I'm pleased as punch to be DJing tonight at Blizzarts (3956 St. Laurent) along with Renaissance men David Shaw and Davey Lahteenma from the growing disco concern that is Loose Joints/Attitude City as part of their Neighbourhood weekly. The musical selection will be better tailored to the dancefloor than some of the stuff I've been posting, don't worry... More details at the Facebook event page.
Seemingly Thursday is the time that Montreal's bloggers are allowed to socialize, albeit only at Blizzarts. Starting at 9pm, The Bitter End will be screening their fourth episode. The Bitter End is the web-based comedy series (it's better than that sounds) featuring (amongst many others) the talents of Said the Gramophone's Daneil Beirne.
I gotta think that Paul Westerberg somehow nicked a bit of Candi Staton's Young Hearts Run Free for The Replacements' Swinging' Party. Lo-fi beach culture enthusiasts Kindness sense that, and thus bring it back to a (lazy) disco-sound by Arthur Russell-ifying it (come on, as if that's not the drum-beat from Loose Joints' Is It All Over My Face? married to some David Byrne-esque slack vocalness).
Kindness is Adam Bainbridge and like-minded collaborators, with some London & Berlin time-sharing kinda thing going on (time n' space-wise) and a cross-Atlantic take on the Washed Out/Toro y Moi sound (or it's just synchronicity)... This Replacements cover is from a new single released by the always-forward thinking Moshi Moshi label. Check out the Kindness Myspace.
In 1999, Kappa Alpha Psi frat brother and R&B superstar Montell Jordan took a trick from the Puff Daddy toolbox, sampling Claudja Barry's Love For the Sake of Love for his chart-topping single Get It On Tonite, the video of which featured an early example of text-message infidelity, making a case for the zeitgeist-anticipating qualities of the R&B genre. In 1980 was there a rock band with a track as prescient as Ronnie Jones' Video Games? (Incidentally, that song was also produced by Claudja Barry's pet-producer, who I discuss later). Not likely!
David Shaw is one-half of the Loose Joints duo here in Montreal, an incredibly talented graphic designer, and an extremely nice & hilarious guy to boot. He's also associated with the international DJ & production cartel Attitude City. For whatever reason, David & Davey Lahteenma (the other 1/2) are one of Montreal's best kept secrets - mixing & mastering for years and earning them the righteous love and appreciation of everyone who ever manages to catch their set, as well as bringing in Hercules & Love Affair, Brennan Green, Mike Simonetti & countless other guests before their big moments in the blogspotlight. Hopefully I'll have some other edits to post in the next little while, but in the mean-time, here's a live-set of David Shaw recorded last year entitled Disco's Dead. (Full-disclosure, I had the great privilege to DJ with him this past Saturday at Pop Montreal's Italo Disco Bike In and it was awesome.)
And now to our diva... Jamaican-transplant turned Torontonian Claudja Barry left Boney M in 1976 to pursue her own singing career, and thank God, because it gave us many great & fine songs, not the least of which is the simple and strutting song Love For The Sake of Love, the b-side to 1976's Sweet Dynamite. Production duties on this (and many other Claudja Barry tracks) were handled by German producer Jurgen S. Korduletsch, who prior to this was working with kraut-rockistes Amon Düül II.
Kraut-rock & disco are not mutually exclusive, which is where Can's I Want More comes in. Also released in 1976 (on the album Flow Motion), the seemingly disparate worlds of the dancefloor & Deutschland find themselves in perfect union here, and thus became their only Top 40 hit in the UK and earned them a slot on Top of the Pops. The guitar-work & full-group vocals on this song are amazing, and the organ-stab anticipates the same stab on Diana Ross' My Old Piano.
