Dorothy Morrison, Pam Todd, Mandrill, Everyday People, Kraftwerk. Why should we listen to boring Donna Summer records while we were on a dance floor? We wanted something deeper. "I Feel Love" was what people sitting around getting high would put on.

[Sufi Marmot]

38. Another shout out for Thelma Houston....

"Don't Leave Me This Way" kicks ass...The Communards version of that song doesn't suck either...

My second place vote would be any one of, or even better, a medley of the following three Hot Chocolate songs:

"You Sexy Thing", "Every 1's A Winner", and "You Could Have Been a Lady", although whether the last song actually qualifies as disco is debatable.

-SM, coming on down and doing what he's got to do...

[Laughing Mirror]

42. Saturday Night Shining Down on My Sunday Morning Face

is another forgotten Thelma Houston classic.

Thelma's still performing. The last time I saw her perform (gay tea dance in Paris) about 10 years ago she looked fit and was in great form. She's picked up a little weight since then.

I would like to give a shout out also to the great Candi Staton (don't forget, Candi's a religious woman), the fabulous Jackie Moore (she flew in from San Francisco with Gay Disco Super Diva, Sylvester (R.I.P.) and they drove the huge crowds wild at DC Gay Pride (last time I saw her in early 1980s), the crazy and provocative Grace Jones (saw her a year ago at a club at 6 in the morning and she's better than she's ever been), the magnificent Loleatta Holloway (probably the most mixed and remixed disco diva that ever existed ... Loleatta's lesbian, by the way). I could fill a whole thread with shout-outs; there were so many wonderful people making music back then, as now, but I'll leave it here.

I insert these parenthetical remarks for those who may not know much about what we're calling disco here, or may have false perceptions about it, as a way of demonstrating that this music was a very significant part of the lives of many many people. A lot of them, it seems from the posts I'm reading on this thread, are here today.

It may surprise people to learn that the music was also at times political. I did not become interested in apartheid, for example, until I found myself on a dance floor dancing to a record that became a big dance floor hit, "South African Man," by Hamilton Bohannon. It made me curious. I wanted to find out what was happening in South Africa that would inspire a man named Bohannon in Atlanta, Georgia to make a record about it.

The Vietnam War and Watergate was going on in the early days of disco. We danced to songs about the energy crisis and danced and sang along on the dance floor to anti-war dance songs: "Bring the Boys Home," by Freda Payne, "Black Skin Blue-Eyed Boys, Ain't Gonna Fight Your Dumb Ol' Wars," by the Equals. Those 45s won't show up on any disco charts, but they were big hits in the clubs that created the discothèque scene (a DJ in a booth trying to match up a continuous stream of beats for a dance floor, as opposed to a live band, which had to take breaks) that came, alas, to be known and derided as "disco."

[OneBlueSky]

27. "Do You Wanna Funk?" . . . Sylvester . . . n/t

.

[Paul Hood]

28. Knock On Wood n/t

[RandomKoolzip]

29. Cerrone- "Supernature"

There was some really odd Eurodisco that I kinda liked. Of course, I like real disco from the seventies cuz it was played by humans on real instruments, not store bought from a computer and samplers....

Disco-Tex and his Sex-o-Lettes put out a good first album, too...a "fake" live album, no less.

[Insider]

30. mfsb - love is the message

couldn't resist a few more

van mccoy - the hustle
voyage - souvenirs
giorgio moroder - e=mc2
sylvester - mighty real
first choice - doctor love
diana ross - love hangover
donna summer - i feel love/spring affair
chic - le freak
cheryl lynn - got to be real/star love

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[nostamj]

32. the first Village People album!

"don't go in the bushes.........."

and WHAT, no Sylvester? for shame. Alicia Bridges, "I Love The Nightlight?" and where's "Native New Yorker" ? (first song i ever danced--with a man--to....

[bonemachine]

35. Ozzy and Dweezil

With their Staying Alive/Crazy Train mix...

[bubblesby2002]

36. This is the only song my boyfriend, soon to be my husband

would ever get up to dance to. He loved that song. I miss him!

[davsand]

37. What? Brick House didn't make the list?

Man! That is still one of my favorites! Ohio Players did Roller Coaster-THAT is another great song, Grace Jones singing Pull Up to the Bumper, or even Atomic Dog by George Clinton...

So much fun music out there!

Laura

[JCMach1]

39. BLONDIE-- Atomic

Much truer disco than Heart of Glass...

A better song too.

[M155Y_A1CH]

40. ABBA

Dancing Queen
That album was great.

[Kickin_Donkey]

41. Two stand out in my mind ...

"Shame" by Evelyn Champagne King

"Got to Be Real" by Cheryl Lynn

[dbt]

43. "Get Off" by Foxy

Wasn't that what yer Disco Era was all about?

:smoke:
dbt

[trogdor]

45. Everything from the Saturday Night Fever album...

...was pretty good. If you want an anthology of good disco, there it is.

[gulfcoastliberal]

47. Boogie Nights - Heatwave is awesome

Also dig "Back in Love Again" and of course those trippy German Kraftwerk records. Here's an obscure one - Klaus Nomi. He was way cool.

[arwalden]

49. Donna Summer - Live And More ... Saturday Night Fever Sountrack - Various

Evita (Art Disco)-- Festival (I think)
The Boss -- Diana Ross

-- Allen

Others: Lady Night, Souvenirs, TBFTGOGGI, Best Disco In Town, Forbidden Love, Intro Disco, La Bamba, Happy Radio

[Laughing Mirror]

51. Great disco playlist, Allen

That's the good stuff. "Best Disco in Town" - Richie Family - Fun sound of Philadelphia disco at its best.

"Happy Radio," the majestic pipes of Motown's Edwin Starr (R.I.P.) Was there ever anybody better than Edwin Starr?

And "The Boss." Ross. Where would the drag queens have been without Diana Ross, and without "Love Hangover"?

If there's a cure for this/I don't want it, don't want it
If there's a remedy/I'll run from it, run from it ...

[Dulcinea]

53. "Got to be Real" by Cheryl Lynn

or "Don't Leave Me This Way" by Thelma Houston.

[mac56]

54. Funkytown

Talk about it, talk about it, talk about, talk about movin'....