I remember a friend of mine had some LPs that were Star Wars themed disco albums, and it brought back a very weird memory from back in the 70s (yes, I'm old!) of listening to a Star Wars disco mashup on the radio. What was all that about? I also remember something like that for Close Encounters, too.
You remember correctly, and this went on for a long while. In 1983, disk jockeys around the country played a record that involved an Ewok rapping the plot of Return of the Jedi in Ewokese. This made it to #60 in the Billboard Top 100.
This is hard to explain to people who weren’t there….but in the wake of Star Wars in the late 70s and early 80s, scifi was so beloved and mainstream that the orchestral music for nerdy scifi and fantasy movies about outer space were remixed and sampled into Giorgio Moroder-esque Italo-Disco dance numbers. And the most astonishing thing is, instead of being consigned to convention acts the way “horse famous” Brony dubstep acts are, this received national airplay on the radio, reached the pop music charts, and were played in discotheques. And incredibly, this continued for years and expanded from Star Wars into Star Trek, Wizard of Oz, Black Hole, Close Encounters….
All of this was the work of one specific person: Meco (or Dominico Monardo). The term “ahead of their time” is thrown around a lot, but Meco really was: a combination producer-songwriter and Italo-Disco pioneer in the style of Giorgio Moroder, he did several things that are now absolutely standard: he used remixes and sampling before hiphop made that standard for musicians, he wrote “fandom music” on a Moog synthesizer decades before Bronies turned their conventions into cringey dubstep concerts with songs like “Everypony Dance Now.”
It's stunning to me that Meco has not been rediscovered, considering every single trend in the culture essentially went his way.
The most startling thing about Meco’s Star Wars disco album, the one that got the ball rolling on this trend, is this: I always assumed it was some kind of cash in created by a record label mandate, a label executive’s completely cynical choice to hop on a hot new trend. That isn’t a crazy thing to think at all, since Star Wars is and always has been the most merchandized and sold out scifi property ever. But it wasn’t! You see, it was all the product of a single man’s specific vision: Meco had to convince his record label to make the record because they were skeptical.
When Meco went to see Star Wars in 1977 on Opening Day (what an experience that must have been) with his friend and fellow Italian chest hair/gold medallion enthusiast Tony Bongiovi, he was already an experienced producer-songwriter who had worked with Gloria Gaynor, Diana Ross, and formed DCA, the Disco Corporation of America. If you've ever listened to Diana Ross's "I'm Coming Out," Meco actually played the trombone solo in that song. Seeing the Star Wars movie for the first time, though Meco thought the movie was nothing short of a religious experience. Originally, he wanted to do Star Wars music as a b-side on a Gloria Gaynor album, but expanded the idea into an entire album.
"When I think about what I did, nobody came to me, nobody said 'Meco, why don't you do this.' Nobody says 'Here's some money go make a record of this movie.' It was just my own... It was magical, it was just out of this world when all that happened."
Not only did this album hit platinum, not only did it actually outsell the Star Wars soundtrack, his remix of the Star Wars theme also went to #1 in the charts. It’s actually the best selling instrumental single of all time. A record, that, incidentally, it holds to this day.
Dick Clark, host of American Bandstand, had this to say about Meco:
"In 1977, Meco Monardo accomplished something no one else has ever done to the best of my knowledge. He was the first one in history to out-sell the soundtrack of a motion picture with his own distinctive version of a film's music. The music was totally danceable, and broke new ground. It's no wonder the STAR WARS THEME went to # 1. I loved his treatment of music from THE WIZARD OF OZ. Again, Meco created something innovative. The fun and the excitement gave a whole new feel to that totally familiar and well-loved music."
Like a lot of studio producers, Meco had an insane work ethic and hit when the iron was hot: he did an album about Close Encounters that exact same year, but also did a Star Wars Christmas Album, one of the strangest pieces of Star Wars kitsch around.
One of the most interesting things about the Star Wars Christmas album is that one of the songs, “R2D2’s Wish You a Merry Christmas” is the first professional vocals by John Bon Jovi, who was Meco’s friend Tony Bongiovi’s seventeen year old younger cousin (he was initially known as John Bongiovi). It's incredible to hear a squeaky voiced teen Bon Jovi on a kitsch album about a robot Christmas.
1978-1979 was really his best year. Meco made an Italo-Disco remix album entirely devoted to Superman, and at this point, Meco had the pull to get access to John Williams's sheet music for the score before the music even came out. In my personal opinion it's the best of them because he has to recreate it entirely with his own instruments, leading to a very unique sound.
He also did an album based on the Wizard of Oz:
And a combination album of Star Trek/Black Hole. It's probably the earliest remixing date of Goldsmith pieces of music: the Motion Picture Theme (which is now associated with the Next Generation - hearing it done in Italodisco is uncanny) and the Klingon Theme:
Incidentally, I think the design here of the Meco Enterprise, which had to be modified for legal reasons, would make a wonderful canon starship if anyone wants to be inspired by it. It reminds me of the same concept that would be used in the very next film for the Reliant-class of ships.
Meco eventually retired from music in 1985, but unfortunately he is no longer with us, as he passed into the next dimension in 2023. I think he showed us that creativity is often about transformation, and was inspired to make his art by a legitimate awe of space, the cosmos, and human imagination that the scifi movies of the 1970s and 80s provoke.
