Category: Music

From the liner notes:

There are certain moments from the mid 1970s Disco era I will never forget. One of those clearest memories is hearing Love's Coming/Baby Love by USA-European Connection for the very first time. I can recall the exact instant like it only happened two nanoseconds ago – and in full IMAX 3D and Surround Sound! It was a Sunday in mid-February 1978 and I was at The Embassy Club in London's Old Bond Street.

Loftily considered the capital's answer to New York's Studio 54, The Embassy is where Sylvester filmed his video for You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) descending the curved staircase from the central balcony area and every Sunday they held a popular Tea Dance event. For the one cover price of £4 (you could buy two Disco albums on import for that cost!) all snacks and drinks—served by waiters in ultra-tight shorts—were included as glammed-up-to-the-nines patrons danced the afternoon and night away.

It was during one particular dance floor frenzy that the DJ played Love's Coming/Baby Love and I distinctly remember its completely new sound shocking me into standing completely rigid and listening closely in wonder at the aural sensations suddenly washing over me. I stood galvanised in the middle of that flashing floor under the swirling lights for nearly fifteen minutes, stunned as the constant orchestral movements, unexpected series of rhythmic breaks and abrupt time changes, ripples of floating strings, synthesizer eruptions and ecstatic girl group vocals segued into the next track. Then, quick as a flash, I literally ran to the DJ booth and demanded to know what I'd just heard. With a roll of his eyes hinting that I was just one of the many asking for the exact same information he told me, "Come Into My Heart by USA-European Connection."

The very next day I rushed to my favourite Disco import emporium in Soho and asked for the USA-European Connection album. "Not out yet," came the reply. "Try in a few weeks when T.K. Records release it." But I just couldn't wait that long and called up my best friend who worked as a producer for Capital Radio, London's premier station since 1973. Every so often he'd let me go into Capital's Euston Tower head offices to raid the New Release cupboards and over the years ! managed to get a lot of rare Disco tracks that way. But I didn't find the USA-European Connection album until I scanned the out-of-bounds desk of famed DJ Kenny Everett. Recklessly, before anyone had noticed, it was whisked into my bag, on my turntable at home, blaring out and I was closely studying the album cover credits. There the name Boris Midney was listed not just as composer and producer but also arranger, conductor, engineer, photographer, keyboardist and horn player—the complete package. Interestingly enough Everett had written a note-to-self in ballpoint on the inner sleeve which said "Huge in the US, the continuously segueing sides may be too much of a good thing". From that moment on I had to know who this multi-talented Midney person was and became totally obsessed by getting every subsequent album he produced. I began collecting his work from all over the globe and am happy to say that my complete fan devotion has not diminished one iota in the intervening years since hearing those groundbreaking USA-European Connection cuts for the first time.

You'll find out why in the second of five Disco Recharge Collections presenting the matchless work of Boris Midney whom I called in my co-authored book Saturday Night Forever: The Story of Disco, "The Stephen Sondheim, David Hockney and Stanley Kubrick of the Disco genre all rolled into one". This "Special Edition" features Midney's two innovative and incredible USA-European Connection albums plus 12" and 7" versions of the medleys and songs featured on both. The key lyric in Come Into My Heart/Good Loving, the first album's title track, sets the tone of this whole collection perfectly: "High winds of feeling tear me apart". For the dancer is immediately caught up in the surge of undulating music as wave upon wave of lilting melody, wild percussion, peripatetic stings and shrieking violins, pounding reverbs, conga breaks and orchestral ingenuity hit you between the eyes with a distinctly emotional force. All that sumptuous pummelling continues in Love's Coming/Baby Love with tuned discordance made to sound sweetly harmonious as the "sensuous vocals" (by Leza Holmes, Renne Johnson and Sharon Williams) go slo-mo only to be uplifted by angelic harps, echo chamber beauty and string enchantment. Sparer, crisper and more precise than the Come Into My Heart album, the second self-titled USA-European Connection release from November 1979 featured the equally haunting I'd Like To Get Closer/Do Me Good and Join the Dance/There's A Way Into My Heart. Vocals this time provided by Chequita Jackson and Kevin Owens, a duo who would continually be employed to convey the delicious brand of Midney Magic. Each is a grandiose symphony of musical quality, focused individuality and artistic refinement that was entirely unique for the Disco era yet still retained the ability to sweep you onto the dance floor for a rapturously blissful workout.

After defecting from Russia and signing with the ABC/Impulse Records Jazz label in America, the classical musically trained Boris Midney had the idea of combining pop rhythms with more orthodox sounds. "The idea of pop meets classical had been brewing inside me for years," says the great man himself in comments taken from an exclusive interview especially conducted for this "Disco Recharge" series. "I had built a studio in Princeton, New Jersey, and started experimenting with strings over funk there. But it wasn't until I built ALPHA International Recording Studios in Philadelphia, with Peter Pelullo, that my Disco foundation truly began. There was no true Disco at the time, just a flavour – R&B with an orchestra—but there was dance pop like Silver Convention. I heard their tracks first hand in Bob Reno's office at Mercury Records and loved the string sound. That confirmed I was on the right track in the combination of different musical styles."

Midney recalls how the Come Into My Heart album was put together: "I made this tape in my studio in Philadelphia at odd times, mostly at night. I sat at the piano and played it all the way through. Of course there were a lot of objections like, 'You can't have one track on the album, too long, gotta separate them, nobody will listen…etc'. I was looking to somehow connect the Euro Sound with the US Funk and R&B one. While commuting from Princeton to Philadelphia, on the highway there was a large sign saying 'Connection to 95', and that's how I got the USA-European Connection concept and project title. Every new style of music starts with a beat and this drummer I was working with at the time had 'that beat'. I was clearly developing a sound, I just wasn't aware of creating Disco. The subsequent Disco craze was nothing short of a revolution against established and cliché pop that allowed composers and producers to experiment with new and 'off-the-wall' sounds, truly the basis for any new movement. Later my lawyer Sandy Ross said, 'You're crazy, what kind of name is USA-European Connection? Make it shorter or it will never sell. That's when I knew I was on the right track".

While some thought Midney was a lunatic recording stuff that was clearly unmarketable to their ears, many loved what he was doing as he points out. "I guess I was determined. I was doing something I really liked and deeply enjoyed doing it. So when the master tape was finished, a friend of mine from New York told me he knew David Mancuso, the DJ and owner of the downtown New York 'underground' club, The Loft, and arranged for it to be premiered there. The place was crowded, full of balloons, and it went on at midnight. One by one people cleared the dance floor because they wanted to listen as it contained such a different sound. I saw this as something of a disaster that the clubbers' non-reaction was due to the recording/mix not being up to par. Without saying thank you or goodbye to Mancuso, I drove back to Philly and totally remixed it. Something that was completely unnecessary as I got a call the next night saying Mancuso had played it again a number of times and people couldn't get enough. After that it was put on regular rotation at The Loft and things started to happen very quickly. Promoters called and I was introduced to Henry Stone at T.K. Records who came up with an offer to release it on their Marlin label."

The result was a Billboard Hot Dance Disco Chart Number 1 that remained on every DJs playlist for the next 21 weeks. Naturally Stone asked Midney for a second USA-European Connection album follow-up. "But I didn't have anything. By then I was at my Eras Studio on Manhattan's East 54th Street. One night I went to my favourite restaurant that specialized in fried, boiled and grilled ducks but my dinner didn't taste exactly right. I went back to the studio and got terrible double vision and severe nausea. I sat at the piano hoping it would pass. My engineer Dmitri Zbrizer was still there and I said 'Let's record something'. He rolled the tape and I was in and out of consciousness playing non-stop until Dmitri yelled 'How the hell do you know what you are playing?' and the tape ran out. I had no sheet music only a click track in my headphones but the second USA-European Connection album was done, with just the vocals and arrangements added the following week. I learned about my father's death during the Come Into My Heart recording, and I had food poisoning on the second album and could barely play a note on the piano. But those dual feelings of euphoria and a total reality disconnect provided the inspiration. Any kind of good music doesn't result from sheer happiness or satisfaction, there has to some drama, discord and sadness. Melancholy is the most beautiful of human emotions and that quality is definitely invested in both USA-European Connection albums".

~ Alan Jones
Co-author of the bestselling book Saturday Night Forever: The Story of Disco

From the liner notes:

"On the Mount Olympus of Disco there are numerous gods. But there is only one Zeus, and his name is Boris Midney".

That's what I put in my co-authored book Saturday Night Forever: The Story of Disco and I still stand by every single word I wrote in the Hot Shots: The Producers section. For there isn't a week in the past 35 years since he stormed onto the Disco scene that haven't listened to a Boris Midney composed, arranged, produced, sound designed or engineered track. As uniquely directional and fresh sounding today as they were the first time they were heard, every eagerly anticipated Midney album left dancers and reviewers clutching for superlatives invoking such rare descriptions for the Disco era as "avant-garde," "extraordinary" and "art."

Midney minted a new marriage between music and technology that yielded successively breathtaking results. The stunningly beautiful melodies he composed, with his engagingly odd and unique lyrics delivered in eccentric but always sophisticated style, coupled with the sparse, ethereal space effects he created in between became instantly recognizable to his legion of admirers. His clean-cut, daring technique and orchestral integrity oozed from every silky groove as Midney was unafraid of experimenting on the surreal edges of dance culture. Because of these highly original aural sensations and cosmic vibrations Midney took Disco on a journey to the far-out side of the mirror ball and created a series of musical fantasy masterpieces in a body of work that is second to none in the entire genre. Disco Recharge is proud to present the first of five Boris Midney "Special Edition" collections with comments from the icon himself taken from an exclusive interview especially conducted for this banner series.

Midney was born in Russia, "In Moscow, a block away from the Kremlin. The Kremlin parks and squares were my 'playground,'" he says. "Both of my parents were professional musicians; my mother was an opera singer and my father was an orchestra conductor. So my obsession with rhythm started early". Midney played most of the instruments on all his Disco albums, including saxophone, clarinet, keyboards, drums and percussion, and he learnt his skills thanks to being classically trained at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, the second oldest in the Soviet Union, home to Sergei Rachmaninoff, and the Gnessin Academy. "No jazz music or saxophone permitted, though ! managed," he laughs. Midney also studied photography at the Moscow House of Photography. "By invitation only, I was on the Working Professional Master Programme," he adds. This additional talent is the reason why Midney shot the cover art for most of his Disco album projects.

But growing up in the USSR during his teenage years proved a disheartening experience as he explains, "I had written the soundtrack for a Russian movie entitled Staircase, which won Best Score at the Monte Carlo Film Festival. No one told me, I learned about winning from the foreign press. I simply refused to accept the Soviet doctrine of 'sitting' put in the country – I just had to see the world. So I defected. I was part of a music ensemble on a cultural exchange tour in Japan. The night after completing the tour I took off for the American Embassy in Tokyo."

Building a whole new life in America proved relatively easy according to Midney. "Perhaps that was my naivety though. Being pretty young, it appeared fairly easy. Upon arrival at the airport from Tokyo, I was greeted by Helen Keane, at the time the manager of American jazz pianist Bill Evans. Apparently she had heard about me, and the jazz group I led in Russia, from an article in Downbeat magazine. Complete news to me of course. Helen turned out to be a 'no-nonsense' active woman who got me signed up with ABC/Impulse Records". The main result of that signing was the jazz group Russian Quartet.

"Fellow Russian Igor Beruk was on bass guitar, Roger Kellaway on piano, Grady Tate on drums and me on alto sax. We recorded at the Rudy Van Gelder Studios. I joined the Musician's Union and started playing the jazz club circuit. People were curious about my background and defection and would come to see and talk to me. I guess I was a bit of a novelty. Then it became widely known that I could read music and I started getting other industry jobs". (Russian Quartet's Kellaway would be Oscar nominated for Best Adaptation Score in 1976 for A Star is Born. Tate moved on to drumming in Quincy Jones' band and Rudy Van Gelder is regarded as one of the most important engineers in music history due to his work with Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins and numerous other luminaries).

Those "other industry jobs" would eventually lead Midney to building his own studios in Philadelphia and New York, and becoming a leading figure of the Disco movement after making his sensational debut with the Come Into My Heart album by USA-European Connection. Beautiful Bend was the second of Midney's solo album projects to soar to Number 1 on the dance charts and remain in the Billboard Hot Dance Disco Top Ten for 14 straight weeks. An incredible achievement for the period, Make That Feeling Come Again! by Beautiful Bend was an astonishing recording all round. A captivating kaleidoscope of sounds so inventive and distinctive it proved overwhelming to many die-hard clubbers when sneak previewed by ace DJ Dave Mancuso at the premier Disco of the time, The Loft, two months prior to being officially released. CD 1 of this double-billed Boris Midney "Extended Edition" Collection contains the entire Make That Feeling Come Again! album as originally presented on the Marlin label, from T.K. Inc. Productions, in one long, two part track on each side. The Bonus Tracks are the 12" shorter versions of both album sides.

With vocals credited to Xo-Xo, all the Beautiful Bend songs were composed, arranged, produced, engineered and mixed by Midney at his ALPHA International Studio in Philadelphia.

Midney played keyboards and saxophone while long-time associate Bruce Weeden took on bass guitar duties with Philly staple Larry Washington on congas. With its burbling synthesizer, angelic siren calls, swirling violins, heavenly echoes and haunting beat, Midney's musical roots, Philly funk and European flavourings invest every moment with a freedom of the Disco spirit and total confidence in his innovative sound. The deliciously bouncy That's the Meaning mixed with the rolling momentum of Boogie Motion and the choral ecstasy of the title track segueing effortlessly into the discordant tunefulness of Ah-Do It is a master class of technique and musicality. The hypnotic result is an exemplary probe into luscious melody and dazzling harmony driven by sound effects that do exactly what the studio assembly's name hints at. Each song is beautifully bent out of shape and then back again into jubilant form by Midney's miraculous artistry. Vince Aletti said it best. Disco's first and greatest chronicler through the 1970s thanks to his Disco File column in Record World magazine, Aletti wrote on July 22, 1978, "Beautiful Bend is ample confirmation of an exciting talent and should prove to be one of Disco's most durable records". Nearly four decades on, how right he was.

After completing the Beautiful Bend album, Midney moved his base of recording operations to 226 East 54th Street in Manhattan. There he built America's first 48-track recording studio from scratch and named it Eras in honour of the new era of dance music it would be at the vanguard of ushering in. CD2 of this Boris Midney "Special Edition" collection contains the entire Caress album as released by RFC Records, a Warner Bros affiliate label, in 1979. Equally as startlingly individual as Beautiful Bend, Caress once more proved Midney was on the proto-trance front-line.

Uninterrupted spans of rhythmic sound accentuated by curving string sections, walls of tinkling sliding scales and densely layered orchestration, Caress is arguably the ultimate in Designer Disco. It begins with the breathlessly sung Catch the Rhythm, which then sinuously snakes into the jazz-infused Charmed By You. The unbelievably catchy You Got It Too Uptight is then teamed with the hyper-jittery brilliance of 'Love Spell'. Bonus Tracks included here are the 12" versions of Catch the Rhythm and an edited medley of You Got It Too Uptight and Love Spell.

With vocals by Midney regulars Chequita Jackson and Kevin Owens, and his patented crisp "Mi Sound" lifting this masterpiece to new heights of Disco amazement, shakes and shivers of delight will be the result of listening to Caress for the first of many times, guaranteed. For as the lyrics of Love Spell proclaim, "What you do, you do so well". And nobody in Disco Dreamland did it better than the one and only Boris Midney.

~Alan Jones
Co-author of the bestselling book Saturday Night Forever: The Story of Disco

Okay, admittedly kind of bombastic (it was written by a record reviewer after all) but I have to agree with most of what he said. Boris Midney is definitely in my Top 5 producers of the era, and the two albums in this set are my favorites of his work. I also have the previous set released by Disco Recharge consisting of Midney's Come Into My Heart and USA-European Connection, which I'll be posting shortly.

These discs aren't the easiest to come by. I stumbled upon them a few months ago while searching for something else on Discogs. But once I saw them, I knew they had to be added to my burgeoning CD collection. Naturally I have the originals (including the 12-inch versions) on vinyl, but nothing can beat the silent background of a CD—and the sound quality of these recordings is outstanding. I originally ordered this set from a seller in Poland, but as of this posting, it's been sitting in US customs for the last six weeks with no sign of movement. Neither I or the seller know what's going on, and there's really no way of finding out what's happening. So I searched and found another copy from the UK last week that arrived in a matter of days. Go figger. If the other one shows up I'll flip it or maybe just send it to one of my faithful readers if there's any interest (first come first served!)…

Sade: Stronger Than Pride (1988)

Tina Turner: Private Dancer (1984)

Dead Or Alive: Youthquake  (1985)

As I rebuild my CD collection, I was looking for Ella's Best of the Love Songs disc, and while on Discogs I stumbled upon this 3-disk box set. It contained not only Best of the Love Songs, but also Best of the Songbooks and Best of the Ballads, both disks I'd also owned previously. Checking prices on the individual disks, it would've cost me around ten dollars a piece (including shipping) to replace them, but here was this collection for ten dollars for all three! In the interest of transparency, there were several copies offered by different sellers, all in the same price range, but this was the cheapest one listed as NM (near mint) condition.

This is a nice collection if you like a little Ella now and then, and as I said it can be picked up for just a few dollars. If you want a brand new copy, it's still available through Amazon for about $35.

On the other hand, If you want all the Ella The Complete Ella Fitzgerald Songbooks 16-disc set, expect to lay out anywhere from $120-$450. (The latter being for a mint, never-opened copy.)

I certainly don't remember the circumstances of where or when I originally bought a lot of my music, but for some reason Best of the Love Songs stands out. I was meeting friends at Scottsdale Fashion Square back in 1998 to see Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss, but I arrived way too early and popped into a record store to kill some time. The disc caught my eye, and at the time just starting to get into classic jazz, I decided to take it home.

In one of those kismet moments that's forever burned into my memory, when I moved back to San Francisco later that year, I Remember You was playing as I crossed the Bay Bridge back into the City.

[Source]

And this, friends, is the reason why I still buy physical media. No risk of it just "disappearing" because of internecine warfare between faceless corporate entities who don't give a fuck about anything other than their next shareholder orgasm.

why the late, great Sylvester remains the reigning Queen of Disco…

Donna Summer: I Remember Yesterday (1977)

I think mine was Alan Parsons Project Ammonia Avenue…

The CD is Dead! Long Live the CD!

It's no secret that I like physical media. After selling nearly all my records in a fit of madness in the late 1980s when I moved to San Francisco (because CDs were the thing), I've spent the last 30 years rebuilding and augmenting my original vinyl collection because records do sound good.  In my quest to do that, I viewed my amassed CD collection as more-or-less disposable. In fact, I sold most of it during a period of extended unemployment while in Denver and never looked back. What remained were discs that held emotional significance for one reason or another and would never be sold no matter how dire my financial state—even though I'd long since stopped playing them. Hell, I didn't even have anything to play them on save for a 90s-era AIWA boombox and a Sony Discman of the same vintage (pictured above). Neither players were what I'd classify as "Hi-Fi" but it didn't matter. Those remaining CDs were in a banker box at the back of my office closet, and all but forgotten.

That was, until some time after the fire, and I realized that box was nowhere to be found. Being forgotten at the time, I didn't think to look for it when we went through the house after the restoration company came through, and when I did realize it was missing, it was too late. It wasn't even listed on the restoration inventory.

Needless to say I was heartbroken—if only because of the sentimental value of those discs. As I wrote about in 2022, I finally decided to stop crying about it, buy a CD player, and start rebuilding my collection. After giving up dealing with that wonky vintage deck, I broke down last fall and bought a new player and since then I've been going a little crazy, taking advantage of the fact that used (and even some new) CDs cost a fraction of new or used vinyl.

And I have to say that I'd forgotten how good these old workhorses actually sound. (As I write this I'm listening to Sylvester's Greatest Hits on that Discman through my Grados at angelic volume and almost orgasming) And when you stop to consider the tech that goes into making them work, it seems close to black magic, even to this relatively tech-savvy guy.

Interestingly, it also seems that CDs are making a comeback. Sales are up for the first time in years. There's just something about physical media that appeals to people—even to the latest generation who grew up on iTunes and streaming.

 

Sade: Stronger Than Pride (1988)

Kraftwerk: Computer World (1981)

Annie Lennox: Diva (1992)

 

Donna Summer: Bad Girls (1979)

David Bowie: Let's Dance (1983)

Take me back to the 80s!

Interestingly, I wasn't familiar with most of the tracks on disks 4 and 5. I'm assuming that's because they were later 80s releases and by then I'd thrown myself fully into the New Age genre and wasn't going out much. I know, I know…living in SF and not going out much?!  (Another topic for another time.)

Inspired by this post on Instagram:

I realized I hadn't made my ears bleed with this album for quite some time. So I pulled out my copy (one of the few pieces of vinyl that survived the great purge of '88) and put it on for a spin. (Take care of your vinyl kids, it will last you a lifetime.)

And room shaking volume at only about 3/4 of a watt RMS peak! Can you say, "efficient loudspeakers"?

Midney's music takes me back to a much simpler time in my life when it seemed my only concerns were going out, dancing, getting laid, and having a good time doing it. No bills, no health concerns, no imminent collapse of western civilization…

New British Canon: Sweet Dreams & How Eurythmics Outraged America

Fascinating!

Pet Shop Boys: Please (1986)

The soundtrack of my life for the first few months I lived in San Francisco.

For many years afterward I would still jump out of my skin when the computer beeps play in Two Divided by Zero because they were so new and unexpected.

Madonna: Like a Prayer (1989)

This anniversary also marks for me 35 years of being Pepsi free.

When Pepsi dropped Madonna as a spokesperson, citing the "sacrilegious" imagery in the Like a Prayer (Jeez, they had no idea what was coming, did they?) video, I swore I would never drink Pepsi again. And I haven't.