I realize I’ve sort of hit upon a theme lately when it comes to LIT70s, but I don’t think it’s fair to limit just the Beach Boys to the Disco Hall of Shame. As we’ve seen over the past few months, there are plenty of other artists who jumped the disco bandwagon to revive a flagging career. There are also quite a few who started as disco artists, only to later change direction and deny their humble beginnings once they hit it big in their new genre.
Take, for example, “Cuts Like a Knife” rocker Bryan Adams. Or as we will all now know him, Disco Chipmunk.
Yes, it’s true: our leather-clad, fist-pumping, “normal” dude next door was once shaking it on the dance floor, and he wanted you to join him. His first single at the tender age of 18, “Let Me Take You Dancing” (download) was cowritten by Adams and his longtime writing partner Jim Vallance. The original Canadian version, a snippet of which you can hear on Vallace’s website, was more in a Nick Gilder vein, but the disco beat was still there. The single made a little noise up north, so for its American release, disco remixer John Luongo was called in to disco-fy the track even more.
Luongo’s solution was to beef up the beat a bit, add some percussion and handclaps, and speed up the track a bit. Trouble is, he didn’t bother to have Adams re-record his vocal track to match the new, obviously higher pitch, so — bam! — Disco Chipmunk.
Adams was understandably unhappy with the end result, but it did score a bit of disco club play and ended up helping garner Adams a full-fledged record deal with A&M Records, so it all worked out in the end.
Now is “Let Me Take You Dancing” a bad song by any stretch? That really depends on your tolerance for disco. If you enjoy some disco, like I do, it’s really not that offensive, if a little bland. The pre-chorus is actually sort of neat, and there are definitely flashes of Bryan Adams songs to come buried under the percussion and helium vocals. Unfortunately, Adams isn’t a big fan of the track, and so far the only place it’s made an appearance on CD is on a disc called Disco Box Vol. 2, Disco Heat released in 2000. If you have a real jones to own it, you can find it on Amazon, but you listed under Disco Heat Vol. 2.
Disco Chipmunk, awaaaaayyy!
“Let Me Take You Dancing” peaked at #76 on the Billboard Disco Top 80 Chart in 1979.
Get Bryan Adams music at Amazon
The most rock-radio acceptable of the new-wave acts (with the possible exception of the Cars and the Police), the Fixx were always unfairly slammed as a producer’s band, the mere playthings of Rupert Hine, who buffed their angular, jagged sound to an airwaves-friendly sheen. I never quite understood how this was considered an insult — why should the Fixx feel slighted because they found a great producer who knew what to do with them? Isn’t that the point of a producer?
In 1988, Leslie Phillips turned her back on a successful career as a Christian Contemporary artist, changed her performing moniker to “Sam,” and recorded her first mainstream pop album, The Indescribable Wow, with producer and soon-to-be husband T Bone Burnett. It was a bold move that paid off critically, if not commercially. The album sold a fraction of Phillips’ Christian work, but her inventive songwriting and unique voice won her a new cult of fans.
It’s amazing to even consider now, but once there were debates on who’d be the bigger band – U2 or Big Country?
Of all the artists who jumped on the disco bandwagon in the late ’70s, one of the most unexpected (and unwelcome) this side of 
In 1984, famed disco producer Giorgio Moroder got it into his head that Fritz Lang’s silent 1927 masterpiece Metropolis needed to be restored with colored tint, a new edit, and heck, a new soundtrack filled with the hottest pop and rock artists of the day. And who else to produce that soundtrack than, say, Giorgio Moroder?
The Sundays began the ’90s by combining the best of the previous decade’s indie rock – The Smiths and the Cocteau Twins – with a wall of guitars courtesy of David Gavurin topped with the exquisite vocals of Harriet Wheeler. Tasting near-immediate success with their debut, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, and its single, “Here’s Where The Story Ends,” the group traded in atmospheric, jangly guitar pop heavy on the reverb. A similarly flavored follow-up, Blind, followed in 1992, best known on these shores for featuring a dream-pop reading of the Stones “Wild Horses.” Budweiser commercials beckoned, both albums went Gold, then the Sundays – vanished.
It never hurt to have a visual hook to get on MTV in the ’80s. From Bananrama and Dexys Midnight Runners’ hobo-chic, to Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran’s new romantic ruffles, a cool gimmick was sometimes all a band needed to get them over some middling material.
The recent release of a cleaned up and remastered Ultravox 
(including a bonus DVD with all the Midge Ure-era videos) got me thinking about how much I used to love this band, despite their being so serious all the time.
In 1967, the Monkees sold more records than the Beatles. And the Rolling Stones. Combined. That year they also scored their third number one single, plus another Top Five hit. The assembled-for-television quartet were the biggest rock music act in the United States and United Kingdom. Three short years later, they’d be stripped down to duo and watch their final pre-reunion single peak at a pathetic #98.
