394. Diana Ross, "Diana"

 


So, say you're Diana Ross and you've already produced some of the most iconic music in the history of modern recordings by the time you're 25 years old.  How do you follow that up?  I don't know, because you're not Diana Ross, but Diana Ross is and she got together with Nile Rodgers, who we've seen here before and will again (and again and again), and put together this disco classic.  Now, this was released straight into the teeth of the disco backlash of the early 80's so you might think it would have a hard go of it but NOPE it sold a million copies straight out of the gate and produced two songs I can almost guarantee you know every beat to, "I'm Coming Out" and "Upside Down."  Not a bad day at the office.

I don't love disco but this is fine.  I mean, I'm not going to put it on in the car while I'm driving around or anything but I always enjoy checking out Nile Rodgers' production, which can best be described as "bumping."  I bet this sounded great blasting out of speakers in the Trocadero in 1980.

When I was listening to this album I started thinking about discos in San Francisco and I guess I had heard of the Trocadero, which was at 4th and Bryant, but didn't realize that it opened in 1977 and was a huge deal in the disco scene.  Bobby Viteritti, a famous DJ of the era, described it like this: "You got people coming from all these bars; you got the queens coming from the leather bars and the straights coming from down by the pier... There's only one after-hour's bar in San Francisco so the hard core, the ones that were still up and they really appreciate dancing, they've heard all that commercial sh*t already. They've heard Donna Summer and all that bubble-gum and they come to the Troc, and the whole place would fill up-it would fill with the leftovers. I would get such a crowd there that I could play anything I want because they wanted to hear anything I wanted. They heard everything else... And no requests! Don't you dare. I had to hire somebody; Gini would be down there since I paid her to keep people out of my booth."  Sounds like fun, huh?

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