Weepy nostalgia blues, opening line: "Woke up this morning, recalling my disco days"...
Which I did because it's Saturday and I remembered that once upon a time Saturdays were exciting - yes - back when I was fresh into my teens and already somehow terribly....tortured? - by something, a lack of fulfilment already! As if I could see into a near future of educational failure and subsequent factory work....oh no...
"The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return."
- Milan Kundera, Ignorance
Why is there a picture of Andy Mackay up there? Because I thought about a pair of shoes I owned which were similar to his but not as glittery and Glam, two tones of brown instead, but exactly the same shape and sole...so imagine my joy when I saw him wearing those on the inner sleeve to Roxy Music's For Your Pleasure (1973)
"Woman, take me in your arms, rock me baby" - George McCrae
But I didn't have my eye on any women, just girls, of course. The DJ would include slow numbers, providing us boys with an opportunity to approach a girl and ask for a dance - a big moment! Yes, would have already chosen a lucky (ha-ha!) recipient of my request hours ago, possibly days ago, although I don't recall any actually question involved, just an approach was enough - she knew all right! It was hit or miss, you know. Some I 'won', some I 'lost' (it was their loss, depriving themselves of the thrilling experience that was a snog from me!).
"Oh, Saturday night's alright for fighting / Get a little action in"
- Saturday Night's Alright, Elton John
What finer cocktail was there for a 70s teenager than one made of clothes, music, alcohol, girls and fighting, eh? Teachers couldn't understand the lure of that world compared to their textbooks! Learning be damned!
It was only a village disco, but some 'action' was guaranteed. It was either Greasers against Skinheads (or to be more sartorially accurate, by the early-70s, Suedeheads) or our village against another...or just two lads who hated each other, but such conflict was never 'internal', i.e. lads from the same village. I was never involved, not being physically equipped to punch my way out of a crisp packet. It was a spectator sport! The poor doorman had no chance (or intention) of breaking up a fight. Besides, he wasn't a bouncer in the modern sense, just a bloke who took the money.
One night the girls had a go - that was fun. Despite sporting steel combs in the top pocket of the tonic jackets which matched their skirts, I never saw one used in a fight. No glasses or knives, just old-fashioned fists. No-one was ever seriously hurt, which is why the boys kept doing it.
"Disco deserved a better name, a beautiful name because it was a beautiful art form. It made the consumer beautiful. The consumer was the star."
- Barry White
In a sense, that's true, even though Barry probably had Studio 54 and other glamourous hangouts in mind rather than a village hall in rural Buckinghamshire. Still, clothes meant so much, in another way. Of course I thought the girls looked beautiful! We, meanwhile, looked smart. This was the pre-Disco Fever era but its precursor, musically, minus the glitz and glam of the late-70s. We weren't beautiful people, but spotty youths doing our best with what we could get, from tonic trousers to button-down shirts and brogues before things got baggy (trousers) twinned with tight-fitting star jumpers and big, rounded collars.
For some reason Superstition by Stevie Wonder (1972) springs to mind as a big tune, although there were so many. It has that slow funkiness to it....a kind of nasty keyboard funk which somehow mirrors the dark undertones to a disco night back then, back there, when something always could and probably would kick off. A couple of years later, Rock Your Baby by George McCrae provided a contrast with its light mood thanks largely to the Roland rhythm machine percussion. That was huge too.
Two years after that, Young Hearts Run Free by Candi Staton and what sounds now like being very close to the birth of the Disco sound as it's known today (light rhythm, lush arrangements) but what a record, what a song! Oh, reader, I could talk long and tearfully about why that song means so much to me, but for reasons of privacy I shan't. Suffice to say that 1976 was a turning point. I started Work, I could relate to the lyrics even though they were aimed at the opposite sex. I felt a kind of freedom already slipping away, just like the girl I longed to date and eventually did despite the tragic circumstances. For a few years before that though, yes, it felt as if we ran free.
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