Recently, seven of the Top Ten singles in America were disco-related. Having made it as the Next Big Thing, disco now faces the challenge of sustaining its popularity against the relentless monotony of its four-beat.
Not since the late Fifties, when the music business jumped on the rock & roll bandwagon, has so much junk been shoved onto the marketplace so hastily. With the obvious exceptions of Blondie's "Heart of Glass" and Rod Stewart's "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?," most of the recent rock-disco crossovers have aimed low rather than high (the Beach Boys' "Here Comes the Night" and Wings' "Goodnight Tonight" being the most egregious panderings). How bright can disco's future be when the
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year's finest such crossover, Desmond Child and Rouge's "Our Love Is Insane," failed to score because it was rhythmically too subtle— and maybe just too good?
If disco is to continue dominating the singles market, the formula will have to be stretched and improved, or the bottom will soon fall out. Still, there's plenty to be said for disco. It's always healthy to shake up the status quo, especially since, by catching the music business off-balance, this populist upsurge has temporarily forced open the doors of the establishment. Now, having gone corporate, can disco survive its success? Or will it be frozen to death in the name of marketing "science"?
Eurodisco remains disco's avant-garde and deserves credit for having pioneered longer, more experimental pop-album forms that were unimaginable even five years ago. Because it lords the franc and the mark over the dollar and exalts in sound effects as it promotes skin-flick and travel-poster wet dreams. Eurodisco epitomizes subversive pop decadence to many Americans. That's probably one reason why its most ambitious electronic/futuristic manifestations have gone out of style. Though fascinating, they're just too threatening.
The Eurodisco currently in style is a comfortable compromise between science fiction and squeally party music, with emphasis on the latter. Fly Away, the second LP by the French studio outfit. Voyage, is the most ingratiating recent example. A seamlessly stitched collection of luxury-liner tourist fantasies, it leads off with the roar of a synthesizer and a Folies-Bergère come-hither chorus ("Souvenirs"). Fly Away poignantly evokes compulsive escape with a mere hint of menace.
In the strongest cuts from Gino Soccio's debut, the Canadian composer/producer/instrumentalist echoes Eurodisco with short, zingy synthesizer licks and abstract chant. Soccio forgoes Eurodisco's soft-focus glamour for a Spartan, gymnastic sound that relates sci-fi to high-tech fashion. Outline is tugged, marathonlike disco music, as calculated as it is trendy.
Both garish and accessible, "The Chase," a lengthened excerpt from Giorgio Moroder's Oscar-winning Midnight Express soundtrack, is a brilliant example of pure Eurodisco at its spaciest and
