I became a fan of disco in 1985. I was sitting around and heard barbershop discussion of Solid Gold. If unaware, Solid Gold was a syndicated TV show in the early 1980s that often featured Marilyn McCoo as the host and featured gold outfitted disco dancers prancing to the hottest hits of the day. This discussion caused many of the patrons to then bring up Deney Terrio and Dance Fever, the disco dance contest TV show. This then spurred on a discussion of disco, which was described as “some funky white people shit that people did drugs to dance to.” At eight years old, all I heard was “funky shit dance drugs.” I knew funky was good, I knew shit was a bad word, I loved dancing, and drugs were bad. Very very very bad. So, when I got home, I went to my mother’s record collection and looked for “disco.” I found the following: The Bee Gees’ Tragedy, Van McCoy’s Disco Baby and Walt Disney presents Mickey Mouse Disco. Of course I’d find more later, but I had these three albums, and started listening, and got hooked. I then went to my grandmother’s and while being babysat on a summer afternoon, and after going through my elementary school library and reading every book on the topic, saw the logo of Casablanca Records on a Donna Summer album and thought it was awesome. The song I remembered the most was Donna Summer’s “Last Dance,” and after a listen, I was hooked. I loved disco, and decided I loved everything about it. As well, the most important label then in disco to me, Casablanca Records.
KISS – “I Was Made For Loving You” – Rock, pop, disco, hooks and ridiculousness. Ahh, Casablanca Records.
Fast forward 23 years and it’s last year. I’m 31 and write a blog about music. I’m also knee deep in studying the punk and disco movements of the 1970s with a far more critical eye than when I was a slavish listener and devotee between the ages of 8 and 21. The more I read and the more I understood, my childhood love of “that cool label with the camel logo” became a great issue of scorn. Payola. Cocaine. Hookers. Typical and should’ve been expected, but imagine my dismay when I fully realized just how much a label I loved was all about the same excess that drove the rest of the era. In many ways in exposing disco to the same mainstream I discovered it in, Casablanca assisted into its demise. Disco was likely the greatest byproduct of an era of excess, and I was a gigantic proponent of one of the most excessive components.
For those unaware, there was very little about Casablanca that appears to be about the development and preservation of music. Label chief Neil Bogart was certainly a music guy, but in many ways far more of a pop impresario. The first band signed to the label was KISS, with Donna Summer, Parliament-Funkadelic and the Village People key signees as well. Casablanca was an amazing music story in that at every explosive point of pop music in the 1970s, Casablanca was at the forefront with a mainstream palatable and completely ridiculous presentation. When arena rock, funk and disco ruled the roost, Casablanca always brought the circus to town. And in the case of disco, it always sounded tremendous. In signing Donna Summer, they acquired the services of her producer, the legendary Giorgio Moroder, whose work on the 17 minute tribute to orgasmic bliss “Love to Love You Baby” and techno/electro predecessor “I Feel Love” were instantaneous classics. Later in their story, their disco dominance became so prevalent on mainstream charts that Tom Moulton, who invented the 12″ dance remix on Gloria Gaynor’s “Never Can Say Goodbye in 1974 joined the label as a remixer and producer, taking things to a bizarre new height.
Casablanca Records dumbed down disco for the masses. They even entered into the movie realm, with Thank God It’s Friday in 1978, which only a year after Saturday Night Fever’s awesome and highly realistic portrayal of disco culture was a hack and slash job of trite cliches of disco culture aimed directly at mainstream society’s worst fears. Disco divas were drug abusers, being a “square” and entering a disco involved having to meet a certain cultural ideal and potentially losing everything about yourself worth having, while at the same time, discos are places where “you can just be yourself.” Disco DJs were smooth talking ladies men, and with some spunk and spirit, anybody, even Donna Summer without makeup, could be a star. As well, their film Can’t Stop the Music parodized a parody, as a fictitious tale was told of the rise and development of the Village People, involving Broadway dance numbers, stodgy white men in suits, heaping handfuls of camp, and a young Steve Guttenberg. Thankfully, before things really got any more out of hand, Neil Bogart’s pop dreams jumped the shark and he sold the label to Polygram Records.
Disco is a serious music shrouded in camp. In many ways, Casablanca made disco a campy music we had to take seriously. Therein lies the problem. Many labels didn’t take disco seriously at all. However, the individuals tasked with making disco at these labels did, and the presumption of the label from the top down was not that disco was pop, but that disco, was well, disco. The records that Casablanca had as #1s are amazing pop songs. “YMCA” in any format is a hit. The songwriting and hook are enormous. Santa Esmeralda’s “Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” was already a 1965 hit for Eric Burdon and the Animals, and was a melody already familiar to pop listeners. Donna Summer’s “MacArthur Park” could likely be one of the worst written songs of all time like Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” but there’s something about Summer’s delivery that makes you forget that.
Time and learning changes everything. Casablanca Records will always be a major part of my musical development. There was a period of my life where that logo and those sounds held the answers to the mysteries of the world. As with everything, time and exposure alter how one sees the universe.
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