Swamp Dogg - Swamp Dogg

I’ve had this album filed under ‘shite’ in my mind for years – my memory of it is that it was full of terrible disco. (Now, I love a bit of disco as much as the next man - more probably – but terrible disco is indeed terrible), so it probably hasn’t been put on a turntable for twenty years. Until today, when I thought I’d give it another whirl.

This came out in 1982, by which time Black American dance music had moved on from the classic disco sound towards what would become known as post-disco or boogie. Not for Swamp Dogg though. Oh no. This album is largely made up of attempts at the classic disco sound, none of which really hit the mark, despite employing every disco cliché in the big glittery book. Here’s the kicker, though – even listening to it with retro ears, it sounds sub-par, both from a disco perspective and from a Swamp Dogg one.

The exception is the first track, the only one which follows more usual Swamp Dogg country-soul lines.

It's back on to the shelf for this one.

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Edwin Starr - Contact/Don't Waste Your Time 12"

Edwin Starr was American by birth and Polesworth by choice. I used to go to college with one of his backing singers.

I’d bought the 12” of this in 1978, then sold it to a girl at school. I later picked up this copy in a second hand shop down the south coast somewhere. It has ‘Toffs’ written in texta on the label.

The only Toffs disco I can find online is in Sligo, Ireland, but this is an Aussie pressing, so it’s unlikely to be from there. I can’t help thinking there would have been loads of discos with that name when this record came out. Fucking terrible name.

Contact is a cracking slab of disco: Starr’s roaring vocals, sweeping strings, bongos, hi-hats, open percussion breaks – wicked.

Lyrically, it tells the story of our protagonist seeing someone he fancies across the other side of the disco, where she is sitting quietly by herself. She meets his glance and Edwin locks eyes with her. He seems to have read an awful lot into her catching his glance, if you ask me, but that was the seventies, I suppose. He then describes his state of excitement as he crosses the dancefloor to bother this woman. Rather disturbingly, he says ‘I never took my eyes away from yours, not even for a moment’, which could be perceived as a bit odd, menacing perhaps, not to mention increasing the risk of bumping into people.

The B-side, Don’t Waste Your Time, is a dreary ballad, and is, rather ironically, a waste of time.

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Sylvester - You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)

I remember being in the teens' disco at Pontin's in Camber Sands in the summer of 1977. Disco was huge. We were dancing to this and my mate, Ricky, turns to me with a knowing look and says, "You know that Sylvester's a [insert epithet for gay man], don't ya."

In hindsight, this is interesting for a couple of reasons: firstly, that the signifiers of queerness were lost on people. Really? That man wearing make-up and a dress and singing in a falsetto vocal is not heterosexual? Mind blown. Even years later, I remember older relatives refusing to countenance that Danny LaRue might be gay.

Secondly, at the time, disco was all the rage, due in large part to the film Saturday Night Fever. Whilst I'm quite the fan of the film, it completely elbows out gay culture from the art form, and replaces it with a preening-peacock form of toxic masculinity.

Why am I going on about this? I don't know really, other than I heard I Feel Love in the supermarket this morning and it got me thinking how much times have changed. My kids' generation are really clued-in about sexuality and homophobia is quite unusual and a bit...ick. I think this is one of the major cultural shifts in my lifetime.

I played this (twice) whilst I was putting away the shopping. I was surprised how acoustic and roomy the drum sound is. What a fucking tune though.

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