Do You Remember Your First Disco Purchase?

[mrbmarco]

I remember going to Tower Records here in Hollywood buying Gloria Gaynor's first LP. I had the Columbia 45 of Honeybee and read all the hype about her new LP on MGM. I think the 45 of Never Can Say Goodbye was also released. Anyway,I was spinning at The DOK West in Orange County that year, and had no time to go home and listen to the LP. When I got to the club it was the first thing I played. The longer versions of Honeybee and Never Can Say Goodbye brought chills down my back--I played the entire side again during "prime time" and the floor was packed until the end of Reach Out. Cheers coming from the dancers. What a great memory!!

[Funky Dude]

I began record collecting at the fall of 1997 and the first LP I got was Sylvers 1976 album "Something Special" and a couple of rock 45's from the Salvation Army. "Something Special" was an excellent LP with a mixture of disco, funk and soul and some of my favourite grooves are:

Mista Guitar Man (very funky)

Hotline

Shak'um Up

Disco Showdown

High School Dance



My next disco record was Silver Convention's 1976 LP "Get Up & Boogie" and my number one favourite of that album is "San Francisco Hustle".



From there on I raided markets, record stores and op shops for disco/funk records and also I grabbed some great rock LPs as well for my collection.



Before record collecting I taped disco from mainstream retro radio, but eversince I caught onto collecting disco/funk records and CDs I found that a lot of that disco sounds even better than a lot of the mainstream disco that our local radio stations belt the shit out of.



Unfortunately a lot of the records I get are either scratched, warped, encrusted with crap or missing their album covers because obviously I buy them from op shops and markets for about 50 cents or 1 dollar, but sometimes I get records in almost mint condition for 50 cents. Some to mention are:

Sylvers - Showcase 1975 LP

Brass Construction - Brass Construction 1975

Brass Construction - III 1977



Today I have between 30 and 50 12" singles, over 200 LPs and over 100 45's.



And I like most people use Napster and Audio Galaxy as a tool to get the even rarer disco that I cannot get from a local record store.



Markydefad mentioned "Hijack" by Herbie Mann, I recently downloaded that song from Audio Galaxy, I certainly love that song especially the bit where she goes "I love, I love ya hijack I love, I love ya hijack I love" and you hear the metal drums and the percussion and then the bass guitar kicks in. I also downloaded Barrabas's version and I reckon they both versions sound equally as good.

[Move2This]

I don't recall the exact order in which they were bought, but these are some of my first disco tracks - all on 45rpm!



Save Me: Silver Convention

How High the Moon: Gloria Gaynor

Weak Spot: Evelyn Thomas

Your Magic Put a Spell on Me: L J Johnson

I Ain't Lyin': George MacRae

Doomsday: Evelyn Thomas

What a Difference a Day Made: Esther Phillips



I remember feeling very excited around the time Never Can Say Goodbye (Gloria Gaynor) and Rock Me Baby (George MacRae) came out because it seemed there was this new sound that I could somehow relate to. Disco burst onto a music scene in the UK dominated by glam rock (e.g. Glitter Band, The Sweet etc), heavy rock (e.g. Nazareth, King Crimson) and pop (e.g. New Seekers). None of these genres really seemed to be my thing, so you can imagine my relief at the new sound of disco.



I was 15/16 at the time - lived in a pretty remote outer suburb, and never went to discos, but I knew this was my music!



Funnily enough, I hardly ever listen to these tracks now, and find them a bit dull, but they certainly started a lifelong interest.

[kelvy]

Well, as a kid, i remember my parents buying me the 45 rpm single for "haven't stopped dancing yet" by Gonzalez. But it was the flip slide with the slower "just let it lay" that was my favorite. They also bought me (as much as i hate to admit) YMCA ..ugh! Even though i liked the song at that time.



Another one i remember was "shake your groove thing" -- Peaches & Herb. i did not purchase a record outright until i was 14 (and this was through scrounging my brother's spare change) for a 12" version of Lime's "your love" & "come and get your love".

[HustleBaby]

Since most of my mother's albums were scratched, I like Funky Dude started taping

from radio stations like KISS.FM & WKTU. I

realized after awhile that I was better off

buying CDS to build my disco collection. This started in 1991 my first disco cds were:

1.Donna Summer - Love Trilogy

2.Chic - Greatest Hits

3.K.C & The Sunshine Band Greatest Hits

4.Kraftwerk - Trans Europe Express

5.The O'Jays - Greatest Hits

6.Dr.Buzzard Savannah Band

7.Disco Tex & The Sex-O-Lettes



DELIGHTFUL!

[jim]

My first vynal 12" purchase was Let's ALL chant/Love Express by Micheal Zager



I found it weird that an album sized record would go at 45 RPM,and had preffered 33 for my 12" purchaSES (THOUGH I WOULDN'T LET THE 45 RPM SPEED STOP ME. :>)

[Bernie]

Not sure which was the first Disco record I actually purchased, but I do recall the first that came into my possession. The 12" of El Coco's "Let's Get It Together" which I found on a bus in 1976! Still have that record.

[markydefad]

Thanks for all the input guys & gals. Reading through the posts, I wondered what my first 12" purchases were. From a look at my collection, I've narrowed it down to these:



HERE COMES THAT SOUND AGAIN - Love De-Luxe

SAVAGE LOVER - The Ring

HEART OF GLASS - Blondie

HERE COMES THE NIGHT - The Beach Boys



I've subsequently collected a lot more earlier 12" singles (including a sealed copy of "Ten Percent" by Double Exposure, a first of some kind of 12"--the stories vary on what actually was the first commercial 12").

[HustleBaby]

I mentioned that I wasn't old enough to buy

albums but I do remember going to the record

stores with my mother and aunts. Now that I

recall, there were no Sam Goody's,Wiz or

other audio chain stores in 1976. I remember going to small-medium size record stores in the neighborhood. This particular store that used to be up the block from us had albums & 45's on left side of the store and tamborines,congos,bass guitars and other instruments on the right.



Delightful.

[Graham_Start]

(WARNING: This is long...)



First disco record? Well it depends...



The first record I ever bought was a 45 of... get this... Rod Stewart's "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?". I was 7 or 8 at the time. I loved the song. However some people might disqualify that as not being "real disco" (I probably would!)



Given that, it was probably about 5 or 6 years ago that I purchased the CD single of "In The Bush" by Musique. Over the next few years, I bought the odd mainstream disco compilation, and a Donna Summer compilation to get the full version of "MacArthur Park". I'd liked them and all, but the real breakthrough was yet to come.... anyway, about 3 years ago I was digging through a chaotic used record store near my sister's house. They had a whole bunch of Village People albums for cheap, so I figured I'd get them for the camp value, and as a part of homo history. I'd seen or heard something on each album, except for the self-titled one... of which I had seen lots of copies floating around in my travels. It was only a couple of bucks, so I thought what the hell, and grabbed it.



When I finally got around to listening to it a few days later, I was totally blown away. A far cry from the overplayed top 40 sound that I'd expected, "San Francisco (You've Got Me)" was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. It was so intense, so charged up, yet warm and carefree and happy, and so much... fun! It was as if I could taste the energy of the moment that it was created. The music transported me to another place (I know this sounds cheesy, but I can't think of any other way to express it). I taped it and listened to it on my way to work, unable to keep the smile off my face as it played...



... to think that for almost all of my life, I was told that this was the worst music ever, that it was deservedly forgotten, that it was a bizarre product of a decade 'that taste forgot', and other countless bullshit lies...



...from then on, I was hooked. I went back to the record store and grabbed everything disco I could find (which is the bulk of my present collection). One thing lead to another... a pile of 8-tracks that I obtained had some good titles, like Paris Connection, THP Orchestra's Two Hot For Love, and El Coco's Brazil (which was really odd because going by the cover and the name, you'd be expecting some sort of cheesy latin music)... from there on, people's recommendations here pointed me towards other gems... and it's still going on, although I've since cleaned out the store where I started, and I'm now resorting to expensive internet mail-order and CDR-swapping. Furthermore, this got me into my massive time-sucker of a hobby, that being audio restoration. I get a great satisfaction from taking some long out-of-print masterpiece and cleaning out all of the clicks and noise, polishing up the artwork, and creating a proper-looking CD of it. It's like preserving a piece of history that so many people have tried to tell me never existed.



The one downside of all this is the effect it had on my own music. I've been composing my own electronic music for several years, and I was getting quite proud of my homemade tracks, and I felt that some of my stuff was better than most of what's out there. Once I fully discovered the splendour, the grandness, the beauty of disco, I realized that practically everything out today is complete and utter childish shit -- like comparing the Sistine Chapel to some tagger's graffiti. And I doubt I'll ever be able to come up with anything that's even close to what I love.

[paul]

Hey Graham. What you had to say was simply beautiful man!

[InnerLife]

Who can not remember?

It was 'Love Unlimited Orchestra - High Steppin' Hip Dressin' Fella'. Though it was released in 1979 i think i got my hands on it later in 1982. it wasn't easy to get these kinda stuff in Germany at that time.

A nice 12 incher with one track pressed on both sides...

[markydefad]

Graham Start

Posted: 2001-10-22 20:43



They had a whole bunch of Village People albums for cheap, so I figured I'd get them for the camp value, and as a part of homo history. I'd seen or heard something on each album, except for the self-titled one... of which I had seen lots of copies floating around in my travels. It was only a couple of bucks, so I thought what the hell, and grabbed it.



When I finally got around to listening to it a few days later, I was totally blown away. A far cry from the overplayed top 40 sound that I'd expected, "San Francisco (You've Got Me)" was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. It was so intense, so charged up, yet warm and carefree and happy, and so much... fun! It was as if I could taste the energy of the moment that it was created. The music transported me to another place (I know this sounds cheesy, but I can't think of any other way to express it). I taped it and listened to it on my way to work, unable to keep the smile off my face as it played...

_____________________________________________





Graham, you shoulda been born 15-20 years earlier; you definitely woulda LOVED living in San Francisco as a 20-something gay man

in the seventies. The Village People song was the new city anthem, replacing Jeanette MacDonald's old "San Francisco" & Tony Bennett's "I Left My Heart in S.F.", at least in the gay communites: Folsom, Polk & Castro.



There was a bar South of Market in the Folsom area called the Black & Blue, whose closing "last call" ritual consisted of playing Jeanette's old MGM "San Francisco, open your Golden Gates" segued into the Village People's intensely fun song. This song truly did capture the sexually electric charge of the moment. I'm glad that it still retained that power when you listened to it for the first time, all those years later.



That first Village People LP was the only one of their LP's I ever bought (I do have their Greatest Hits on CD). It was by far the best thing they ever did, and I was most delighted to read in an earlier post that none other than our own favorite DJ Nicky (NickNack) played tambourine on that first LP.

[Leanmean]

Wow, Graham, how elequent you are! "San Francisco" has always been my favorite VP song. That's amazing that you got into this music so late and love it (like our dear Funky Dude) and have been able to look objectively at your own music production in light of the quality of disco. Just remarkable!



Here's a thought out of the blue:

We should all make a plan to meet in Key West next summer! Let's dance!



Back to the topic...

My first disco purchase came quite late in the season. I think it was Anita Ward's 12 inch of "Don't Drop My Love." Before that, I didn't have a record player. I still have that album!

[delboy]

I remember back in 1979 I was buying records by Racey and Dollar but all my mates were getting into disco, so not wanting to be left out I got into the Disco music scene and my first purchase was the 12" of Can You Feel the Force by The Real Thing on Yellow Vinyl.



Just prior to that,I bought Hit me with your rhythm stick by Ian Dury and The Blockheads on 12" but I gave it away because it had a song with a swear word in it on the B side and I thought I might get a telling of from my mum!