CLASSIC TRACKS: "Dancing in Outer Space" by Atmosfear

The first few posts to this new blog were fairly long personal recollections of my early career as a DJ. Last time out, I posted my first full review of an album. And this time, in my ongoing efforts to add some variety to the blog, I'm trying something else. Here's the first in what I hope will be a series of many ongoing random posts highlighting favourite "songs of the moment".

These random CLASSIC TRACKS posts are not full album reviews, just a couple of paragraphs on any random, individual song that I happen to be listening to at any given time. It can be anything, old or new, but mostly will be older songs of various genres - alternative, rock, soul, funk, disco, reggae, ska - indeed ANY song that I happen to like or which holds a special significance for me.

I'll be reserving album reviews for the various CLASSIC ALBUMS posts, but this one is about a single track from an album. On the CD player at the moment is a cracking compilation album, Dancing in Outer Space, by the classic jazz funk band Atmosfear, a retropective of the band’s best work, published by Elite Records back in the year 2000, a repackaging of a CD compilation that first appeared in 1995. Right now I'm listening to the first track, the title track of the album, and (deservedly) their most famous song ever, the glorious summer of 1979 dancefloor classic (on both sides of the Atlantic) Dancing in Outer Space (all 9 minutes 34 seconds of it) by the great jazz-funk group Atmosfear. This one is the same version as the original 1979 vinyl 12 inch single release, which I used to play at the clubs all those years ago.

This song, for me, epitomizes the best in hardcore jazz funk - an incredible ground-rumbling bass line, ethereal outer-space-ish keyboards, fat, hard drums and super-smooth funky guitars (and lets not forget the sizzlin' saxophone). The ultimate in club dance music from that era, if you're any kind of fan of jazz or funk music, this one just has to set you bopping.

When I think of "dance" music, sure, I like some modern EDM, but as an old fogie I think primarily of the jazz/funk/soul/disco phenomenon of the 1970s and 80s, not all this modern hip-hop, rap and R&B (R&B? Muddy Waters and B.B. King are R&B, not the modern rubbish that has hijacked the name), although I did quite like to step out to a select few of the more modern rave/house/trance classics. Maybe I'm just showing my age, but, in my opinion, the 70s and 80s gave us REAL dance music. And Dancing in Outer Space is one of the true giants among classic 70s jazz funk dancefloor smash hits.

There are a number of YouTube links to the original 12 inch monster hit version of Dancing in Outer Space. Here's one of them.

I’m now up to track 5 on this album. I’m very impressed, so far. Not a bad track yet. Who knows, maybe Dancing in Outer Space won’t be the only classic on it. But I'll leave a review of the entire album for a CLASSIC ALBUMS post at a future date.

CLASSIC ALBUMS - Silk Degrees by Boz Scaggs (1976)

Original album 1976 (Columbia Records)

Remastered Audio CD (24 Feb 2007)

Three extra live tracks

Number of Discs: 1

Label: Sony Music CMG

 

 

Track listing:

1. What Can I Say (3:02)
2. Georgia (3:56)
3. Jump Street (5:13)
4. What Do You Want The Girl To Do (3:51)
5. Harbor Lights (5:59)
6. Lowdown (5:17)
7. It's Over (2:52)
8. Love Me Tomorrow (3:17)
9. Lido Shuffle (3:43)
10. We're All Alone (4:14)
11. What Can I Say (Live Version) (3:29)
12. Jump Street (Live Version) (5:08)
13. It's Over (Live Version) (3:37)

Two of the greatest feel-good, easy listening albums of all time are Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and Boz Scaggs' Silk Degrees, both of which came out within a year or two of each other in the mid-1970's, an era which was a fertile period for such music.

Boz Scaggs is a highly talented and versatile, but sadly very underrated guitarist and musician, who worked with the Steve Miller Band in the late-1960s. When he went solo in the early 70s, he made the switch from r'n'b to producing his own strand of smooth, silky jazz-funk, a genre which was enjoying some considerable commercial success at that time. He set up stall with a bunch of excellent session musicians (most of whom were to go on to later form the acclaimed band Toto), a combination which was to prove, along with his own undeniable talent, the main driving force behind the polished, classy quality of his albums.

Scaggs produced his first two solo albums back in the 60s (1965 and 1969), but both of these were commercially unsuccessful. He moved to Columbia records at the beginning of the 1970s, and his first four albums with them all entered the charts, but were not exactly raging smash hits, except for Slow Dancer (1974), which went Gold. It wasn't until his fifth Columbia album, Silk Degrees, that his solo career went stratospheric.

The mid-to-late-1970s was by far his most successful period, during which he had no less than four hit albums, one Gold and three Platinum-selling smash hits. Down Two Then Left (1977) and Middle Man (1980) both went Platinum, and Hits! (1980) went Gold. But it was the 1976 smash-hit Silk Degrees that has proven to be the most enduring of all of them. This one went five times Multi-Platinum, reached #2 and spent 115 weeks on the US Billboard Charts, and was the album which skyrocketed Scaggs to the top of the "absolutely must listen to" musical league.

There are so many good tracks on this album, which produced no less than four successful chart singles over 1976-1977 - the sublime "What Can I Say?" (my personal favourite on the album), the sultry "Lowdown" (my third-favourite), the catchy floor-filler "Lido Shuffle" (my fourth-favourite) and the even more catchy "It's Over" (my second-favourite). But I also rate "Georgia" pretty highly, as were a couple of excellent ballads, "Harbor Lights" and "We're All Alone", the second of which which was to be a massive US and UK hit cover single for Rita Coolidge in 1977.

"We're All Alone" was also covered by Frankie Valli and The Walker Brothers during 1976, and Bruce Murray, The Three Degrees and country & western singer LaCosta in 1977, which means that there were at least half a dozen different cover versions of the song circulating the various charts in the US, UK and Europe during 1976-1977, and none of them were actually by original artist Boz Scaggs! Scaggs only released "We're All Alone" as a B-Side to "Lido Shuffle" in 1977.

I originally bought Silk Degrees on vinyl way back in the early 1980's, and more recently also bought the remastered 2007 CD edition (the one I'm reviewing now), which contains three extra bonus tracks, live versions of "What Can I Say?", "Jump Street" and "It's Over", all of which are also excellent, and show just what a force Scaggs and his group must have been on tour.

I can listen to this amazing album over and over and over again, and I never get fed up with it. If you are a fan of soulful, silky-smooth jazz-funk, and you've never heard Silk Degrees, you are missing one of the true classics of the genre. Do yourself a huge favour, go out and buy this great album, pour yourself a cool drink, and just sit back and let the music flow over you.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...