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Hot Tunes?
Y’all went and made me do it. You knew I would go to Charmin and outhouses if pressed. So, here we are: disco.
The Rolling Stones went disco with “Hot Stuff” from their 1976 Black and Blue album. The lyrics are simple to trite, and the music a repetitive dance track. It did not make the Top 40, unlike the ballad “Fool to Cry.”
Credit the Stones with trying to give the people what they wanted, but if you want a dance tune titled “Hot Stuff,” you really want to go with the Queen of Disco. Donna Summer recorded an entirely different song, also entitled “Hot Stuff,” on her 1979 album, Bad Girls. Produced by English producer Pete Bellotte and Italian producer Giorgio Moroder (the master of synthesizer pop), “Hot Stuff” was the lead single and became Donna Summer’s most popular song.
The synthesizer and guitar lines are distinctively Giorgio Moroder, but the attitude is all Summer. She smolders without showing up nearly naked, unlike [fill in the latest pop tart here]. Donna Summers began her collaboration with Moroder and Bellotte after meeting them in Europe, where she was performing stage plays, like Hair, (auf Deutsch)!
The same year that the Rolling Stones’ “Hot Stuff” fizzled, Donna Summer was cooking with “Love to Love You Baby,” one of her early collaborations with Bellotte and Moroder.
The lyrics are not more sophisticated than the Stones’ “Hot Stuff,” but imagine them played back to back in a discotheque. Summer was in her element; the Stones, not so much. It is as if the Stones were waving their fans’ lighters, while Summer ignited a disco inferno. In the immortal words of Jerry Reed, “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot [When You’re Not, You’re Not]:”
Published in Group Writing
We did not have television back then, but I vaguely remember hearing this novelty tune on my little AM transistor radio, or possibly at the local youth recreation center on post. So, I knew what to dig up, and where it was likely moldering.
Let them eat Bach.
Cute! I bet they were influenced by some old Victor Borge videos.
There are about 5 disco songs I have to admit to liking and this is one of them. Nile Rodgers actually has talent.
I was given the album as a child.
My childhood record collection would give you nightmares.
The greatest disco track ever:
Greatest disco track? Oxymoron
Signature Giorgio Moroder synthesizer tracks. See the 13 minute long “Chase” theme from the movie Midnight Express.
Bowie just needed a little help from Giorgio Moroder:
https://youtu.be/Z9GbGO7CKdQie
I think I have heard this. Now, William Shattner is the undisputed master of destructive performance of popular music.
So, it was inevitable:
Meh. Too much like a Kraftwerk track. You can’t dance to that.
Another synth track that can’t really be danced to. i.e. Not really disco.
The only thing keeping Shatner’s critics from lambasting his singing career is is his shabby acting career.
I can top that
The Vulcan for the win on the hot list.
This thread is still going?? I expected it to die a well-deserved death over 20 comments ago. Perhaps Leonard Nimoy has pounded the last nail in the coffin.
You do know that is waving a red cape in front of the Ricochetti, right?
It is African-American Music Appreciation Month. I might roll out another music post, with a somewhat wider and deeper playlist. I was deadly serious about inviting a R> jazz aficionado to write on hot jazz, or maybe hot jazz and the birth of the cool!
Actual comment of a woman forty years ago: “Wow, I had no idea you could dance!”
Actual McVey reply: “I can’t. You’re drunk”.
As a White Sox fan, I approve this comment.
I chafe at referring to this as disco, but if it is in that category it is by FAR the greatest song of that genre.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs069dndIYk
Disco wrought that? Or a bunch of drunk morons, egged on by a dumb owner did? This is proof that cities have mouth-breathing rednecks too. (I don’t think “redneck” is necessarily pejorative, but in this case it is, and is apt.)
That’s way too late for disco, though it is dance music.
It was more Steve Dahl, but ownership got what they wanted (a full stadium).
P.D.Q. Bach was a separate classical music comedy enterprise. It was based in the underlying joke of “undiscovered” classical music. “Professor” Peter Schickele put on works attributed to the forgotten Bach, P.D.Q. — a play on C.P.E. Bach and the enormous progeny, 20 children total, by his first and second wife, of J.S. Bach.
It absolutely does have that rock solid 4/4 beat. You would definitely see people do the hustle to it. For those unaware, the hustle was a pairs dance with definite footwork, like swing, but in a different time signature. Like some other new dances, it even had a song titled “Do the Hustle.”
Pretty peppy, huh? Gets your toes tapping and might put a smile on your face when you are stuck in traffic. Yes, it is just a bit of froth, but enjoy the bubbles for the moment.
As a man of taste, if not wealth, I assume instead of Hot Tunes you meant to refer to Hot Tuna.
I discovered a while back that Peter Shickele also did serious music compositions. The pieces I listened to were pretty good!
Was there a second date?