Disco Trivia

Listening to Guy Lafleur made me feel nostalgic about some early disco classics. Back in grade school I bought my first record player started my vinyl collection. I brought my own record to the same school dance I wrote about in my last post. It was the Bee Gees' Spirits Having Flown album which I bought for the song Tragedy.

Despite our young age, the homophobia surrounding disco had already been accepted and internalized. I remember some kid saw the record cover through my plastic bag and started to call me a fag. He was an asshole. I'm sure the teacher overheard because he asked what I brought and told everyone what a great record it was. The asshole shut up and some of other kids began to show their own records including The Trammps' Disco Inferno and Patrick Hernandez' Born to be Alive.

I loved all those songs like most kids there but none of us danced. I think we just ate chips, drank pop and played games. What else could supervised geeky pre-teens do in a well lit room?

Anyhow, I decided to do some reading on Patrick Hernandez and learned that Madonna of all people got her start as a back up singer on Born to be Alive. The link I put here is obviously not to the original version so I'm going to have to look for another copy do download. I want to see if I can pick her voice out. (After that, I'll try listening for Cher in an early Phil Spector song).