(Money) Makes Me Feel Like Dancing!

Please note: the following is Part 2 of my life in music - the disco days

Rhapsody’s song list was extensive. We had to know at least four 50 minute sets worth of material. Occasionally we would have to include a dinner set, which would usually consist of lighter (cheesier) songs. Our set list was a mixture of disco hits, current Top 40 hits, hard-core funk tunes, ballads, a regionally required beach song or two, and if we were asked to rock, well....we could pull out Steve Miller’s Jet Airliner when needed. I know....sounds horrific, but what the heck, we were a business and we aimed to please.

Just about all of the disco hits of the era were there; Turn the Beat Around, Don’t Leave Me This Way, K.C. and the Sunshine Band medley, Bee Gee’s medley, You Make Me Feel Like Dancing etc...and etc.....John loved to get funky and we could actually get down hard on tunes like The Isley Brother’s Fight The Power, Wild Cherry’s Play That Funky Music, and Tower Of Power’s This Time It’s Real.

Those were the tunes that I actually loved playing. John was a formidable bass player, and while I can’t remember if I have ever told this to anyone, but hard core funk was right in my wheelhouse, and probably my favorite genre to play. The crappy songs in our set were for the customers, we were paid to make them dance and/or enjoy their dinner, the funk tunes were there for us. Most could be heard on the radio, and John spent many hours a week reading the current Top 40 charts, buying the singles he thought would work, and choosing which ones we would learn. It sounds really ancient, but we traveled with a portable record player!

Some of the slightly obscure songs were Con Funk Shun’s Ffun, Can’t Stand The Slaughter (Tower of Power), Starrgard’s Which Way Is Up? and Look Thru My Eyes, an incredible slab of funk by Chaka Khan/Rufus. Some of the horrible tunes were Grease, Neil Sedaka’s Breaking Up Is Hard To Do (vomit), Evergreen (lots of vomit) And heaven help us all, I believe I have already mentioned the dreadful Leo Sayer song! While it is certainly very easy to deride these tunes, and disco tunes in general, I must say that most are extremely well constructed songs containing sophisticated chord structures, dense harmonies, cool bass lines and the well known, but generally written off simple drum parts. The beat was king, relentless and steady, and John pushed me into the role of intense timekeeper. We could play around and get creative on the funk tunes, but the disco tunes had better never waver in the tempo department. Believe it or not, at one time I was money as a human metronome !

Before we actually played out, John informed us that as a favor for a good friend, we were going to do a couple of shows featuring this good friend of his, in our first set. The guy was an older man (mid-30's?) named Joe, and he was getting ready to go to prison (!) for smuggling pot in his private small aircraft (!!). Joe played guitar and sang, and the 2 numbers we featured him on were Bad, Bad Leroy Brown and Kenny Roger’s awful but insanely popular Lucille. Yikes! Fortunately, Joe was a tremendous showman, and I’m here to tell you that he could work the living crap out of a crowd with just those 2 songs. Sometimes he would go off on a storytelling binge and draw the tunes out into epic proportions. The Southern folks ate it up! I still crack up at the glances John and Pam would give me as we would find ourselves vamping for 10 minutes on the not very adventurous chord changes in Lucille while Joe told some hilarious stories!

With the 2 favor shows done, Joe was off to prison. He was a great character and I witnessed firsthand what it takes to win a crowd over and to be a professional showman. I thank you for that, Joe. I’m really glad I had a chance to play with you!

We were now ready to hit the road, and man, we hit it hard. Since I was now self-employed (and a card carrying union member!), I had to keep pretty meticulous records of the gigs, the pay, and hang on to all receipts for things such as dry cleaning my lovely jumpsuit and disco shirts, meals etc....Believe it or not, I still have those records, all handwritten on note cards!

Shows included weekend engagements at exciting and exotic places such as the Clemson S.C. Holiday Inn, the Lake City S.C. Country Club, a week at the Greenville S.C. Holiday Inn, a grueling but very eventful 2 weeks in Opelika, Alabama at the People’s Choice Lounge embedded deep within the bowels the Ramada Inn.

In December of 1977 (I was initially wrong about the date I joined the band - my previous post has been corrected), we played more profitable one-night stand Christmas dances. 10 of them, as a matter of fact (including the very hard to get into Slug’s Top Of The Tower in Charlotte!), ending the season with a week at the Fireplace Lounge at Rock Hill’s own Best Western.

From August 10 to December 31 I made over $3200. Rooms were free, meals mostly discounted or free, and when I was not on the road, I lived at home with mom. For what seemed like a first time occurrence, we were both happy about my career in music. Money talks, baby!