¿Qué será mi vida?

Like I said, always choose disco.

Choose disco

This is probably way too much yellow fabric and blue eyeshadow for a rainy October morning, but some of us choose to jumpstart the day with drugs while others, like me, choose disco.

The Gibson Brothers (who, despite the Anglo sounding name, were actually Francophones from Martinique) represent a phase of late 1970s French/Belgian pop hitmaking that no one other than me would possibly be interested in. Long live the production team of Daniel Vangarde and Jean Kluger!

From this era and from this production team, I am particularly fond of "Cuba" but also of another Gibson Brothers' hit, "Qué Será Mi Vida (If You Should Go)," which was popular the year I made my debut at the cotillion of publicly acknowledged homosexuality. That is to say, bounded out of the closet and into the hearts and minds of a small but highly valued group of family and friends.

Cuuuuubaaaaaa, quiero bailar la salsa ....

Showing the '70s some love

And Party Every Day: The Inside Story of Casablanca Records by Larry Harris
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book far more than I probably should have. While it's not perfectly written, it is very entertaining, especially for me, someone who remembers well the rise and fall of Casablanca Records, the Kiss era, Donna Summer, disco, Parliament/Funkadelic, and everything else that Neil Bogart, Larry Harris, et al., begat and bequeathed.

Not all of it was good, but when it was good, it was great, as much for the music as for the fantasy, glamour, and excess it created.

The focus in this book is perhaps more on Kiss than on the others. As more of a disco dolly, I would have preferred more about Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder. Nonetheless, Harris does a good job of conveying some of what was going on with them and their music at the time. He also touches upon the rise of gay culture in the disco era, not shying away from it, although again, I was left wanting more.

That's not really a criticism. I'm just greedy.

While not a Kiss fan and knowing only a little about George Clinton and Parliament, I was nonetheless enthralled to read about their personalities, work, and vision, and how Casablanca hustled to unleash them on a receptive, if unsuspecting, public.

I was a teenager during this era, a time in my mind's eye, when America was still on the move, when the angst and anger of the late '60s had somewhat subsided and the conservatism and consumerism of the '80s had not taken over. So there's a special place in my heart for the people, places, and events described within. People often say the '70s were about nothing, but I think they were about a number of things: harmony, unity, diversity, fun, working out our past social kinks and moving on to a better, more liberated culture. An idealized take on the decade? Perhaps, but I'd match it any day to the accomplishments of the '80s.

Having said that, from some of the events described in these pages, I'm not sure I would have survived if I'd been on that '70s scene. In fact, many didn't. Drugs, decadence, and disease took their toll.

Thus it's great to have Harris's stories about Paul Jabara, Marc Paul Simon, Jacques Morali, Henri Belolo, Casablanca FilmWorks, Donna Summer, George Clinton, the four Kiss solo albums, radio promotion, marketing music, and all the rest. It's a terrific chronicle of a lost time and place and a loving but honest look at the genius and the folly that was Neil Bogart.

View all my reviews

When I was 15, it was a very good year . . . for music

I think we can all agree by now that my taste in music--and most other forms of popular culture--is a mixed bag, ranging from the almost-credible to the incredibly dodgy.

Australian and South African soap operas, Fannie Flagg novels, lustful or wry commentaries about French TV personalities, the Sims, ABBA, shortwave radio, the Minogue sisters, '60s James Bond movies, Eurodisco and other music that is more about the beat than the lyrics--guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, and so very guilty.

And so be it. I am what I am, and to deny these rather camp cultural tastes is to deny myself, my identity, which in large part is that of a gay white American man in his early 50s with a slight Southern accent and somewhat leftist politics who can't drive a stick and avoids pretentiousness and math as if they were plagues from the heavens. I'm weary of apologizing for myself and tired of feeling embarrassed about my likes and dislikes--even though I am doing a bit of both, right here and now.

I do have other interests, ones that are slightly more highbrow, especially when it comes to movies (ahem, film) and fiction (ahem, literary fiction). I should share more about those and maybe I will in the year ahead. Admittedly, it is tougher to write about the "serious" stuff and somewhat less fun. Perhaps this belies some serious intellectual laziness on my part, I would wager. Or, again, am I dissing myself over my true interests so as to seem weightier, to be taken seriously? Yes, that too.

Goodness knows I struggle with this at work too often, pretending to being into what I do when, really, I think my interests within my profession lie elsewhere and are much more basic. They're more about helping people, relating to them, figuring out their needs, than shilling to them about another new, half-tried technology or half-baked theory.

My profession is crazy these days. But it doesn't mean I have to be, too.

And, thus, I present to you "Fly Butterfly" by Ruby Manila.

This is one of those songs that has teased my memory for years. I used to hear this--or something like it--on my shortwave radio in the late 1970s, but I was never able to identify the performer, the song title, the country of origin, the year of release, or even the exact station I was listening to (although I had a pretty good idea it was being broadcast on a German station or one in the Benelux between 1976 and 1978). I heard it more than once during the era but could only remember the refrain, "fly, fly (or high?), butterfly (butterfly)," sung by a smooth, high female voice, counterpointed by a ridiculously deep male voice.

I adore the song--it's quintessential Eurodisco, with the swooning vocals, skanky bass, and seductive beat, perhaps more 1976 than 1978 in sound, but who's counting? It's not quite as I recall it--I don't remember any of the lyrics other than the chorus; I remember the music being slightly more electronic and faster in beat; and I remember the singer's voice as being a little higher--but it is the song. Maybe there was another "special disco version" or someone else covered the tune. Regardless, this is it, and I'm glad to finally discover it after nearly 40 years of off and on searching.

How did I find this? I'm not sure I can even recall the exact steps. For years (at least five, maybe longer), I've searched repeated for the phrase "fly high butterfly song" and "fly fly butterfly song" or simply "butterfly song 1970s" via Google, YouTube, and some online music forums. You'd be surprised not at how many references to butterflies in the 1970s you might find in this way but perhaps at the number of songs you might discover.

Such as this:



Which is close. Right genre, right era, right region.

And this:


Which is not but was popular in the early '70s and was covered in other languages and by other artists.

Apparently, too, these guys had a hit with a song called "Butterfly" in the 1970s, but I kept getting pointed to this instead:



No, I don't understand it either. On many different levels. When it comes to "schlager," I realize that even I have borders of camp that I won't cross.

For some reason, last night, after a day of housework and sleep, I was obsessed with the idea of finding this song (plus one other, which we'll get to in the near future). I tried my usual searches and came up empty. And then I got creative (or overcome by the dust and cleaning chemicals, take your pick) and branched out a bit. I can't remember what exactly I typed in the search box: Some combination of "butterfly, fly, disco, song, 1977, 1970s" or some such. This search somehow miraculously led me to this page, which identified a song title and a singer, although providing more lyrics than I recall. And this information quickly led me to discover the video that started off this post.

There are a few other references to the song: For example, this page and this page. But that's about it, at least for now.

None of my usual searches and sources have turned up a roaming mp3 or even an unwanted vinyl for the tune. But never say never. I found the song, I found the artist, and in good time, I'll add the music to my collection.

Along the way I think I also discovered another lost part of my youth and thus nother part of me. Misspent you say? Wasted you infer? I beg to differ. I wouldn't be me without all the Ruby Manilas and Fly Butterflys in my life. Perhaps that means little to you--but if you've gotten this far in the post, I suspect it means something--but it increasingly means a great deal to me.

Fashion crimes against humanity

All y'all know I love the '70s, for lots of reasons but especially for its politics of dancing, which for me encapsulates the decade's open and relaxed attitude, its positive vibe, and its diversity of ethnicities, sexualities, ages, income levels, social strata, body types, and more. It was OK to be gay, lesbian, straight, and bisexual. It was OK to be African-American, Latino, Anglo, a woman, a man, rich, poor, middle class. It was OK to be. At least that's how it seemed from my vantage as a boy and then a teen. There were lots of possibilities, lots of positivity. The horizon was endless, the future bright and welcoming.

And the music--such a mix! Glam, pop, rock, Southern rock, punk, new wave, soul, funk, jazz, and, yes, disco--and some or all of it coupled together in the same song.

All y'all know as well that disco is one of my favorite genres. I like it in part because of the diversity it embraced and represented but also in part because of the beat. I, for whatever reason, have always been a slave to the rhythm, even though my Anglo-Saxon culture too often seems to fear, reject, and denigrate it. Considering the beat . . . what? Too "ethnic"? Too feminine? Too gay? Too queer? Disco was about the party, sure, about self-focused dancefloor fantasies and glamorous excess. But I think there was some love and kindness there, too. Joy, happiness, and community. And sometimes even more depth than it's give credit for.

I don't think this is just my fantasy either. I'm currently reading excerpts from Vince Aletti's The Disco Files 1973-78: New York's Underground, Week by Week, a compendium of articles and charts from the '70s disco scene, along with some before-after-the-fact interviews with Aletti (a columnist, scene-chronicler, and record distributor during the era), who describes what the disco heyday was like:

There's this scene at the end of [the movie] The Last Days of Disco, one of the characters has this very idealistic speech where he says disco was a whole movement. It was funny, but it was really true and people felt that. They felt disappointed that the idealistic quality of it was being trampled over, in favor of money and celebrity. As much as disco was glitzy and certainly loved celebrity culture, there was never a sense of it being driven by that. It was much more driven by an underground idea of unity (Aletti, 1998, p. 466).

All to the good, and all to the sad and the bad that that feeling was lost due to the "disco sucks" backlash, Anita Bryant, the Reagan and neo-con era, HIV/AIDS, and the fierce, sometimes hate-filled reaction to the culture of the '60s and '70s. Those were "Good Times," and I'm so sorry that they disappeared in a huff of money-grubbing, wowserism, and not-in-my-backyard bitterness.

Nevertheless, despite my love for the era, there's one thing I cannot abide about the '70s: The absolute vileness of the clothes. The colors, the fabrics, the cut, and the style. Profoundly horrid, incredibly tragic, viscerally repulsive.

Oh sure, you could slap a Gucci-Pucci-Fiarucci label on it, but there was nothing flattering about it, except maybe that the clothes did allow for a diversity of body types more so than today's lines. You could be heavier in a caftan or hairier in a leisure suit, but if that's your only saving grace, you probably need to go back to design studio and the catwalk and try, try again.

I hate to go there because it is so so easy, such a cheap laugh, the ugliness of '70s fashion. Mind you, I don't think the '80s, in retrospect, were any prettier. Edgier and sleeker perhaps but still, ultimately, hollow and very dated-looking nowadays--that "triangle" design motif with the broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist pervaded every piece, all of which were shaded in equally decade-giveaway colors.

I favor a lot of '50s and '60s design. It must be the MadMan in me, but that era looks so much classier and classic (albeit preppy-conservative at times), even if the experimentation of the late '60s often looks clownish and tawdry nowadays, an odd mix of Dacron and denim, in organic shapes and lurid colors.

A couple of cases in point--the dancers in the video above by Spanish pop-rock-disco combo Barrabás and this one below by the oddly named Spanish/French band Bimbojet.



Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Fugly foxtrot at that. Nothing you'd ever want to wear yourself, let alone see on anyone you know, except maybe on someone who dumped you for a Solid Gold dancer.

But, again, no cheap shots: Rather than blaming disco, the '70s, hedonism, the Gay Agenda, a mass outbreak of vision and taste impairment, or any other easy-ways-out, let's call out the real culprit: Tacky couture and fascist glamor, courtesy of one Generalísimo Francisco Franco.

I'm (mostly) not making this up and only being slightly ridiculous: Dictatorships do seem to have a certain (horrid) fashion sense. Rarely is it good, with the possible exception of you-know-who. More often it is simply, cruelly vulgar. Really, how often do you need to look at photos of Eva Braun and Marlene Dietrich side-by-side to see that La Dietrich not only left behind a genocidal maniac with a really stupid mustache but also lots of treacly, frilly Berliner Alexander-plotz hausfrau drag? And how many times do you have see a certain V. Putin shirtless on the back of the people's long-suffering horse to long for the days when horse-drawn carriages pulled up to balls and banquets and gentleman sauntered about the manor house in well-cut Eugene Onegin-inspired shirts, trousers, and suits?

It's bad enough that these anal retentive mass murderers abuse their citizens' basic human rights--must they also destroy their nations' innate sense of style? The Italian working class had it going on with its headscarves, neck kerchiefs, and wrap dresses. Bendito Benito "Muscles" Mussolini, with that lampshade pull on the end of his modified fez, so did not.

During a fashion war, intervention and action are vital now, not later. Where is the UN General Council when you need it? No doubt helping victims of famine, conflict, disease, and the like. Yet while the UN dithers, miserable wretches must dance around in jewel-toned Arabian Nights' fantasies and mustard-yellow-and-sage-green baby poop-striped travesties, with no one caring, no one coming to their rescue, not even Couturiers-sans-Frontières.

Clams on the half-shell and roller skates? A rumor has it that it's getting late. Time marches on, just can't wait. There's not a moment to waste when the survival of humankind's fashion sense is at stake!

This weekend's read--And Party Every Day: The Inside Story of Casablanca Records

I'm going to try something new with this blog--start writing more about what I'm reading.

It's not that you've been missing much. Simply stated, I've lost that reading feeling over the last couple of years. My normal explanation is that it's an occupational hazard--for me, as a librarian, information, words, text, are just so much "product" and so much noise at the end of a long day. Books are a commodity. Information = work. I get tired of seeing text all day

No, I don't read books at work, despite the idealized stereotype of the librarian at work. (I have shushed a couple of people in my time--and been shushed myself by library patrons for being a little too loud and boisterous.) However, I do read screens, memos, articles, websites, reports, e-mails, what have you. The thought of doing this even more when I get home, especially on a device like a Kindle or a Nook, is rather horrifying--or maybe just depressing. Or possibly both.

Couple this with the vague concept of ownership surrounding e-books (do you really own that book or are you just renting and borrowing it for a period of time?), preservation issues (will you be able to read that book in the same e-format 20 years from now? 10 years from now? Probably not), and not having a lot of room for books/wanting to travel light on any future moves, and I just find myself feeling indifferent to the printed word. Shocking, I know.

Nevertheless, I'm trying to get the feeling again. Last month I devoured Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, with 600 pages flying by during a week away from work. I will try to write up my thoughts on that book soon; while it probably is not perfect, I really enjoyed it, more than anything I've read in a long while--which may not be saying much as I really haven't read anything substantial in a long while. The novel Triomf by Marlene Van Niekerk was the last hefty tome I took on--a book I bought at The Strand in New York in 2005 and finally finished in . . . 2011? And I still haven't written up my thoughts about that one, which has left a heavy impression on me.

I may even do something radical and finally move past page 25 in Le Libraire by Gérard Bessette, my first (short) novel in French or at least try to finish A Spy in the House of Love by Anaïs Nin, another short novel and one that is testing my new-found interest in and patience for reading.

In the meantime, I'm turning my eye to my first love and the original intent of this blog, pop culture, by reading And Party Every Day: The Inside Story of Casablanca Records by Larry Harris, an executive at Casablanca during the mid- to late 1970s (co-written with Curt Gooch and Jeff Suhs). So far, so good--it's been an enjoyable read, although not one that I've read sequentially. Instead, I've skipped around to find and savor the parts of most interest--how Casablanca founder Neil Bogart started the label, the arrival of Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer on the scene, and bits and pieces about Alec R. Constandinos, Jacques Morali, and Henri Belolo, the latter two of Village People fame.

Along the way, I've been reminded that Casablanca Records was also the home of KISS and Parliament/Funkadelic, something I've mostly forgotten, and two groups that have had amazing staying power over the decades, KISS for its image and Parliament/Funkadelic for its wild, innovative, influential, and highly sampled sound.

Casablanca, too, had a "filmworks," having produced not just the lamentable (or maybe just lame) Thank God Its Friday, but also the summer of '77 blockbuster, The Deep, among others.

What I've enjoyed most, of course, is gaining some insights into the personality and work ethic of Donna Summer. Harris writes that, based on her early recordings with Giorgio Moroder, Neil and he weren't that impressed with Summer on initial listen. Later, once that realized how talented (and invaluable) both were, Harris describes Summer as having a certain amount of drama surrounding her. Later, he notes that her marriage to Bruce Sudano settled things down and made her very happy. The author also seems to bear no ill will toward her for jumping to Geffen Records, which, along with the (alleged) death of disco, was the beginning of the end for the label. Rather, he seems to have facilitated her leaving for (according to him) altruistic reasons.

I also like his positive takes on Paul Jabara and Jacques Morali and his not-unexpected takedown of Village bully Victor Willis, the one straight member of the group (other than producer Belolo) who by numerous accounts, here and elsewhere, seems like an asshole of the first order.

There are some surprises along the way--Harris noting that despite seeming and mostly being a gay-friendly record label (pretty much unknown heretofore), there were those in Casablanca management and staff that were indeed homophobic (not Neil Bogart, however). And there were those who didn't initially get that the Village People were a very gay act.

Interesting, too, is to read how often the music was viewed as "product" by executives, promoters, staff, and others (although seemingly not the artists themselves). Disco wasn't taken seriously at first (if ever), but it became a huge money-maker for the label, at least for a time. However, even KISS, a "serious" rock-and-roll act (OK, not really) was viewed in terms of money, product, risk, liability, promotion--the mechanics of the record industry.

Of course this shouldn't be such a surprise; it's just me being quite naive about how business works. It also shows my naivete about pop culture--it is often commerce that we attach deeper meaning to. Is that justified? Or does the meaning exist upon inception and creation of the work and the response to the creation is commercial? I can't really say; it's probably something of both. I'm unlikely to know unless I finally get that master's degree in popular culture from Bowling Green State University I've promised I would for years now.

Then again, in my profession, am I any different than a record company exec or flunky? I surround myself with literature, scholarship, and information, but they are really just product, commodities, costing money, requiring promotion, incurring liabilities and risks? Etc., etc., etc.

I don't mean this to sound negative about my profession or even the record industry. It just is what it is. Nevertheless, in my case, it's not too late to remember to appreciate books and information for the treasures that they truly are.

Which probably means a career change at some point, or retirement, or that master's degree from Bowling Green. I think it's plenty obvious that I'm not close to either of those events at this phase of my life. Alas and alack.

So in the meantime, I'll keep reading And Party Every Day and then hopefully quickly move on to Turn the Beat Around and The Disco Files (for which I am not paying the going rate), finally making it onto my suddenly rejuvenated reading list.

Get up and boogie, y'all.

Into the groove

Some over-the-weekend record-shopping with my friend The Music Lover at Jerry's Records in Squirrel Hill resulted in this inexpensive discofied and soul-fired gems.

1. A special edition Donna Summer 12-inch disco single featuring the full-length version of "Love to Love You Baby" on side A and "Try Me I Know We Can Make It" on side B.

I vaguely remember seeing this years ago when I was but a mere ovum. An odd little item but Casablanca Records was nothing if not excellent at marketing new versions and offshoots of their highly successful catalog. Remember when On the Radio: Donna Summer's Greatest Hits, Parts I and II, were repackaged so you could buy each volume separately rather than together?

Neil Bogart was a music, marketing, and merchandising genius, I tell you what. Legend has it that he was the one who came up with the idea to change "Love to Love You Baby" from a 3:30 single into a full 16-minute plus symphonic, orgasmic opus. And thus a galaxy of stars were born--Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder, Pete Bellotte, Neil Bogart, Munich's Musicland Studios, Casablanca Records, and disco as a cultural phenomenon.

One funny thing about this record--it's a gatefold, so when you open it, you'll find in very creamy, romantic script the lyrics to "Love to Love You Baby." Which begs the question--people used to sing along to this in the '70s? It boggles.

2. A "Spécial Instrumental" edition of French disco band Voyage's first two albums, featuring instrumental versions of various tracks--including hits such as "Souvenirs" and "From East to West"--some of them greatly shortened from their original takes.


I have to admit I don't get the purpose of this record--the originals were fantastic with superlative vocal work chiefly by Sylvia Mason-James. These perfect little gossamer-winged angels of pop, Balearic in style long before Balearic was cool (in the mid-'90s, if I recall correctly). Oh la la. Probably some DJ concept that I don't understand--or the French label Sirocco was picking up ideas as it blew past Casablanca.

3. An early Bohannon album, Keep on Dancin', appearing on the Dakar label in 1972 (according to the record itself) or 1974 (according to Wikipedia). Regardless of the exact year, that album cover so clearly tags the release from the early 1970s: A lovely young woman in the fugliest sort of "Cherokee People" corduroy-chic ensemble you could ever imagine. With a tambourine and one maraca!

I never listened much to Bohannon at the time (covers like this might explain that). I knew about him, saw his discs in the stores, but didn't have enough curiosity to explore further. Even after hearing him name-checked in Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love" ("Bohannon, Bohannon, Bohannon, Bohannon . . ."), I smiled knowingly but ventured squat. Only recently when another good friend requested one of his albums (impossible to find his work on iTunes, please note) for Christmas did I start to check out his music.

Here's one not on the album, 1975's "Bohannon's Beat," which should give you an idea about his barebones, funk-dance style.

4. and/or 5. Alas, I did not buy--a choice between Donna Summer's Four Seasons of Love album (with poster!) and Biddu's Rain Forest, assuming I had both at home. What an unpleasant surprise to realize that I do not, in fact, own these records--although I still think Four Seasons of Love is tucked around here somewhere. Hopefully they will be there when I return after payday.

A hurricane is coming tonight, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow . . .

Because I couldn't be any gayer, that's why.



Whether rightly or wrongly, this is the song that has been stuck in my head ever since the Weather Channel and all the news programs, national and local, began whipping up their 24-hour frenzy of chronicling of every bump, gust, drop, and whistle of Hurricane Irene's advance toward the North Carolina coast, New York, and beyond. A trek that has been days in the making and promises to be many more in the unmaking.

Because I grew up in the region where the storm has made landfall--only 15 minutes from Bogue Inlet Pier in light traffic (i.e., not summer)--I am particularly sensitive to hurricanes and the havoc they can wreak. Carol Douglas, notwithstanding.

However, I have to admit, nothing--except maybe a bowl of chicken pastry (not dumplings, you ignorant Yankee narrator!)--makes me feel more nostalgic for childhood than a hurricane. Despite all the dire warnings and potential for harm and damage, the oncoming storm engenders a certain amount of excitement and energy. As the sky grows more menacing and the winds more dramatic, everyone's pace quickens, your senses are heightened, and life seems more vivid. What happens next? How will this play out? What destruction will nature cause? Will things ever be the same again?

In the sleepy coastal North Carolina of my childhood, I was always grateful for the natural thrill brought on by the approach of a hurricane.

Then again, I never lived through a really bad one. From what I recall, way back when, in the late 1960s and 1970s, we merely had a series of indifferent hurricanes and weak-willed tropical storms, most of them just grazing the coast, dumping a lot of rain, and washing away the beach. Only later in the '80s and '90s, after I had moved away and my parents had relocated inland to the Triangle, did the storms get bad. I remember leaving home one afternoon, heading back on a plane to Texas, lucky enough to escape a particularly severe hurricane that even affected area 125 miles inland. While I was home and dry in San Antonio, my parents endured 100+ mile-per-hour sustained winds for several hours. With all the downed trees, they didn't have electricity again for more than a week. They couldn't even get out of their neighborhood, until neighbors with chainsaws started cutting through the debris to create a path to the main road.

So indulge my nostalgia at your peril. Obviously, I don't know what I'm talking about in terms of health and safety. But snowstorms, tornadoes, and flash-flooding have got nothing over the mood of excitement, danger, and fascination created by a good, old-fashioned hurricane.

Sadly, "hurricane mystique" doesn't get you much of a break on homeowner's insurance.

Sigh. Why did I have to go mention something "adult-oriented" like insurance? I know! Maybe for fun we could start talking about our retirement plans or lawn care treatments! Sometimes it's just better to stick with the hazy childhood memories. Pass the chicken pastry, please.