...AND THE BEAT GOES ON! The GRAND ILM DISCO POLL results are revealed!

Sorry I missed the voting and discussion so far. "Young Hearts Run Free" is an epic track. I love her vocal delivery and the chorus has stayed in my head for days. Doesn't seem all that danceable though.

well top 40. shit is getting tight. there are still 40 songs on my ballot and all of them are essential. have no idea how this will work out.

Disco reminds me of what my life might have been had I not movedfrom Northeast Philadelphia, after seventh grade, to some quasi-rural neo-Nazi suburb. (Hint: I think it would have been better.)

I think I had two ABBA songs in the top ten (they are my favorite group) but neither was Dancing Queen. It is still rather wonderful though. The one I was most tempted to vote for but didn't was If It Wasn't For The Nights which always stood out as one of their best disco efforts.

It's strange but Abba didn't move me at all in the context of this poll. I ended up cutting them back to one song (not this, which I've never liked much) and even then I regret it because I think I picked the wrong one. I just can't imagine dancing to them.

did anybody do like a walter gibbons style extended cut of "dancing queen"? I could maybe see it working... total euphoria.

the B side is incredible too.

40. Skatt Bros. - Walk the Night (1979)
307 points, 7 votes.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v655/lixnixn/R-2778880-1300641742_zps44d10118.jpeg

http://youtu.be/MdtXhRiGNms

What is the Gayest Song Ever?

"Walk The Night" by Skatt Bros. takes the prize. (Soul)Seek if you dare.

― Jay Vee (Manon_70), 18. helmikuuta 2004 0:54

And compared to the Skatt Bros., LEATHER NUN were straight as an arrow.

― chuck, 1. lokakuuta 2004 0:50

As xhuxk alluded to earlier, there is a disco subgenre known as morning music (also known as "sleaze" to some). This website will tell you all about it:

http://www.discomusic.com/forums/disco-music-70s-80s/8822-morning-music-vs-sleaze-debate.html

I love how sleaze is distinguished from the merely sleazy, i.e. The Skatt Bros. magisterial "Walk The Night"

― Kevin John Bozelka (Kevin John Bozelka), 3. syyskuuta 2006 1:06

One of last years most played: Skatt Bros' 'Walk the Night'

― PappaWheelie (PappaWheelie), 18. toukokuuta 2005 17:55

According to their Discogs.com profile, the Skatt Bros. were marketed as the "straight Village People", which sounds pretty incredible if you just listen to "Walk the Night" once.

I've always kinda thought DJ Hell was heavily influenced by this tune in his own music and in the whole International Deejay Gigolos aesthetic.

Oh, yay, finally another of my votes! Love this track.

Great track. Didn't even consider it but yeah, totally deserves its place.

I know "Life At The Outpost", but hadn't heard this before (and it's not on Spotify either, BTW). It reminds me of the brutally alienating gay disco scenes in Cruising and American Gigolo, which alarmed me so much as a teenager. I've never heard music like this in an actual gay disco, though.

Good record. Reminds me of Joy Division.

this record is one of the many high points of Optimo's Psych Out mix

At least one of those Skatt guys looks likes a Saddam Hussein double.

I've never heard of the band or the song but would vote for it based on the cover alone.

had no idea the policeman from Allo Allo was in a 70s disco band.

According to their Discogs.com profile, the Skatt Bros. were marketed as the "straight Village People"

are you sure it didn't actually say "Village People that can & will actually murder you in an open street"?

centre guy looks like Paul Morley with a very dubious moustache

haha i thought so too.

39. A Taste of Honey - Boogie Oogie Oogie (1978)
307 points, 10 votes.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v655/lixnixn/a-taste-of-honey-boogie-oogie-oogie-capitol_zpsd623f743.jpg

Seems like this has been completely blocked in Youtube, but here's the tune in Vimeo:
http://vimeo.com/24425764

David - what did you think of Taste of Honey's "Boogie Oogie Oogie" then?

― dave q, 28. huhtikuuta 2002 3:00

Is that a trick question? I love it - brilliant bass line. I'm surprised it hasn't had more sample-action (or maybe it has but it hasn't crossed over enough for me to notice it).

― David, 28. huhtikuuta 2002 3:00

"boogie oogie oogie" by taste of honey - absolutely INTERGALACTIC!

― bob snoom, 5. heinäkuuta 2002 3:00

xpost Yes!!! GET DOWN BOOGIE OOGIE OOGIE! I just rediscovered that song only like a month ago or whatever since my childhood. Fantastic fucking song!

― Lucking Faptop (Bimble), 11. huhtikuuta 2009 23:01

decided to go for "Boogie Oogie Oogie" because it always puts me in a good mood no matter what : )

― but hey, that would be going into sexual details ... (The Reverend), 25. kesäkuuta 2009 5:45

"Walk The Night" was one of my top choices, and one of the disco songs I've actually danced to most in the past 8 years or so, being as it is dropped so regularly at more underground-ish gay club nights. I think I said upthread or maybe in the nominations thread that when the song breaks into actual scatting I've seen so many people on the dancefloor get this "oh my god I don't know what it is going on here but it totally awesome" look on their faces.

Speaking of Cruising there is a youtube clip of the song which marries it to footage from the film to somewhat unsettling effect.

Apparently the cover isn't just for decoration, Janice Johnson and Hazel Payne do play the bass and guitar on that tune (and on all their other records too). It must've been quite rare in 1978 for band to be lead by two black female instrumentalists, not just in disco but in any genre...

(x-post)

Yeah, that's what fascinated me about "Walk the Night" when I first heard it years ago, that it was so unique, I'd never heard anyone put all those elements together. And I'm still kinda wondering: obviously there were loads of campy disco, but did this kind of harder, darker, S/M-ish gay disco exist at all before "Walk the Night"? Because I've been listening to disco for a long time, and I still haven't come across anything quite like it from that era (the late 70s). (Macho's "I'm a Man" is the closest example I can think of, and even that one isn't quite as hard.)

Adore "Walk The Night". Skatt Bros are such an interesting group - second album only released in Australia; founded by the Sean Delaney, who was responsible for Kiss' 70s makeup & choreography. As well as the peerless use in Psyche Out, it was used in Grand Theft Auto IV - Rockstar Games hired a private investigator who tracked down Delaney's surviving relatives in Utah to secure the rights to use the song.

Also:
http://www.richiefontana.com/images/GRACEJ.jpg

Love "Walk The Night," great to see it in the top 40. Interesting to see where we go from here...

xpost Woah.

the fierceness in that photo is just

and the unbearable sadness too

Haven't You Heard is absolute heaven. Exactly the kind of song I hadn't heard before that I expected to find in spades on this list.

My "Haven't You Heard" story is that when I was 18 me and my boyfriend got up really early and dropped some pills and went to the dying hours of this fantastic house party, and at some point "Haven't You Heard" played and I nearly exploded with euphoria.

I didn't hear it for a long time after that but the chorus and piano line kept lurking in the back of my mind, and then I was in a record store about four years later and it came on and I had this total flashback to this sense of being happier than I'd ever been in my life.

One of my favourite songs ever.

are fantastic house parties a matter of course in Australia? You'd think they would be in Miami but noooo.

required listening

Actually that was confusing, it wasn't a house party but a dance party playing house music.

But I have been to many fantastic house parties in my time.

the guy hugging grace reminds me of Stevie D

a bit!

i didnt even know abba was considered disco. they're swedish.

lol

boogie oogie oogie album art is all time

candi stanton + alicia bridges b2b melts my heart, all time flop jams

Boogie oogie oogie is all time. Skatt brothers is so fun, such a fantastic chorus.

are you sure it didn't actually say "Village People that can & will actually murder you in an open street"?

This made me lol for real

I have a very specific idea of how Skatt Bros would murder you and what they would do to you first.

38. Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band - Cherchez la femme / Se si bon (1976)
308 points, 9 votes.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v655/lixnixn/7499062_zpsa7174204.jpg

http://youtu.be/9UXA5reH0_o

Dr. Buzzard's is not only very pleasurable, I think it is "important", although more from the standpoint of theory than from that of actual influence. For me, Dr. Buzzard's was one of the really original artists in African-American music in the mid-70s, along with Parliament/Funkadelic and Afrika Bambaata and other forebears of rap. Its music is a glimpse of a road not taken in African-American music -- an attempt to do music that reflects the identity of a Black community that is composed of cosmopolitan strivers, polyglot syncretists, rather than the paranoid, self-limiting, "thug" culture that has become the focus of hip-hop (which I am not attacking, by the way). It is the pop music that Stanley Crouch would want if he ever got his head out of his butt. And, like Prince but unlike a whole lot of other African-American music, then and since, it is hyper-aware of the entire African-American musical tradition and the many points of intersection and influence between that tradition and European musics. And, like Parliament and unlike a whole lot of other African-American music, it is playful and subversive about race and politics (listen to "Soraya" or "Once There Was A Colored Girl").

All of that does not make it "better" or "more valid" or whatever compared to types of music that are actually popular and commercially successful. What it does provide is sort of the musical equivalent of a type of science-fiction novel: What would the world look like if we just tightened (or loosened) this one screw a bit . . . ? Kid Creole, of course, came from the same place, but pretty systematically limited its ambition to making funny party music. Dr. Buzzard's was party music, often funny, with something serious to say and do.

― Vornado (Vornado), 10. tammikuuta 2005 17:30

"Cherchez la Femme" is blowing my mind. I've known the song for a few years, but I've never sat down and tried to pick each instrument apart until now. It's not working. At all. My favorite is the bassist, though. He seems like he spends the entire intro off in his own little corner/world plucking out his busy busy part with no regard for what anyone else is doing. Then the verse starts and all of a sudden he's not just in the pocket, he's a fucking metronome.

― The Reverend, 27. marraskuuta 2007 10:24

"cherchez la femme" is the weirdest song ever

― amateur!!!st (amateurist), 21. syyskuuta 2004 3:33

"cherchez la femme" was one of my very favorite songs as a little kid! i had a disco hits lp and whenever "cherchez" was on i'd always keep moving the needle back to the beginning and listening again and again. when i got a little older and learned about darnell's hipster cred i was very pleased with myself. :-)

― 2 columbus circle in 1964 (Jody Beth Rosen), 11. tammikuuta 2006 5:35

First new discovery! And it's... quite something.

37. Anita Ward - Ring My Bell (1979)
309 points, 8 votes.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v655/lixnixn/R-1491023-1277411767_zpsd08949c3.jpeg

http://youtu.be/72yefCkY5Xo

I really want to second or third "Ring My Bell"... I always forget about it but when I hear it I am suddenly convinced it is the best disco bassline of all time.

― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), 28. elokuuta 2003 5:13

Anita Ward: "Ring My Bell" was a classic disco one-shot that nicely exploited her girlish soprano.

― J.D. Considine, 19. toukokuuta 2005 15:39

Obviously this will change daily, but the most recent transcendent experience I had was with Anita Ward's classic "Ring My Bell" - that single syndrum at the top of each bar, that tinkly glockenspiel simulating the titular bell, and Ms. Ward's impossibly-high, near-incomprehensible vocal = Purrr-fection! Probably the last great disco song before the death of the term 'disco' (cause the music itself never died, of course.)

― Scott, 26. tammikuuta 2004 18:37

Ughhh Ring my Bell!

My no.4, love it. Might've been my no.1, but finding the 12" version cooled me on it slightly.

It did? Why?