Joe came into Capitol Studios once when I worked there. He was a very friendly easy going guy, who seemed happy to be alive & making music.

Though when I saw James White and the Blacks in 1980 (at, of all places, a nursing dorm at Columbia U.), his first number was a skronky punk/free jazz version of … “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough.” (Which he played while lighting dollar bills on fire.)

In New York, at least (and clearly in London), a subsegment of Hip White Youth really really wanted to be black back then, which is how you get “This Is Radio Clash” and “Rapture” and “Papa’s Got a Brand New Pigbag” and the music of Liquid Liquid and the Bush Tetras and the Delta 5. And I spent a fair amount of time in the clubs where the latter bands played, and people would invariably start to dance when, after about an hour and a half of bloodless British fake-funk, the DJ would plays (as inevitably happened) “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough.”

(This, admittedly, was pre-Thriller.)

I for one am looking forward to the Billy Mays tributes.

Oxi-Clean forever muthafuckas!

As long as were recommending radio that doesn’t suck.

Itunes/radio/alternative gimme noise is great as is 3wk underground and 3wk classic underground

TBOGG,I’m disapointed to find out that you’re one of those white suburban dopes a’feared of the jungle music.Yet,as SteveM points out,the wierdest thing about American white guys that praise English punks for “saving” rock and roll is that thay are oblivious to the fact that that generation of punks loved club music (yes Disco!)The Clash too often embarassed themselves trying to pick up it’s vibe(do you really want to listen to the Clash do Police and Thieves?).If you read about the early days of punk you will find the key players stomping at gay clubs and expressing nothing but contempt for “Rock”.

I was in Northern Africa for 4 months when The Clash hit the States – graffiti on the JFK stall door upon my return: The Clash – “The Only Band That Matters ! gave me pause and made me feel ‘old’. didn’t help much when the clerk at Tower informed me “London Calling is sold out, M’am“

Chris Cornell doing “Billie Jean”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2MgwAJrfXo

Kind of a trippy…

You wanna hear something weird? I woke up with “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” running through my head this morning.

And I haven’t thought about the Clash in years.

btw, I think Eddie’s solo on “Beat It” kicks fucking ass.

I was a Clash fan from their first album, and got to see them on their London Calling tour. Brilliant show (at the Motor CIty Roller Rink, of all places; punk acts played where they could), although the hearing in my right ear’s never been the same. Small price to pay……

I saw Chris Cornell here in SD last year and he did that cover of Billie Jean. He was halfway thru before we figured out where we’d heard it before…

Small world – the London Calling tour started me on the road to tinnitus – even the NY subway sounded hushed and muted for a week after that concert.

For a country founded on a rebellion against royalty, we sure have a lot of kings. Jacko was (self-declared) “King of Pop”. Budweiser is (again, self-declared) “King of Beers”. All this shows is that, with the exception of Elvis Presley, American kings suck. Or that we should put kingdoms up to a vote, preferably by the informed, educated segment of the population.

Huey P. Long said “every man a king”. Sadly, he may have had something, there…

Yeah, even Lenny DiCaprio got to be “King of the World.” On the other hand, we all know what happened to him on that big boat. Come to think of it, Elvis and Jacko are both dead before their times and the Germans own Budweiser.

Maybe it’s not so good to be king after all…

I was exactly 20 years old in 1975, so I’m your demographic!

By 1976 I was hanging around in San Francisco clubs listening to nascent punk bands. By 1977 I was playing in one.

@BillFM: “The Clash too often embarassed themselves trying to pick up it’s vibe(do you really want to listen to the Clash do Police and Thieves?).If you read about the early days of punk you will find the key players stomping at gay clubs and expressing nothing but contempt for “Rock”.”

The “rock” we had contempt for was corporate “FM” rock the likes of REO Speedwagon, Styx and Kansas. And yes, we stomped around “gay clubs” long before it was “hip”. As far as tracks like “Police and Thieves” go, that was Reggae/Ska, and punks were also on that bandwagon long before it pulled up to the “mainstream”. So please spare us the “a-feared of the jungle music” put-downs. Disco was the WHITEwahsed brainchild of blitheringly Caucasian producers like Geogio Moroder and Neil Bogart, or have we forgotten Lipps Inc, Wild Cherry and KC and the Sunshine band?

Disco was to Black music in the 1970s what Pat Boone was to Black music in the 1960s: sanitized funk/R&B for white cubicle drones to get drunk and shake their booties to.

PS: I’ll actually give Bogart props for putting out George Clinton’s records in the 70s, but it’s not like Funkadelic were nothing until he came along.

Weird – Redemption Song is next in my stack. Also, I highly, highly recommend Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros “Streetcore” record. I listened to it 3 times straight through when I first go it. Their cover of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” is poignant given the whole Strummer’s dead thing.

yeah, ’should i stay or should i go’ and ‘rock the casbah’ were so much more palatable the 1000th time i heard them. and just for the record ‘the magnificent dance’ was a disco staple at the time.

i try not to begrudge those who hate disco. when popular culture latched onto it and tried to make a buck some truly awful music was made, but at the same time disco productions of the late 70’s were truly the high water mark of studio production and if you dig for the underground cuts played at the black gay clubs where disco never died there is some truly life changing music.

challenge your preconceived notions about music, mr. bogg. people change and so do their tastes. i used to hate bananas, man!

So please spare us the “a-feared of the jungle music” put-downs.

No, I don’t think we will.

I was a teen during the punk years and while there were smart punks like you and T who knew that all black music wasn’t disco, there were many, many, many punks who did not know the difference and did not give a shit to learn the difference. I remember listening to funk and soul and being written off as a disco clown by punks who frankly should have known better than to fuck with me. Punk was “us against them” with them being anybody who wasn’t a punk and people who weren’t punks were usually of a darker pigment and listening to the Gap Band, Dazz Band, Hot Chocolate, Parliament and of course, Funkadelic. And all of those bands were written off by the punks as disco. Maybe not by you, JoeMax, but by plenty of others.

Disco was the WHITEwahsed brainchild of blitheringly Caucasian producers like Geogio Moroder and Neil Bogart, or have we forgotten Lipps Inc, Wild Cherry and KC and the Sunshine band?

KC was white, but the band was one white guy and seven decidedly not-white guys.

And I wish I still has the college-paper interview from the ’70s in which David Byrne raved about Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love,” which was Giorgio Moroder’s work.

Disco sucked some of the time. Often it didn’t. And it’s still with us. Like LCD Soundsystem? You’re soaking in it.

I know I probably speak for others when I say that I’m really looking forward to going twenty-four hours without hearing the name “Michael Jackson”.

You sure speak for me!! I am sick, sick, SICK of Michael Jackson! The “tributes” and airwave time make one think Desmond Tutu has died.

Worst of all was that MSNBC gave over TWO NIGHTS of time that could have been Keith & Rachel’s to blather on. Crap, if folks want to get hysterical re Michael Jackson, switch the channel to MTV.

I admit to being a reformed disco-hater. Maybe it’s a function of one’s age, or of the years when I was in my early 20s, but it seemed that a lot of people’s identity was predicated on the kind of music they liked. I still have a cassette of myself hollering “DISCO SUCKS!” in displeasure over what was playing on the radio. Now that they aren’t on the radio constantly, or threatening the very existence of rock n roll, disco songs provide fond memories of youth. However, I still get a chuckle out of Steve Dahl’s “Do You Think I’m Disco?”

JoeMax:As far as tracks like “Police and Thieves” go, that was Reggae/Ska, and punks were also on that bandwagon long before it pulled up to the “mainstream”.

What!?And all this time I thought Junior Murvin was a pseudonym for one of the Bee Gees.

As for the rest of your argument, I think SufferingBruin already gave a great response.I’ll just add that your being far too generous in your defense of narrow minded American punks, whose parochialism culminated in the dead end sludge of Grunge.British punk,on the other hand, kicked off a glorious twenty years of inspired indie rock.Thus we got New Order,punk funk (the guys in Gang of Four just loved “Forget Me Not” by Patrice Rush),and the indie/dance fusion of Madchester to name just a few highlights.All of wich shares a love of dance music.

So some disco sucked.What’s your point?Allot of punk sucked too.Including just about everything The Clash did after their first album.How a band can go from “Janie Jones” and “What’s My Name” to cringe worthy crap like “Lost In The Supermarket” is a mystery.

I will not back down from defending good disco cheese like Moroder and KC.KC not only gave us the fun “Boogie Man”,he produced the glorious “Rock Your Baby”.For that alone he has my loyalty.It’s easy and predictable to say you dig P-Funk(who doesnt?), I know your real when you blasting “There But For The Grace of God” by Machine or “Grooveline” by Heatwave.Theres a reason these riffs and beats are endlessly sampled:their fucking brilliant.

I always liked disco music and still like it. The first records my brother and I had were Ktel records, featuring “Do the Hustle” and “Burn Baby Burn (Disco Inferno)” — now I prefer Thelma Houston “(Baby Don’t Leave Me This Way”) and Vicki Sue Robinson (”Turn the Beat Around”). Of course, I like to dance.