You Should Be Dancing: Saturday Night Fever pt.1
Love is the Message: Dance, Music and CountercultureShow Notes
The day has finally come: after 79 episodes of Love is the Message, it’s time to talk Travolta. Saturday Night Fever was always coming down the pipe for us, and now we’re giving it the LITM treatment.
In this episode, Tim and Jeremy establish some of the pre-history to the seminal 1977 film. With musical examples drawn from Vince Aletti’s Disco Files playlists, we hear about the rise of the suburbs in the USA, the dynamics between the different boroughs of mid-70s NYC, and consider the suburban disco scene. We ask again what makes disco disco, revisit the Hustle, tune up the Salsoul Orchestra and take a trip to a disco conference.
Of course, it wouldn’t be Saturday Night Fever without the Bee Gees: often-derided and much-mocked but one of the highest selling bands of all time, it was their music which provided the soundtrack to the film. Are they a guilty pleasure? Listen along to find out.
Produced by Matt Huxley.
We are now on Youtube! Find series 6 here: https://www.youtube.com/@LITMPodcast
Remember, we have a rolling playlist of all the tracks discussed over on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3ZpKyqhvhOXfTuPMHCBkFs
Tracklist:Carl Douglas - Blue Eyed Soul Gloria Scott - Just as Long as We’re Together Babe Ruth - Elusive Tina Charles - Disco Fever Joe Bataan - The Bottle Van McCoy - The Hustle Salsoul Orchestra - The Salsoul Hustle Bee Gees - Spicks and Specks Bee Gees - Massachusetts Bee Gees - Jive Talkin’ Bee Gees - You Should be Dancing
More from Love is the Message: Dance, Music and Counterculture
In this episode we conclude our survey of 1970s spiritual jazz with some lesser known cuts from the canon. Several of the tunes here were once hard-to-find collectors items, but the renewed interest in this body of work has led to reissues and an enlarged audience for these awesome pieces. Tim and Jeremy discuss the various religious sources on the practitioners of spiritual jazz, from Buddhism and Hinduism to African and Gospel influences. They unpack the problems with the term ‘spiritual’, consider this music’s utopian horizons and conduct a little reception history of how this sound lost and found an audience.
This is an excerpt of a patrons-only episode. To hear the full thing, visit Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod.
Today we’re taking it back to the early 70s as we begin a mini-series on spiritual jazz. Psychedelic, cosmic, astral: all words associated with a set of releases somewhat maligned at the time but now firm favourites on our turntables and across the globe. Tim and Jeremy cue up Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler, Lonnie Liston Smith and of course the great Alice Coltrane for a journey down the streams of consciousness. They examine the genealogy of the term spiritual jazz and the pre-history of some of its early progenitors, dig into the the various belief systems of universal love and peace, examine the Indian influences on both the music and the metaphysics, and give some time to the looming figure of Miles Davis in all this. Plus: an unexpected visit from Louis Armstrong. Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod Loveisthemessagepod.co.uk Produced by Matt Huxley
This is an excerpt from a patrons-only show. To hear the full thing, plus dozens more like it, visit Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod to sign up.
Love is the Message returns from our summer break just in time for the Bank Holiday Weekend, which in London means one thing: Carnival. In this episode Jeremy and Tim cover the history of Notting Hill Carnival, the largest such event in Europe. They discuss patterns of Caribbean migration to the UK, traditions of carnival from Ancient Greece to Trinidad and Rio, and the particular story of Notting Hill, with its steel bands, dub sound systems, parade and party. They return to Lovers Rock, consider legendary stages like Aba Shanti, Good Times and Saxon, and interrogate how Bakhtinian and Deleuzian ideas can be applied to this unique expression of Black British culture. Plus: David Mancuso in Trinidad, and a young Jeremy tries to buy Pass the Dutchie.