#underground disco

[fuchinobe]

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(1979, One Way Disco, T-03)

[yellowmanula]

My new DJ Mix - a bit of disco, progressive and Techno :) Video mix by: jamal

[jimhenson-themuppetmaster]

Shelley Duvall & Jim Henson Attending a party celebrating the release of TIME BANDITS at the Underground Disco in New York City. January 4, 1981.

[fuchinobe]

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(1979, Pinnacle Records, PIN 15-12)

[fuchinobe]

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(1972, Opalo, OPL - 21)

[fuchinobe]

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Blue Magic (1974, ATCO Records, SD 7038)

[fuchinobe]

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Excerpt from To Be With You (1976, Salsa Records, LPS-718) Full Version

[fuchinobe]

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(2020, Sunshine Sound, F10001)

Bandcamp 

Context below the cut ⬇️

This is one of Walter Gibbon’s mid 70′s experiments with breaks. This particular drum break is taken from the beginning of Happy Song by Rare Earth, which was a rock song and not disco at all! You will find this break sampled in many other places if you know to look out for it!

Here is the track’s mention by Tim Lawrence in Disco Madness: Walter Gibbons and the Legacy of Turntablism and Remixology”. Journal of Popular Music Studies, 20, 3, 2008, 276-329.

Gibbons went on to DJ at Galaxy 21, an after-hours venue on Twenty-third Street, around late 1974, or possibly early 1975, and it was there that he began to play records such as Rare Earth “Happy Song” (drawn from the 1975 album Back to Earth), Jermaine Jackson “Erucu” (released by Motown on the Mahogany soundtrack in 1975) and the Cooley High soundtrack number “2 Pigs and A Hog” (also released in 1975), all of which contained prominent breaks. “Walter was so innovative,” notes Kenny Carpenter, who witnessed Gibbons forge his craft in Galaxy 21, where he worked the lights (and briefly dated the DJ). “He would buy two copies of a record like ‘Happy Song’ and he would loop the thirty-second conga section.” Hired to play drums alongside Gibbons, much to the irritation of the DJ, François Kevorkian recalls how listeners “would never hear the actual song” when Gibbons worked two copies of “Happy Song”. “You just heard the drums,” he adds. “It seemed like he kept them going forever, although I imagine it was actually about ten minutes.” 

Francois K, who drummed alongside Gibbons at Galaxy 21, created his own edit of the break in 1977 as one of his first works, sold initially as an acetate through Sunshine Sound.

This particular interpretation by Gibbons was never released to the public, but offers an interesting insight into the changes in structure and priorities that disco would undergo in the process of its eventual transformation into house music.