We didn’t know much what to do with Disco in #DeepChatham. Frankly, the whole #TarHeelState had some adjusting to do. My first recollections of a particular sound filtering into that world are from the school year 1974 with Kool And The Gang - “Jungle Boogie,” Average White Band - “Pick Up The Pieces,” and Carl Douglas’ “Kung Fu Fighting.” In the Summer of 1975 I attended the Belmont Abbey Basketball Camp with my Chatham Central High hoops teammates and I very clearly remember KC & The Sunshine Band’s “That's The Way I Like It” and “Get Down Tonight” along with Earth Wind and Fire’s “Shining Star” dominating the radio play among the boys in the dorm and on the court during those days of transistor radios.
By the time we were back in school for senior year (‘75-‘76) music was sufficiently scrambled as to pit The Sylvers’ “Boogie Fever” with Stephen Stills and Neil Young’s “Long May You Run,” and Charlie Daniels’ “The South’s Gonna Do It Again” in the competition for the CCHS “Class of 1976 Song.” “Long May You Run,” thankfully, won the day but not by much.
Arriving in Chapel Hill in August of 1976 after spending summer weeks with cousins at RAF Woodbridge in England, much time listening to some permutations of radical, to me at least, broadcasts on Radio Caroline and Radio Luxembourg, I had heard some sounds there that were mainly unnamed and fitfully germinating that would quickly boom (bloom?) into Punk and New Wave. I’d been inexplicably tuned in to David Bowie since 1974 and the glam-rock of ‘Diamond Dogs’ briefly morphed into the disco leaning ‘Fame.’
In Chapel Hill I imprinted on two very different college party scenes that first year — the dorm-rat and fratty duet of Kirkpatrick’s Bar and The Shack, and, across a parking lot, the lit-up dance floor, cosmopolitan disco glitz of Mayo’s ‘Bacchae.’ (Troll’s came later) An occasional weekend back in Chatham introduced me to a raucous scene I never fully explored but have heard tell many tales of — The disco paradise of ‘Crash Landing’ in Southern Pines.
It was also during that time that I made my personal discovery of used records. With great joy I dug into the into the bins (thank you @Dennis Gavin) at The Fair Exchange.
I also tuned into the forward projections in the very air (thank you WXYC) and even bravely started hitting the smokey little clubs where live music was happening (thank you Town Hall/Mad Hatter and Cat’s Cradle).
Jukeboxes were a thing and that could mean that in the college bars of Chapel Hill that you were at the mercy of the tastes and emotions of friends and strangers alike. Likewise, in the dorm, stereos battled and genres clashed. Most radio stations weren’t fully tracked into genres yet and potpourri was the disorder of the day. The Walkman was in the future (‘79) so we were all still stewing in the goulash of the collective soundscape. So many tunes to love, to hate, to space out to. I can’t say if the ‘70s had the greatest music - but that decade without a doubt was an utterly unplanned and anarchic mashup.
I’ve not mentioned so much — so many songs and artists. If you listen closer next time you’re doing your grocery shopping chances are you’ll catch some strains of once-controversial ‘70s hits and near-hits. Really. Try it.
#OTD in 1952, Randy Jones-The Cowboy-was born in Raleigh. After Enloe High, NC School of The Arts, and UNC, he headed to NYC. Jones was a member of The Village People from 1977 thru 1980 and they say that he still performs — and lives — in Greenwich Village.
Village People’s Cowboy Hailed from Raleigh
