EPISODE 10: ITALO-DISCO
Hey, hey my friends, I hope you’re doing well and gearing up for a fabulous summer. Welcome to another and the final episode of Nightclubbing with your host Cherry Pie, broadcasting from Lower Grand Radio in Oakland, California. As I mentioned, this is the last episode of this series and this show has been so incredibly enriching personally and professionally for me. If you tuned in, shared with a friend or gave a follow I want to demonstrate my immense gratitude and say thank you.
For our final episode, we’re exploring a genre and a scene I feel very passionate about, but in my work, I find very few people actually know what Italo disco is. The term “Italo disco” was actually coined by the Munich based ZYX record label, who were the first to license and market it to mostly northern and western Europe in 1982. Before that, as you may have guessed, Italo-disco’s story begins in Italy in the late 1970s.
Italo disco’s roots are in disco and dance music. If you remember in episode #7 about Chicago’s Warehouse, we talked about Disco Demolition Night. This is a really important event in dance music’s history. While disco in the United States was on the decline in 1979, it was just ramping up in Europe, thanks to a few club owners who experienced disco culture while visiting New York City. American disco imports in Europe were rare in the 70s – but there’s one notable club on Italy’s east coast that aided in revolutionizing the Italian music scene. This club had a huge influence on the development of Italo disco and overall club culture in Italy in the 1980s. It was called Baia di Angeli. Formerly a sports club, in 1975 Giancarlo Tirotti took over, and after having visited and fallen in love with the disco dance clubs of NYC, he brought back 2 American DJs with him, and Baia di Angeli was transformed into a nightlife spot. As I mentioned, American imports were rare at the time and the standard for the Italian DJ was to announce each record over the microphone and play music in a strict order: five slow songs followed by five fast ones. What’s more, most DJs didn’t actually play their own records but would instead play the collection of records owned by the club. Very few Italian DJs had even contemplated blending records. If DJs were celebrated at all, it was due to their banter. In most cases, their status was below that of the bartenders.
These 2 American DJs – Tom Sison & Bob Day, changed that. They brought the artistic, adventurous and venerated role of the DJ to Italy, and loads of American disco records with them. People traveled from all over Europe to dance at Baia di Angeli. And of course, as all good things must come to an end, and with a common theme throughout all these stories I tell – the culture at Angeli started getting out of hand with drugs and alcohol. Giancarlo decided to sell Baia di Angeli and move to Africa, and DJs Tom & Bob returned home to New York, where they would fade into obscurity. Baia di Angeli continued on until 1978, and even though the end of the 70s marked the end of the disco era, it also ushered in blossoming Italian talent to take the stage, and recreate the genre to be their own. With the solid musical base that clubs like Baia di Angeli brought to Italy, Italians were ready to make their own dance music for their club culture.
In 1978, an Italian group called La Bionda released a single called “1234 Gimme Some More”. The following year, post-disco pioneers and producers Jacques Fred Petrus and Mauro Malavasi created the soulful disco-esque groups Change and B. B. & Q. Band. Then of course, we have Pino D’Angio emerging in 1980. All these artists were putting out American inspired, but Italian made disco, no doubt heard in clubs like Baia di Angeli, while disco was actually on the decline in the USA. This was a short but impactful chapter of Euro disco, enjoyed by many European tourists from countries like Germany, Belgium, France & the Netherlands, all dancing in Italian discotheques on holiday. These tourists, mostly Germans, who were coming to Italy on vacation, fell in love with the Italian euro disco, returned home and imitated the music, but influenced it in their own way with the usage of drum machines and synthesizers. Though synthesizers were invented by American engineer Robert Moog, they were popular in Europe, particularly in Germany & The UK, and pioneered by influential bands like Kraftwerk and The Human League. Meanwhile, Italian producers are highly influenced from music that came from abroad. So you can see the genre evolves – due to this diverse convergence of influences and exchange -- thanks to producers like Giorgio Moroder, an Italian living in Munich, & Bernhard Mikulski, the owner of XYZ Records, and as we covered prior– was the first to coin the term “Italo disco” and license and market it to mostly northern and western Europe in 1982. With each new influence during this time period, Italo disco is reborn into multiple phases.
You’ll hear some variation in what I’m planning on playing today – some songs are more synth driven, some are more classic disco sounding; they have slightly different styles and lyrical content as the genre was evolving all the time with each influence and technological advancement. For the most part I’m going to be focusing on the mid 1980s era of Italo-disco, 1983 onward, when the genre was fully established in its sound. Musically, Italo disco is fast paced designed for dancing; it’s futuristic and lively in it’s sound, and commonly includes vocoder vocals and lyrics about space sung in heavily accented English. Why is italo disco mostly sung in English you might ask? My theory is that the people making Italo disco were pretending to be American or British for marketing reasons. This was actually not uncommon in the music industry, to imitate wherever they might think a trend lives to have more success. Although Italo was popular on mainland Europe, unfortunately, it never really reached the mainstream in the United States, though a few songs did reach the British charts – Ryan Paris’ “La Dolce Vita”, Laura Branigan’s “Self Control” -which is actually a cover, we’ll here the original today, & Baltimora’s “Tarzan Boy” – to name a few.
TRACKLIST:
1. La Bionda – I Wanna Be Your Lover
2. Alexander Robotnick – Problemes d’Amour
3. Mr. Flagio – Take A Chance
4. Charlie – Spacer Woman
5. Gina & The Flexix – I Wanna Believe
6. My Mine – Hypnotic Tango
7. Raf – Self Control
8. Roni Griffith – Desire
9. Baby’s Gang – Happy Song
10. Ryan Paris – Dolce Vita
11. Kano – Another Life
12. Blue Gas – Shadows from Nowhere
13. Gaznevada – I.C. Love Affair – Italian Version
14. Clio – Faces
All good things come to an end -- the rapid overcrowding of the music scene and consequent saturation led to the decline of Italo Disco in 1987. It was replaced by the Italo NRG or Italo house, which combined Italo at high speed with house music elements. Italo lives on in the hearts and stereos of music nerds like myself, with select artists and labels still making music in this style still today. If you live in the Bay, find an Italo night: there’s monthly nights at both Thee Stork Club and Eli’s Mile High Club in Oakland, and also The Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco. See you on the dance floor!