An Ongoing Unearthing by Noah Mallin

Before he invented Dr. Evil’s laser, Alan Parsons was an engineer at EMI’s studios. He’s the man responsible for the crystalline sound of both The Beatles Abbey Road and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of The Moon. Inside Parsons was a recording artist struggling to emerge — it finally did on The Alan Parsons Project’s first album Tales of Mystery and Imagination in 1975.

Parsons and his Project really hit it with the follow-up 1977′s I, Robot, a much more faithful rendering of Isaac Asimov’s sci-fi classic than the later Will Smith film would prove to be. In amongst the beautifully arranged art rock was their first single, the chilly disco of “I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You.” Like many rock bands doing disco (see Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in The Wall Pt. 2″), the use of a disco arrangement is meant to be a bit of a putdown, a satire on the facelessness of a producer-driven medium. The fact that Parsons himself gained fame from his knob-twiddling skills only adds a level of irony.

The Alan Parsons Project would have several more hits after this, most notably “Eye in The Sky”, but none that attempted the booty-shaking cool of “I Wouldn’t Want to Be Like You.” The video features a guest appearance by Univac which is likely shamed by today’s Macbooks and a very naughty flower-hating robot.

L.A. (Light Album) turned out to be a mishmosh of styles but right there at the beginning of Side 2 (ask your grandparents kids) was a nearly 11-minute long remake of their 1967 Wild Honey track “Here Comes The Night” discofied within an inch of it’s life. It’s hard to know what Brian Wilson thought of this, the video clip below makes him appear to have been pulled from the bottom of a Santa Monica dumpster especially for their appearance that night. If it’s any indication, his centerpiece on the album was a meandering stab at “Shortnin’ Bread”. Not pretty.

Archival Grave Robbing by Noah Mallin

Dr. Hook made their careers as stoned country rockers singing about making it to “The Cover of Rolling Stone” — a song that eventually made their wish come true. Many of their jokey early songs had lyrics supplied by Where The Sidewalk Ends author Shel Silverstein.

A bankruptcy and a change of labels in the mid 70s led them to the path of disco perdition as it would many another band. Their sense of humor and legendary stage antics have led some to believe that all of their disco material was tongue-in-cheek. This is entirely possible, but for Key Party Nation their songs about lust, love, and more lust struck a chord, giving them their biggest string of hits.

Central to this pearl necklace of commercial acceptance was 1979s “Sexy Eyes” a Lothario’s come-on notable from a band who’s frontman Ray Sawyer sported an eyepatch. “I was sitting all alone/watching people get it on with each other…” is an opening line worthy of Plato’s Retreat, if not Dylan. It’s telling that Sawyer doesn’t sing this– he would leave the band in disgust a year later. As always, if the video shows as “Not Available, hit refresh in your browser. It’s just the YouTube demons acting up…

(If the vids show up as unavailable, hit refresh in your browser — it’s just the YouTube demons getting fresh)

The late 70s and early 80s were confusing and disturbing times for many in the music industry. For some of the great titans of rock and many of the little titanettes punk, disco, and new wave were confounding forces. Some plowed ahead, others chose to dip a toe in the funky stuff and try out this thing the kids were calling “disco.” Even some new bands saw the merit in a quick easy hit off disco’s crystalline white powder.

Starting today I will be presenting a new video every day (or thereabouts) of a rock band trying their hand at disco. Of course I wanted to start off with a biggie so today I bring you one of the all-time disco-rock classics, “I Was Made for Loving You” by Kiss.

Kiss of course started out as glam rockers, honing a metallic sheen that by the mid 70s would prove to be a formative influence on the hair bands of the 80s like Motley Crue. In 1979 though, they found their energy diluted by a rash of solo albums and the rising disco tide. Peter Criss sat the accompanying album Dynasty out and future World’s Most Dangerous Band drummer Anton Fig was on the studio drums. Their response was this classic (shown “live”, with Criss):