Serve Somebody (dance remix version)

Back when we were young and dumb, there were two music-related events we couldn’t get our heads around: Bob Dylan’s conversion to Christianity and the rise of disco.

Aside from Dylan, the born-again Christian thing seemed like a fad at first. It swept through my then-circle of friends like a pandemic, taking two couples and a cousin with it. Actually, it happened so quickly, involving changes in personality and relationships, that it felt more like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It was difficult to understand and seemed counter to where we were in life: in our early twenties, with personal freedoms we could only wish for in high school, and now everyone who had fallen under the spell was taking a step backwards, afraid to face the future without some ethereal presence placing its hands on their shoulders and directing them.

In Bob Dylan’s case, it was equally hard to figure. The “spokesman for a generation,” raised Jewish, chastising audiences as non-believers and making what amounted to gospel records. It felt like losing a cool uncle to a cult.

Even while all this happened, the distant thump-thump-thump of disco started being heard. At first, it seemed more than a bit corny and a mutant strain of the R&B we’d grown up with, 1001 songs that sounded the same, 975 of them about dancing, the rest about sex.

Donna Summers

It spread fast, quickly becoming the soundtrack in bars, hair salons and car rides. It didn’t matter one bit that much of the music was being made by black musicians or embraced by gays. What bothered us was that disco, like being born again, translated into a lifestyle we didn’t understand or aspire to. On the outside at least, it seemed hollow. It was about perfect hair, flared pants and dancing, for God’s sake – not flannel shirts and sneakers. (Although for both sides it was all about wearing the right uniform for the army you’d volunteered for).

But once you got past the fashion, the unspoken secret of disco was that we began gravitating toward it. There was plenty to like. The dynamic guitar solo on Donna Summers’ “Hot Stuff” (played by Elliot Randall, also responsible for the lead guitar on Steely Dan’s “Reeling In The Years”). The undeniably cool synthesizer workout that ruled Summers’ “I Feel Love.”

John Lennon claimed to be a fan of Shirley and Company’s “Shame, Shame, Shame” (we were too, but just didn’t want to admit it). Neil Young confessed his admiration for Donna Summers’ “Bad Girls.” When rock groups began appropriating the disco sound, we were all in. Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” was unbearably dumb, but appealing. I played the extended dance remix of the Stones’ “Miss You” – the version you’d hear in gay clubs and the discos we’d never set foot in – to death.

The golden age of disco was relatively brief, and it was probably done in by general overexposure and crap like this. I’ve read it was white rock fan backlash that killed disco, but if that’s true the jokes on them as dozens of English bands took to synthesizers, drum machines and the unmistakable dance beat as the foundation of new wave music.

Bob Dylan, as he always has, stayed away from any sort of stylized music like disco. His Christian phase lasted only a couple of years (at least as far the public is concerned). The two albums he made under the influence were – another unspoken truth – among his better efforts from the decade.