OK, enough of the hating between the rockers and the disco-freaks! This ain’t the damn 70s, so why can’t we all just get along? In love, peace and some sweat-drenched bell bottoms? Besides, there is a big crossover between these two supposedly “opposing” genres.

About five or six years ago, at the height of both nu-disco and the Italo revival (and while I was releasing music under the name Trippy Disco), I found myself playing more and more vintage disco records with crashing power-chords and wailing axe solos. Because of the “sell out” accusations that these kind of records attracted at the time (from both camps) it’s a side of disco that’s been neglected, even though I love those sounds. So, I decided to put together an hour’s worth of my favourite disco/rock records, and, lo, the ‘Skool Of Rock’ mix was born.

I decided not to feature anything too “New Wave” or post-punk as the disco influence on those sounds was already very obvious, though I did get to slip in a few acts who would technically be classed as “disco” but who dipped into “rock” now and again (Edwin Starr and Giorgio Moroder, for instance.) And accordingly, there’s also the obligatory disco cash-ins by some of your favourite rock acts (Queen, Bowie, ZZ Top.)  Besides that, there are some real gems here, including the Patrick Cowley remix of Tantra’s “Hills Of Katmandu” which is one the most “fuck yeah!” fist-pumping disco anthems of all time.

So, you might love this mix, you might really hate it, but either way here it is: 
 

 
Tracklist:

ELO “Don’t Bring Me Down (Trippy Disco Re-Edit)”
CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL “Fortunate Son”
ROCKETS “On The Road Again”
EDWIN STARR “The Rock”
CHILLY “For Your Love”
KISS “I Was Made For Lovin’ You”
TANTRA “Hills Of Katmandu (Patrick Cowley Megamix / Automan Edit)”
LED ZEPPELIN “Whole Lotta Love (Acapella)”
MATERIAL “Bustin’ Out”
ZZ TOP “Legs (Metal Mix)”
GIORGIO MORODER “Evolution”
MACHO “Not Tonight (Dimitri From Paris Re-Edit)”
SKATT BROS “Walk The Night (Album Version)”
QUEEN “Another One Bites The Dust”
DAVID BOWIE “Stay”
WINGS “Goodnight Tonight (Trippy Disco Re-Edit)”

You can download the ‘Skool Of Rock’ mix here.

BONUS!

David Bowie performing “Stay”, live on Muzikladen, Bremen 1978:
 

 
Lynda Carter’s rock and roll fantasy from her 1980 TV special Encore.

I find this an almost perfect collision of pop culture iconography that could have only existed in the era of spandex, platform shoes, disco balls and hairspray - twixt the end of the punkish 70s and the dawning of the gloriously absurd 80s.
 

 
Ah, the delights of hair metal. Marc, you have really opened up a can of glam worms with that post on vintage Poison! Here in its engorged entirety is still the best document of the mid-80s spandex metal years I have seen, though how most of these bands qualify as “metal” is beyond me, as is the fact that most of these men were considered red-blooded, macho heterosexuals! This whole world has been undergoing a re-appraisal in recent years, possibly as being the last time mainstream rock was this fun, stupid and thoroughly enjoyable. To quote Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler “And then that pussy Cobain came along and ruined everything”.

Decline… Pt 2 has lots of recognisable faces (Kiss without their make-up, a surprisingly lucid Ozzy Osbourne, the Toxic Twins from Aerosmith, wisened elder Lemmy) but the real stars of the film are the musicians and fans plucked straight from the Sunset Strip who we have never heard from again. The “where are they now” pathos, especially at the end, is almost heart-breaking. But don’t let that detract from the fun, especially the sight of Paul Stanley on a bed full of groupies, and Chris Holmes from W.A.S.P. pouring fake vodka into his own face while floating in a swimming pool and shouting at his mother: 
 

 
This news cast was from 30 years ago, but it might just as well be today. We’re living in dark times folks and it ain’t rock and roll that got us here.

In contrast to the southern preachers, who sound like a bunch of drooling idiots, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons are the voices of reason. Ironic that the craziest looking people in the room (in their “evil looking make-up”) are the most sane. Even the newscaster buys into the religious hysteria claiming that Kiss fans “idolize the underworld.”

From a 1982 edition of Entertainment Tonight.

I wonder what’s on Rick Perry’s play list?
 

 
Graphic via Princess Sparkle Pony.

 
Here’s a small piece of TV history as Sir Sean Connery kisses Richard Pasco in a BBC production of Jean Anouilh’s play Colombe from 1960.

This is the first ever male-to-male kiss aired on television. It would take the BBC another twenty-seven years to show two men kissing on-screen again, in an episode of the soap opera EastEnders. For fact-fans, the first man-to-man kiss in a major movie is claimed by Raf Valone in the 1962 feature Vu du Pont.

While this is a TV first, the kissing couple were not lovers but brothers. Connery’s character Julien believes his brother Paul (Pasco) is having an affair with his wife Colombe (Dorothy Tutin), and kisses Pasco to find out what makes him such a good lover. Hm, that old excuse?

This might seem like nothing to us today, but we should appreciate that homosexuality was outlawed in the UK,  a criminal offense punishable by gaol, until 1967, when the law was repealed. Therefore, it was more than hugely controversial to have two grown men kissing on TV (whether brothers or not) for it could have finished the careers of both Connery and Pasco, as they would have been seen as “corrupting viewers’ morals” and open to attack from those hateful right-wing moral evangelists, like Mary Whitehouse, who wielded such frightening and dangerous power back then. So, three cheers for Sir Sean and Mr Pasco.

The play Colombe was believed to have been lost or deleted, but copies of the drama turned up in the U.S. last year, after a reseracher found copies that had been sent to broadcaster National Education Television. The programs have now been returned to the British Film Institute in London, where Colombe will screened today.
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

 
Via the Daily Mail
 

 
“Episode 1. Paul gives me advice about the ladies and makes an offer.”

True story: Sometime in 2004, I was returning to my car in the parking lot of a CVS drugstore in Sherman Oaks, California (the one with “The Party Store,” the Marie Callendar’s restaurant and the really good dry cleaners on Ventura Blvd. & Willis Ave., for all you locals).

Just as Paul Stanley and his son, who was maybe 6-years-old at the time, were leaving “The Party Store,” two transgendered women were walking in.

The kid looked them and when the door automatic doors had closed behind them, he asked his father the rock star, “Dad were those GUYS???”

Stanley, with a deer-in-the-headlights look on his face that I will never forget said softly: “I don’t know, son” and then quickly changed the topic to “Hey, this is going to be a really great party, tomorrow, huh?”
 

 
Via Kembra Pfahler/Howie Pyro

 
Or is it genius?
 
(via HYST)

 
Before records labels like Slash and Dangerhouse came along to consume my youth, there was, of course, Casablanca Records.  With KISS, Meatloaf, Parliament and Donna Summer under its roof, the label straddled a number of seemingly incongruous musical worlds.

But as the LA Weekly’s Gustavo Turner points out in his review of Larry Harris’ new book And Party Every Day: The Inside Story of Casablanca Records, these worlds were all linked, albeit tenuously at times, by Casablanca’s visionary-in-chief (and Harris’ cousin), Neil Bogart.  A genius at both label promotion and self-indulgence, Bogart passed away from cancer in ‘82, but not before becoming one of the defining figures of the ‘70s.  Here’s a snip from Turner’s review:

They struck gold, big-time ?

Did you know that Carlos Santana has his own perfume? (He’s got two actually, one for women and man’s cologne) Or Kiss? Michael Jackson even had six different kinds! Antonio Banderas, too. Hell, even Alan Cumming has his own perfume! WHO wants to smell like Alan Cumming? It doesn’t make any sense! The Incredible Hulk and Spiderman have their own colognes, not to mention Austin Powers (it’s called “Mojo” and smells like someone pissed on candy). Above is an amusing vintage clip from MTV circa 1996 about some hits and misses in the celebrity scent sweepstakes. Seems that no one wants to smell like Prince and MJ’s scents weren’t that popular either…. and boy did they pick a bad name for Anna Nicole Smith’s fragrance, eh?