Joe (Are We Not Men? We Are Disco) Fernbacher, Creem, 2/79
You see, it all has to do with types: stereotypes, stenotypes, monotypes. Types, types, types. Say it 60 times real fast and you’ll have expended as much time as it takes to listen to the latest from those disco anarchists, the Village People.
My fangs really wanted to sink into this one. I wanted to be caustic, bitter, annoying, predacious, and just plain rude with these guys, but I found myself in the exhausting position of actually finding them hysterically funny. They’re a belly laugh, from the loin-cloth racism of the Indian to the nipple-stroking egoism of the Construction Worker. And they’re a complete put-on, which is satire, and satire is supposed to be funny.
You could write epics about each of the songs contained on this LP, but I’ll just dash off a few mini-series because we’re tight for space--seems somebody thinks rock ’n’ roll is serious and wrote the nth essay on the “Paradoxes Displayed in the Street Images of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen or Sniffing Sulfur as Teenage Psychosis.” So...
“My Roomie”: This low-budget musical sitcom stars Tony Randall as an aging Disco Prince who drives his roomie bonkers with a myriad of new and inspired disco dance routines. As this episode closes, the roomie (Victor Buono) is on the phone ordering an air drop of Pittsburgh Paint cans on Tony as he’s leaving for work at the Poodle Salon. Next week Tony, paralyzed from the neck down, drives Victor to idiocy by inventing new and inspired disco dance routines using only facial gestures.
“Hot Cop”: An adventure series co-written by Joseph Waumbaugh, concerning a vice cop (George Kennedy) whose beat takes him into the disgusting, depraved and horrifying world of discos, where he must deal with the day-to-day pressures and tensions of disco queens and their pimpettes. This week’s episode shows the Hot Cop teaching a gay disco murderer the meaning of the law with his truncheon...Next he must solve the bizarre case of the “Paint Can” murders. (As an interesting sidebar, the show’s producer has recently hired Patrick Juvet to arrange, in a contemporary disco vein, the theme from Dragnet. Seems the producer was having lunch with John Travolta one day and John revealed that in order to prepare for his opening scene in Sat. Night Fever--walking down the street with a paint can--he watched every Jack Webb movie ever made, twice. Says the producer, “John researched his role so completely he could actually tell the difference between a male and female sand flea.”)
“YMCA”: Originally scheduled as a PBS Masterpiece Theater project, this show caught the attention of network executives and they decided it would be a natural for a second season replacement. In the opening episode, the lives of the regular cast cross paths for the first time. The stars include Ed Asner as the Policeman, Gavin McLeod as the Indian, Ted Knight as the Cowboy, Mary Tyler Moore as Leather Man, Cloris Leachman as the Construction Worker, and Valerie Harper as the GI. They all meet in the lobby and learn to do the New York Hustle while a chorus line of Paint Cans with legs invents new and inspired disco dance routines.
I guess I could’ve been really nasty with these guys, but like I said, they’re funny and a laugh is a laugh. So if you like disco (ha ha), then this is as fine a piece of dance music (tee hee) as you’ll come across (chuckle, chuckle) this year. (Ho ho.)
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