1970s – Anecdotes and Antidotes in Burgundy

To dance or not to dance? This was an active decision many young men were forced to take at some point between the age of 14 and 18. For most boys of my generation dancing just got in the way of their newly acquired drinking habit. The nightlife of most of England was centered around pubs and enduring the struggles to get taken seriously and allowed to buy beer while the girls never seemed to have any problems. It was partially a question of how you dressed, partially your own development physically – were you tall, did you have facial hair other than ‘bum fluff’? Were you wearing your uncle’s tweed 1950’s great coat over your Levi denim jacket? Smoking helped you look older as long as you didn’t cough or choose Consulate or other menthol brands. Pubs basically split into those who looked the other way and those who took the legal drinking age seriously and in Frome that split was over 60% biased to the former so it was not that difficult.

We had one ‘club’ in town, the Hexagon Suite which was built into the back of the Grand cinema and it was open until 1.00 am on Friday and Saturday so of course you went at least one night a weekend if you were working. Girls danced around their handbags and the boys would stand around the edge of the dance floor letching and talking. The bravehearted would swoop in for a quick dance when the music slowed down, with various pleasantries shouted into each other’s ears. We would occasionally get touring minor acts, usually on their way down and never anything but pop and the odd Radio 1 Roadshow. The only act I remember that actually progressed their careers upwards after playing the Hexagon was The Real Thing who are still touring their one big hit, “You To Me Are Everything” to this day.

It was always going to be difficult dancing in front of people you went to school with or played rugby with so my desire to impress girls with my moves was latent until the anonymity and newness of university life changed all that. There were kindred spirits who not only loved dance music but actually dancing, not just girls but other equally bumbling young men. 1975-1978 was the era when disco, universally ridiculed, became funk, if not loved at least tolerated. The golden years of funk brought not only the dance grooves that later drove much of early hip-hop. It brought with it an exuberance and style that was uniquely African American. Regardless of the terrible demand to Play That Funky Music White Boy the music was solely the domain of musicians from Detroit, New York and once Motown moved its headquarters there, to LA. Funk had a fashion that was equally as flamboyant as the music, the economy was booming, and the flares became bigger, the shoes became platformed and the lapels dived groundward. For some reason the waistband went higher and had 3 belts, the local bouncers in Bradford were un-impressed though. I managed to annoy their sense of what men should or should not wear and my funk inspired choices were an affront. I was refused entry for wearing a red pair of what were an exaggerated version of Chuck Taylors, as the bouncer informed me “You’re here to dance, son, not fuckin run”.

The fact I was a gobby southerner with an earring was probably as offensive as my sartorial choices, although I do remember wearing my mother’s 1950’s box shouldered fur coat one winter over bellbottom jeans and multi hewed jumper, to visible derision by the locals. However, Bradford had a tradition of dance through Northern Soul so if we could get into the clubs they were cool with us dancing. The local girls were luckily more forgiving of my fashion disasters.

This was an era of big dance hits that have since become the fodder of bad movies and wedding playlists: Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstition’, Wild Cherry’s ‘Play That Funky Music’, Isley Brother’s ‘Summer Breeze’, Donna Summer’s ‘Love to Love You’, The Commodores ‘Brick House’. We also used to do those bizarre dances that involved sitting on the floor in lines, Gap Band’s ‘Oops Upside Your Head’ demanded that for some reason. Being a music nut of course meant that my choices were more esoteric and the cool guy feeling soared when you asked a DJ for something like Lenny Williams’ ‘Choosing You’ and they gave you a big thumbs up and with a beaming smile produced a 12” from their bag. I had been introduced to Lenny Williams when he was lead singer with Tower of Power, whose ne plus ultra horn section was backing Little Feat, Santana, Journey, Aerosmith and Rufus among many others, basically if there was a brass section on a song between 1972 and 1990 it was probably the Tower of Power horns.

There was obviously a lot of white kids listening to this music as became evident over the next 15 years when white synth bands took the classic bass heavy funk rhythms and created a new genre of electronic dance music. Tom Tom Club openly acknowledged the debt owed to James Brown and Bohannan on “Genius of Love”. There is a direct line through James Brown to disco and funk and the electronic dance anthems of New Order, Depeche Mode, Chemical Brothers and onto the sample heavy SoulWax, DJ Shadow and Steinski. Old School Hip Hop was based around disco and funk riffs sampled and chopped up. As much as I loved various different rock genres I was and remain to this day committed to dance music is what you dance to, work out to, or just go a little funky when the mood strikes.

The play list on Spotify is here. You do not need to sit down on the floor in lines to enjoy this celebration of the funky, you do not need to change into bell bottoms, but you do need to shake your tailfeather. It is in chronological order and transitions from the originals to the synth driven versions around 1980. The actual playlist starts with George Clinton’s insanely good One Nation and appropriately ends with Deelite’s Groove in the Heart with a cameo by Bootsy Collins, James Brown’s former flamboyant bassist and court jester of funk.