My initial introduction to disco in the 80’s was being told by music connoisseurs much older and wiser than I, that it (and I quote), “SUCKS.” These same people would then proceed to play me Journey or Twisted Sister or Bon Jovi and in some cases Shannon or Stevie B as “freestyle” was the big thing around that time and place. I think most of these people thought disco was what most of white America’s introduction to it was: “Saturday Night Fever”, the Bee Gees and “Disco Duck” or whatever parody of it they saw on SNL or Johnny Carson. I never thought much about disco or what it meant to me at all until the late 90’s when disco artists’ names starting popping up in conversations with fellow collectors when I was learning more about music that had been sampled by hip-hop producers. Learning and appreciating the history of DJ culture in the US and beyond is impossible without recognizing the original disco DJ’s, producers and artists. As a teenager I spent a summer or two being fascinated with the nascent “rave” and “techno” world (Fresh Jive “Tide” t-shirt: Check!) and even then I’m not sure I made the connection between electronic music and whatever I thought disco was. As I got older, the more I collected soul and funk records, the more I realized that a lot of what I was hearing was what formed the original roots of disco, before artists like the Village People became household names and crowds of haters were burning records in baseball stadiums.
Like a lot of musical styles I may have written off at various points in my life, it took a lot of time spent bars with DJ’s, clubs and record stores before I found myself wanting to dig deeper into disco. I’ve spent a lot of time over the years trying to make sense of different styles/sub-genres that fall under the umbrella of “disco” and while I was a fan of house music in the late 80’s/early 90’s after hearing it played on NYC radio by hip-hop DJ’s, I still had trouble categorizing what it is I like and don’t like about certain styles of dance music. My earnest attempts to appreciate, say, the “Scarface” soundtrack, led me to believe I need not flip through the “Italo” section of any store I visit moving forward. But then I found myself going out of my way to find records by Brazil’s Azymuth or the UK’s Atmosfear (“Dancing In Outer Space”), two bands that were probably considered “jazz funk” in their heyday but whose records would certainly not be out of place in the “A” section of any well-stocked disco bin. Realizing that artists as diverse as KISS and Donald Byrd recorded and released music that could be considered disco made it even harder for me to pin down in what that word meant considering the only thing that most of this music had in common was the “four-on-the-floor- beat that came to characterize pretty much every major genre of dance that followed it in the 80’s (until certain artists got their hands on the concept and turned inside out, another story altogether). At some point I just gave up trying to articulate what I did and didn’t like, and just focused on listening to whatever sounded good to me. I never aspired to be a dance music DJ and by the time I had moved to NYC in the early 00’s my peers were so far ahead of me knowledge-wise I just ran back to the punk/indie/experimental world I had come from and only dipped my toe into disco when the mood struck me.
Today, I have the luxury of living in a world where Serato mixers and MacBooks paid for with college graduation money have replaced actual vinyl for most DJ’s old and new. When it comes to impressing a crowd of dancers, MP3’s work just as well as 12″s and they’re a lot cheaper (the cost of a wifi password). Aside from the world of Discogs, prices on a lot of dance records have come down considerably in brick & mortar shops. You can always tell when someone either switched to MP3’s, grew out of it” or, sometimes, “really needed heroin”, decided to sell their collection to a shop. There’s usually a few “wall records”/”bangers” that the shop turns into Instagram gold but often the rest are a cheap and easy way to fill some holes in your collection. Not too long ago, while flipping through one such drop, I came upon a record called “Dance To the Music” by G.B. & the Tracks. Upon first inspection I was sure it was a disco cash grab, perhaps by a Canadian “library” studio band. Much to my surprise, the title track was not a Sly & the Family Stone cover but actually a mid-tempo cookie cutter disco track with one of the most polite and sexually innocuous first lines of a dance song I have ever heard: “If…you feel like danc-ing…Please…don’t hes-i-tate.” SOLD!
“G.B.” is one Gerry Bribosia, and the Canadian label that released this record, Smash Disco, seems to have been a fairly legitimate late 70’s disco music label and even released a record by an artist called “Disco Gag Band” who I’m guessing shared the same sense of humor as Msr. Bribosia. Gerry seems to have had a pretty full career before jumping onto the disco bandwagon. He was in a band called Octopus that released one 45 in 1971 that owes a small debt to “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (in a good way). Before that he was in a garage rock band in Quebec called Les Misérables who released several singles and one LP in 1965-7. I tried finding more info on Gerry and his bands but most Googling and subsequent translation from French led me only to passages such as:
“From competitors to accomplices
At that time, Les Monstres also toured with Les Misérables – the French Canadian Rolling Stones, it was said. Their singer and guitarist, Gerry Bribosia, is still a Hamilton sidekick. He accompanies the singer on stage. Rivals at the time, they are accomplices today.“
So, that’s that… The G.B. & the Tracks LP, while pretty polished and definitely comparable to a lot of UK government-funded studio bands responsible for dozens of “library records”, still has a certain French-Canadian je ne sais quoi as (I think) they say. Aside from some unimaginative song titles and lyrics, the LP’s real strength is G.B. and his bandmates’ use of an array of synthesizers that don’t feel as cold as they often do on a lot of over-compressed dance music studio recordings of the late 70’s and 80’s when (in my opinion) the overzealous motivation to embrace new technology in the recording studio (or bedroom) often led to bland, soul-less dance music that didn’t have the “mechanical funk” some of the best early techno artists came to exemplify. Gerry himself, while also providing lead vocals on most tracks, seems to have been pretty into his arsenal of Maxi Korg, Arp Sequencer, Arp 2600 and Poly Moog synthesizers featured on all tracks but one, “Funky Flute”, which unfortunately for the representatives of Gerry’s local Guitar Center, also happens to be the strongest track on the record. Keeping with the theme of titles very specifically reflecting what you’re about to hear in the song, the second song on side 2 does indeed contain a fair amount of very funky flute playing by one J. Labelle. The whole track sounds almost like a sped up Bobbi Humphrey/Mizell brothers production but aesthetically not quite as adventurous. The last track on side two, “My Kind Of Woman”, features an instrument referred to in the liner notes as “Quentin’s Drum Computer” that, while I’m not well versed enough to identify, sounds not unlike something on Juan Atkin’s first Cybotron LP or even Giorgio Moroder’s less string-heavy productions (from what I remember). The rhythm and bassline are interesting, but the vocals provided by Brit Gary Sharkey quickly devolve into a repeated refrain that wouldn’t sound out of place as the closing number by some sort of Fleetwood Mac-worshipping 80’s act. If there was any doubt whatsoever that Gerry didn’t take disco that seriously, his follow up to this record, the 12″ single “Dracula Disco”, makes it clear that Gerry knew what young Quebecois wanted to hear at that moment and what was going to pay the bills. It is to “real” disco what the “Rappin Rodney” record is to “real hip-hop”. Not the worst thing I’ve ever heard but I’m also probably giving it a little more of a pass because it’s in French and I have no idea what he’s saying in his Dracula voice. I think whatever appreciation Gerry had for actual soulful “disco” came through a lot better on the “Dance To the Music” LP.
According to the internet, Gerry is still alive and still rockin’.
