The Great WoMag Disco Challenge!

If you ask most musicians, regardless of what kind of music they play, to give an opinion on disco, it's most likely going to be negative. When asked, Worcester musician Daniel Gay said he thought it was, “vacuous and soulless, hedonistic and cocaine-fueled.”

“I used to say, 'Disco is why God created punk,” admits Pamela Tiger, of the band Punk Rock Treehouse, “and I still do, because I still don't like it much more than I ever did back then.” Veteran Worcester rocker and poet David Jahn says, “Once upon a time, I despised disco. Found much of it genuinely unlistenable. But held pretty much anything commercially successful in contempt as well.”

The genre had a few unapologetic lovers, such as guitarist Lance Muhammad, who says, “I felt like most disco songs were very well produced and played almost to the point of perfection,” but most of its defenders had a tendency to qualify their response. “It's dance music,” says local jazz great Tyra Penn, “so if it's vapid that's OK. Not my cuppa, although some of the hooks and riffs have persisted long since the 'death of disco.'” Rocker Michael Kane, of Michael Kane and the Morning Afters, says, “Coming from a punk take when I was younger it was always 'disco sucks,' but the riffs and the bass lines are undeniable!”

RELATED STORY: The Great Worcester Magazine Song Swap

For younger artists, disco was more of a historical curio. “I always saw disco as wack and my mom's music,” says rapper Angel Geronimo, who performs as Death Over Simplicity. Sarah Fard, of the jazz-infused project Savoir Faire, also associated disco with her parents, although more positively: “My mom listened to a lot of disco when it had its resurgence in the '90s. In fact, when I finally got a CD player, there were two CDs that I bought: 'Tuesday Night Music Club' by Sheryl Crow and … 'Pure Disco 2.' YUP.”

For the past year and change, disco has had another quiet resurgence in cultural life, even as most of us have had to resign ourselves to just dancing in the kitchen. “RuPaul's Drag Race,” in February, had the drag queens create a “disco-mentary,” telling the story of the oft-maligned genre, and had two contenders lip-sync to Sylvester's “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).” ABBA is going back on tour, and probably the most prominent straight-up rock group playing today, the Foo Fighters, is putting out a disco album. As the Atlantic pointed out, disco songs were blared at Black Lives Matter protests, and former President Donald Trump grooved to “Macho Man” at rallies.

Maybe it's that members of the “disco generation” are largely now mostly in their 60s, making it prime nostalgia fodder, or maybe it's just that the past year has been so grim we need inherently happy music to balance it out, but for what ever reason, disco is back in vogue, and that warrants a re-examination of the genre, and of course, our favorite method of doing that is to get 50-odd Worcester-connected artists to agree to cover disco songs without knowing in advance what they'd be given. That's right … It's time for the Great Worcester Magazine Disco Cover Challenge!

Hot Stuff

The songs assigned were culled from a number of "greatest disco hits" lists, including critical picks, fan favorites and chart toppers, and at least one list of "underrated" disco songs to keep things interesting. The mix also has expanded works by a few notable artists – including ABBA, the Bee Gees and Sylvester – who seemed to be worth exploring a little deeper than some others. The artists were given six weeks to record a cover of the song, however they defined that term. More than 100 artists volunteered for songs. Only about half finished their assignments.

The reactions to the songs artists received was wildly varied, ranging from exuberance to disdain to, in more than a few cases, confusion.

Tony Brown, frontman of the poetry-music fusion band the Duende Project, says he was “thrilled” to receive the aforementioned “You Make Me Feel.” “It's a favorite from the era and also has the panache of being an anthem. Also, Sylvester is a fascinating artist with a compelling story.” Industrial artist Itoarazi was “pumped” to get Andrea True's “More, More, More," saying, “I'd been surreptitiously thinking about covering that song on and off for a while, and that was the only confirmation I needed to do so.”

Vocalist Deborah Beaudry, who performed “I Love the Night Life,” accompanied by electronic artist J. Hams, said, “My initial reaction to the song was, 'Oh yeah. That's great.' Very familiar with the song and it was very much a disco anthem and a 'one hit wonder,' as a lot of disco anthems were. Just read the Wikipedia page and it seems like they were one of the acts that jumped on the disco bandwagon to get a hit song, I guess. Those are the songs that are the most fun, in my opinion.” Singer-songwriter Doug Geer was also happy to get Donna Summer's “Hot Stuff,” saying, “I was lucky, my song had good structure and a great melody. It was more of a song than just an excuse for an underlying dance beat.”

Heather Caunt-Nulton, of the Dandy Highwaymen (performing here as the Handy Diewaymen, for … reasons) was ecstatic to get ABBA's "Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight)." “I enthusiastically disco danced to the song in the kitchen with my dad the day we got our assignment. It is so disco, and so fun to dance to. And I so did not want to end up being the band member to sing it, given the lyrical content. I was pleased when my bandmates agreed that we needed to subvert and twist the meaning and vibe of the song as much as possible without actually changing the lyrics”.

Penn – who got Rick James' “Super Freak” – says she “would have called my tune more funk than disco, but who's splitting hairs? It certainly isn't a song I would ever choose, although it amused me. The lyrics, such as they are, are shallow and objectifying; but the groove is a classic. There was room to do a few different things to make the song as a whole more interesting.”

Musician Paul Gunby, of the Organiacs, on the other hand, admits he was befuddled by his pick, saying, “Of all the disco songs … 'Waterloo,' by ABBA? Is that even disco? What the hell do these lyrics even mean to me?”

As scattered as the reaction was, it begged two questions: “How would the musicians make these songs – some distinctive, others disreputable, some both – their own?” and “Just what is disco, anyway?”

Dance Fever

Gunby and Penn weren't alone in questioning whether their acts were really disco. The lists of songs assigned had some unexpected choices. ABBA and Rick James were one thing, but early Michael Jackson? Late Jackson Five? Blondie? The Commodores? Earth, Wind and Fire? In some ways, it seemed the only real definition of disco is what was playing in the nightclubs in the late '70s.

“I would say, musically, disco is all about getting people dancing,” says Megan Ross, a professor of music at the College of the Holy Cross. “A lot of offshoots of rock involve getting back to basics, a move a way from the mainstream, like punk.” It's easy to forget that punk, hip-hop and disco were all concurrent movements, and all often only vaguely aware of each other. Ross says a lot of the emphasis across the board was moving away from the overly serious and complicated rock that came before. “That's the role that disco is playing in the movement: Every beat four on floor, high-hat emphasized.”

Which might be why disco is, in reality, less of a musical genre and more of a confluence of genres. Then-contemporary R&B and funk melded with the dance music emanating from queer culture to create a musical mélange that quickly won many fans, and more than a few detractors.

“Strange things were happening,” says Ross, of the late '70s music world. “Rock artists, rock culture, was really in an identity crisis as new genres came into being and rock spread thinly.” It was met with pushback from many rock musicians and music critics, who knocked the musicians' musical prowess, the production of the albums, and the move away from live music. Of course, the issues ran deeper than that. “This was something new, a little intimidating to white, straight men whose girlfriends were off at disco clubs dancing with gay men.” Ross says, “Disco served as a cultural venue for gay liberation music. Quite literally, the disco clubs themselves were queer spaces, in terms of social significance."

The challenge participants who remember the era were definitely aware of the conflict, even if they didn't always buy into it itself.

“I wasn't an especially huge fan of disco,” says Brown, "although I'm old enough to have spent my time in a few … I'm surprised at how many of the songs that were included here were characterized as 'disco,' which to me is very much about BPM and a particular repetitive beat. That said, I still believe a lot of the critique leveled at it has an undercurrent of racism and homophobia – not necessarily overt, but I can feel it.”

Worcester record producer Roger Lavallee says he found the antipathy toward disco jarring. “I lived through the disco heyday, though I was young for most of it,” he says. “I was still aware of how the rock people hated it, and not just disliked it. They REALLY hated it. Like it killed their mother or something. It was personal. I never quite understood that, other than how over-saturated it was around 1979, like any other mainstream music style. It gets popular, then it gets done to death, and then it gets backlash.”

Let the Music play

“I was alive and awake for the late disco era,” says musician and writer Pope Markus, who tackled Sharon Redd's “Love Insurance” along with Dodeca musician James Moore and producer Chyld. “At that time, there were still 'funk nights' on Landsdowne Street where I could afford the two dollar cover. In the '80s, disco was being carved up into endless dance loops that would occasionally drop into a lyric, like 'Fly Robin Fly' or 'Music Makes the People Come Together.' 'Love Insurance?' I had never heard of it, but enjoyed researching and learning about a life like Sharon Redd. And lo, she was the main vocal for Soul to Soul, which laid down some serious funk. Compared to that, 'Love Insurance' was more cookie than cracker, but Chyld and James gave the bridge a hook we could hang our hats on.”

Markus was hardly the only one who went down a rabbit hole trying to learn more about the artists they were covering. Indeed, several found they associated with it more than they realized. “After learning about how anti-establishment so much of disco actually was,” said Duende Project guitarist Christopher Lawton, “I feel it may have more in common with punk than most any other genre.” In approaching “Make Me Feel,” Brown wrote and inserted a poem into the song, which draws connections between Sylvester and the band Little Feat, “and the common ground between rock fans and disco fans.”

For many of the musicians, the sparseness of the songs made them difficult to work with. Kane, for instance, points out that his song – Van McCoy's “The Hustle” – literally only has three words, so he wrote a new song instead, one that acts as sort of a counterpoint to the original. Jim Gerdeman, performing as part of the Heartwigs, noted that his song, the Bee Gee's “Stayin' Alive,” is “mostly one chord, but there are riffs and all sorts of production elements. So it was a decision on what to keep and what to add to make it our own."

Nathan Comstock, who has a folk music background, covered “Let's Groove” by Earth, Wind and Fire, saying, “I'm not a person who usually considers background instrumentals, like horns and strings or even drum fills and guitar licks, as essential elements of a song that need to be preserved while covering the song or it isn't even a cover. 'Let's Groove' definitely challenged that assumption – without that horn part or that bass line, it's not 'Let's Groove.' It doesn't have anything resembling a traditional verse-chorus-bridge structure.” How did he deal with it? He did an a cappella arrangement.

“Punking up” a song was a pretty typical approach for many artists such as Jahn, who handled “Love Hangover” by Diana Ross. “First challenge: how the hell am I gonna carry a Diana Ross vocal melody? Second challenge: how am I gonna sing this with a straight face? To overcome this, I flipped the script and drove a train through the middle, effectively eliminating my initial concerns.”

Others solved problems by turning up the dark on the songs. Dynamo Marz, of the Deadites – which tackled ABBA's “Name of the Game,” with vocals by Mz. M – says, “I felt the lyrics of our song and the lyrics of a few of ABBA’s songs are a bit regressive. The idea of a woman lovelorn to the point of almost begging isn’t a great look for a band that has featured some of the strongest, most kick-ass women ever to sing in this city, or for that matter, any self-respecting dance-floor band in 2021! But if you turn the dial all the way to 10 and make her wanting dark and obsessive, delusional and dangerous, it definitely jives with the side of our band which is basically 'Tales From the Crypt' at 1000 beats a minute.”

When told how dark so many of the covers went, Ross says she wasn't surprised, noting that the darkness was usually there to be found. There were reasons, after all, that people wanted to dance their troubles away. This is certainly what James Keyes found in his song, the Bee Gee's “Night Fever,” which he says “has a lot going on in it, especially three-part falsetto harmony, so my plan was to turn the whole thing on its head while still keeping the disco element to it. The lyrics are kinda strange if you read them the right way so I took that as my musical cue to expose the dark underbelly of the cocaine and glitter façade.”

Gerdeman concurs, adding, “It’s been a dark year for me at least. But I would say that disco might be the music playing in hell. It’s all glitz and escapism until the music stops and the lights go on and you realize you’re surrounded by corpses and vampires.”

Staying Alive

Jahn was upfront that he once hated disco, but feels that there might have always been more to that disdain than he realized. “The more I think about it,” he says, “I didn’t start out hating disco, it was a learned response. Something I need to unlearn. Because I don’t care if the cool kids like me anymore.”

Tiger agrees, saying that “it's easier to find the good in lots of stuff … I secretly loved some of the Gloria Gaynor and Donna Summer from back then, and still do. And I did and always will love Hot Chocolate and KC and the Sunshine Band.” Fard found herself impressed by Taste of Honey musicians Janice-Marie Johnson and Perry Kibble. “I watched a few lives performances and thought, 'Damn! Why don't more people know how badass these two were on guitar and bass?!' I think the fact that it was a disco song may have overshadowed just how fierce Taste of Honey are on their respective instruments, so I'm glad to represent some amazing women in music!”

Brown says, “I still am not a fan of the genre, can appreciate individual works and artists, and still feel — maybe more now than before — that a lot of the critique of it as a genre is less about the music than it is informed by other cultural conditioning.” Tiger agrees with him, adding, “I still hate it, but I don't hate it as an entire genre of music as much as the other cultural stuff surrounding it. In the last few years as a musician, I'm learning to look more at each individual song as a standalone, no matter what genre it's a part of.”

"Like anything," says Geer, "you look hard enough with an open mind you can find greatness. Disco music had an objective — which was to get people on the floor to shake their groove thing — which is a positive. Funk moved you like a religion, nourished you, where disco was like a fast food sugar fix that never really profoundly affected your soul."

Markus, however, says that, "Disco rises to the level of an — I hate to use the word — authentic cultural product in a number of iterations. 'Love Insurance' won't last as long as 'The Mona Lisa,' but think of Anita Ward's 'Ring My Bell,' an anthem of female empowerment and sexual freedom. We'd be all greatly diminished if it weren't for 'Ring My Bell.'"

Listen to the songs from the Great Cover Song Disco Challenge online at Worcestermag.com and Telegram.com.